Rylan's presence sucks all the oxygen out of the tiny space. She stands with her back to them, close to the doors. Blocking the exit. She doesn't spare them a look, but in the mirror glass of the door Zef can see a pinch to her expression.

The night isn't going as she planned. He would take small comfort in that, except he can't breathe. Can't get his heart to slow. His chest aches, ribs creaking like he's a jam-filled donut being torn apart for aesthetic advertisement. The illuminated screen displaying which floor they're on flicks from five, to six, to seven.

The executives' rooms are on forty-four. Rylan hit the penthouse. Of course she did. She'll be with them the whole time.

She doesn't talk, though. They'll be fine, Zef tells himself. They'll be—

"Miss Archer?" says Katarina. "Are you really the Miss Archer?"

Zef's blood goes cold. Of course Katarina's the type to strike up conversations with psychopaths.

Rylan barely casts her a sideways glance. "Mm."

"I heard the news about your home, and I want to express my condescension— conversation? Condolences! Ah, my English."

Rylan's face moves as if through concrete into the facsimile of a smile. "Yes, a shame."

Zef stands frozen, hoping that will be the end of it, but no, Katarina has her captive audience. She wants answers. The ones she obtained at the dinner party are unsatisfactory. "Did you ever find out who did this terrible thing?"

"The criminals were apprehended," Rylan lies smoothly.

"Oh! What good news. And who were they?"

Rylan deigns to look at Katarina. Not directly, but in the mirror glass of the elevator doors. "What's your interest?"

Perhaps if she wasn't stoned, Katarina could hear the threat in Rylan's tone. Instead, she plunges ahead. "My job is all about ethics! It is important, this thing. We do not want more instances of—"

"I'd leave that to the company's defence and legal team, not the ethics board," Rylan says.

"Ah, but these things should not be siloed so! Ethics, defence, and legal teams should work together, yes?"

Zef sweats. Why is Katarina so persistent? He'd think she has a death wish. The only advantage is that it squares Rylan's attention away from Zef. She stares unfaltering and silent into Katarina's reflection, waiting for that silence to break her, to make her so uncomfortable she rescinds her opinion. Katarina smiles blithely.

Rylan says, "This is your floor." She pronounces the words the same way others would say 'fuck off.'

Zef and Lina are already halfway through the doors. Zef passes Rylan feeling like a dog crossing over an invisible electric fence.

"So it is!" Katarina declares. "A pleasure to meet you, Ms Archer."

Rylan does not reciprocate the sentiment as the doors close.

Zef feels like he should be able to breathe, but he hardly does. He escorts Katarina to her room in a trance. He asks her if she needs anything more from the open doorway while she chugs her glass of water and face plants into bed. When she doesn't answer, he realises she fell asleep in seconds, and wishes he could. Exhaustion snuck up on him like a shiv to the ribs.

Feeling like a total creep, he lets the door shut behind him and roots through his pockets for the tranquiliser Damo gave him. Carefully measured, it should keep her out for long enough they can infiltrate Bionic Capital HQ in her place. Sami promised to check in on her.

Zef still feels slimy sticking the needle into the vein of her arm. It disturbs her less than a mosquito bite. Already boneless, she sags deeper into the bed with a sigh. Still in her evening dress.

He feels bad leaving her like that. He takes off her shoes and puts one of the extra blankets over her.

He leaves to collect Lina next. By then, the hotel manager stands at the stage, informing them of the sabotage, and they're under the influence of prisma, the effects of which are safe and will wear off. He advises them to sleep it off in their rooms. It makes Zef's job easier. When he asks Lina if she would like a hand getting to her rooms, she nods blandly and follows him like a distracted baby duckling, carrying her heels on one finger and pinching her brow with the other.

The minute she's in bed, asleep, drugged into sweet oblivion, Zef collects the bags from he and Gray's room then leaves. In an alleyway devoid of surveillance cameras, he turns off the hologram, changes out of the server uniform and chucks it in a dumpster. He puts on non-descript sweats and takes the subway to Damo's.

Somewhere along the route, he'd successfully buried his feelings about seeing Rylan, replacing them with worry for Gray's well-being. He hadn't looked good while leaving the hotel.

Damo draws him up short on that.

>>How are you holding up, champ?

Zef sighs. The train is far from empty. He texts back.

>>Feels like I could sleep for a decade.

Damo:

>>Fair, but first, could you do something for me?

Zef:

>>What's that?

Damo:

>>When you get in, I've got a room for boxing. Bit of a hobby. You get to be as old as me, you collect hobbies the way other people collect stamps. Anyway, I want you to go to town on the punching bag.

Zef scrunches his face up. >>Why?

Damo:

>>You just relived a near-death experience in a situation where you couldn't yell, scream, or fight back. Your body's storing all that fear and tension. It's poison, mate. You gotta let it out.

Zef:

>>I feel fine.

Damo:

>>No, you feel detached. Dissociating and being okay are two different things.

