When Zef gets into the elevator, he doesn't push any of the buttons. He plasters his sweaty back against the cold mirror glass, stares at the doors sliding shut, and debates.

Ground floor jailbreak, or penthouse death trap?

Shouldn't be a tough call, but something keeps him glued to the spot.

A slippery spark of hope.

If Archer suspects him of stealing the Vitali, why call him into her office personally? Why not just call the police? Or Bionic Capital's personal army, like with Mira? It's a car. An offensively expensive car, but a car is a car. In the grand scheme of corporate espionage, it's small potatoes compared to trade secret theft and fraud. Cars could be retrieved. Cars could be insured. Trade secrets in the hands of competitors could cost the company untold billions—and if there was anything companies valued highly, it was theoretical money.

So why have Mira tased and arrested publicly in front of her co-workers while Zef got a private audience?

It's stupid. The last reason he should go is to sate a half-witted curiosity.

But hope accompanies that curiosity.

If he leaves now, no more job. No future prospects. Return to the bayou. Can't just city-hop because his bank account is more arid than the Atacama desert.

If he hears Rylan out?

Maybe a criminal record. Maybe.

Or maybe she's got an offer in mind.

He stares at the glass buttons like they might bite. It'd be breaking a rule. He'd be taking a risk. A calculated one, but still a risk.

He presses the button for the top floor.

The elevator shoots up, his stomach left behind. The doors peel open to a reception unchanged from his last visit. Disgruntled teenager at the desk. No soldiers, thank Christ. The door to Rylan Archer's office awaits.

"She'll see you now," says the bored receptionist.

Zef opens the door. He's never going to get used to Rylan's office. He studies her face as he enters rather than pay attention to the pavement several-hundred feet below him. She wears a grey, structured pantsuit covering her from neck to ankle and gold pumps matching her gild. Her expression is blank. She doesn't raise her gaze or stop typing.

"Sit."

Zef sits. Tries not to feel like a very obedient, very stupid dog. Curiosity and hope seem like faraway principles when faced with the unfeeling mask of Rylan Archer. She finally stops and looks at him. Neither kind nor unfriendly. Neither accusatory nor benign.

"I assume you understand why I've asked you here."

That has to be a trick question. Get him to confess? Not likely.

"To ask about my first day?"

"Do I seem like the sort to inquire after every employee's experience on their first day?"

You seem like the type to have a freezer big enough for bodies in your basement. "No, ma'am."

"No," Rylan agrees.

She pushes back from her desk, chair rolling across the transparent expanse of her office. With a gesture, the back window fogs and projects her computer monitor. Zef's gut twists. Here it comes. He came here on purpose. He can't forget his reasons.

She pulls up a series of photographs and flicks through one after the other.

Zef finds it very hard to hold onto his convictions.

The first photo shows the darkness of the parking garage under The Gilded Road. Gray touching the hood of the Vitali, shimmering like a pearl in the dark, and Zef with him. The next is from a traffic camera. Zef white-faced and gritting his teeth in the passenger seat. Looks like a still from one of those rollercoaster cams. The third?

The third is the worst.

It's from inside the Vitali. Gray didn't even disable the security cameras. Zef doesn't have capacity over the buzzing in his head to overthink why. The photo gives him a genuine sip of guilt.

It must have been taken after the chase. Gray grins his crooked grin, bathed in the Vitali's interior neons, his expression incandescent. Incriminatingly gorgeous. And Zef.

Zef's looking at Gray like he's the only star left in the sky. Like Zef's got questions and Gray's the answer. Like they're two souls stuck in a moment so brief it lasts forever. And in that photograph, it does.

"I can explain—" Zef starts, though he doesn't know what he's going to say.

Rylan interrupts. "What is your association to the assassin known as Gray?"

That was not what Zef expected. Assassin. "Pardon?"

"The man with you in these photographs is an assassin." Rylan looks at the photos, expression inscrutable. "What is your association?"

Zef had assumed Gray was less than legal. He had not pegged him for a hired gun. "No association. I met him at a bar." Zef frowns, intuition coalescing inside him. "Look, I'm really sorry. I didn't even know the car was yours until today. I thought it was his. He unlocked it like it belonged to him, and I just figured I'd have a fun night to celebrate getting this job, and now I might lose this job, but I promise you I had no idea he was going to take me joyriding in a stolen car let alone your stolen car and— And..."

Rylan does something strange. She reaches up to her temple and taps. The implant there—the one shaped like a figure eight—swirls red, blinks twice, then powers off. Rylan's face falls out of stiff torpor. Reanimated, she massages her jaw, frowning at the screen without looking at Zef. It seems as if her empathy dampener suppresses her own feelings, not just her perception of others' feelings.

She looks tired. Older.

"Let me be candid with you, Zeffir Kovac," she says. He tries not to writhe uncomfortably at the use of his full name. "I have very little doubt you were unaware of the circumstances around what occurred last night. It would be fairly nonsensical to lose the job you just spent an entire month interviewing for. A job that, as I understand, you're dependent upon for gender-affirming care."

Dependent. A pit opens up in Zef's stomach and burns.

"To be even more candid," she continues, "you fucked up."

Swearing normally puts Zef at ease. Like finger food on a first date. Like unbuttoning the collar of a tight shirt. It's a bit human. Not this time. This time, it's a knife under his chin. "I'm sorry." He says, even though he doesn't think it will save him. Even though he doesn't feel particularly sorry, just powerless.

"I'm not concerned with an apology," Rylan says. "My only concern was over your association and history with Gray."

"Okay..." Matching candour for candour, "I have none. He's hot. I'm gay and stupid. That's about the extent of it."

Rylan smiles. It is not comforting. "Then I think perhaps we can help each other."

An olive branch. This. This is what Zef came for. The distant hope upon which he'd pressed the elevator button for Rylan's floor. "How?"

Rylan turns to the screen and gestures. Once again, she flicks through photographs. These ones are blissfully devoid of Zef's dumb face. Instead, multiple photos of Gray pass through. Gray on a dash cam barrel rolling over the hood of someone's rust-bucket. Gray running from cops (again) with middle fingers extended. Gray with a black eye illuminated by the ember of his cigarette while he stands in an alley with some shady looking hoodlums.

"Gray has been a thorn in my side for a while now," Rylan explains. "He does more than assassinate important individuals. Last month, he managed to commandeer a vessel of shipping containers with the entire month's materials for a product launch that had to be postponed. Investors hate delays."

Zef tries and fails to look adequately sympathetic. Corporate espionage sounds light years outside his purview as a cybernetics engineer.

Rylan scowls. "I don't think you appreciate the seriousness of this situation, so I'll spell it out more succinctly."

She switches the projector's photo collage. Zef's heart arrests mid-beat.

These photos show a factory-line floor. He can't make out what the assembly line's for. Most of it's automated, but there are security personnel tasked with protecting company property on site to supervise. These personnel, along with the factory machine components, are strewn across the room like a Jackson Pollock painting. Like someone put bodies in a big water balloon and splatted it from on high.

Standing