Zef sometimes hates the way Damo and Sami interpret his feelings better than he can. He tries to deflect. >>Is Gray okay?

Damo lets him stew in an uncomfortable digital silence.

Zef:

>>Okay, fine. I'll do it.

Damo:

>>You'll thank me later.

>>And Gray is doing about as well as you are.

>>Which is to say, you're both a hot mess.

>>But you'll be okay.

Zef wishes he could take comfort in that, but Damo's words act like truth serum. Flushing out the lies Zef tells himself. That he's got it together. That he's fine, and it's Gray that needs help. Now, sitting on the train an hour after seeing Rylan in the elevator, watching his fingers shake, it's harder to maintain the fiction.

At the door, Damo immediately stuffs a Pop-Tart in his mouth and leads him down the hall into a room he's never explored before.

Damo explains he discovered a way to block the signal messing with Gray's gild. Says it was actually good luck they encountered it tonight rather than it happening while they're inside Bionic Capital HQ.

"Can I see him?" Zef asks.

"He's out, for now. Pain meds." When Zef looks primed to argue, Damo adds, "I promise he's okay."

He sticks Zef in front of a punching bag. Takes out a strip of bandages and wraps Zef's shaking hands. Teaches him not to tuck his thumbs. "Think like you're a matadorian bull, and this is the red flag." He pats the punching bag. "Just go ape shit."

Zef looks at it dubiously. All his energy's sapped. The quiet tremor in his hands hasn't abated. He doesn't want to hit something, he wants to take a nap. Preferably in the arms of a boy just as damaged and drained as he is.

He strikes the bag with a closed fist. It sways gently like a sheaf of wheat in the wind.

"Harder," Damo says.

Zef hits it again. The sound his knuckles make impacting the bag lack the satisfying thwok of a heavy punch. The equivalent of air let out of a whoopie cushion.

"Harder," Damo pushes.

"I'm trying."

"Doesn't look like it."

Zef twinges with irritation. He didn't want to do this. He hits the bag again. Again. A slow one-two.

"C'mon, Zef, what the hell is that?"

Zef punches it again.

"Where's the fire? The force? Aren't you angry?"

"No," Zef says. He doesn't really get mad. Though, a little irritation with Damo makes him punch harder than before. Annoyance with him for pushing when all Zef wants to do is lie down. For insisting on these dumb treatments and exercises when all Zef and Gray's problems feel disproportionally weighted in their enemy's favour.

The next punch gets the bag to jerk a bit.

Not enough for Damo. "You've gotta be kidding me. I'd be raging in your shoes. You should be fucking furious."

Punch. It radiates from Zef's shoulder.

"Rylan tried to take everything from you two," Damo continues.

Punch, thunk.

"Stole your transition, your autonomy, your bodies, your free fucking will. Tried to pit you against each other. Tried to smash your identity, your willpower. Turn your heartbeat into a flat line. Tried to flat line your boyfriend, too, in every way that matters except the literal."

The word 'boyfriend' bites like a backhand. They hadn't established if that was what they were, but if it were up to Rylan they'd never get that chance.

Punch, punch, punchpunchpunch.

"Are you gonna let her?"

"NO!"

It comes out a scream. Rotten, raw and slimy as unrefrigerated chicken. His voice cracks on the impact of his fist, a hit he feels in his chest. Right where it tore open. Radiating through his scars like Lichtenberg figures. Punchpunchpunch. It was the last thing he wanted to do. Now he's not sure he can stop. Waiting for recognition in that elevator. Watching Gray—brave and resilient and deserving better—turned into a twist of agony at Rylan's behest. And the last thing, sneaking in like an insect through a hole in the screen window at night— Ollie. Choosing death instead of Zef. Instead of talking to them. Instead of one of any countless alternatives.

The fury bubbles over in every hit, until finally there's not enough boiling rage left inside to expel. Zef holds the punching bag steady in clenched hands. He sits heavily on his ass, forehead pressed to fake leather.

Damo shoves a smoothie at him. Zef accepts it reluctantly, still peeved with Damo for putting him up to this, even though something cathartic seems to unravel the knots in his chest that had lingered ever since seeing Rylan. Even though his hands aren't shaking anymore, just sore.

"That was more like it," says Damo.

"I hate this," Zef insists. "What's the point?"

"It's like this," Damo says. "People like us, we can go our whole lives being told there's a right and wrong way to be angry. To fight. To stand up for ourselves. People who step on us get to wipe the blood off the soles of their shoes with silk hankies and pretend to be victims when we lash out. The greatest lie they ever told us was that our righteous outrage was radical." He reaches out and squeezes Zef's shoulder. "Don't believe it. Don't hold that wrath inside where it'll turn against you. Let 'em have it."

Zef shudders. The violent recollection of his brush with death courses through him. He's right. That's what you're up against. You can't freeze up against someone like Rylan, because she won't hesitate.

He looks into Damo's dark eyes and for the first time wonders how he got free.

Probably not peacefully.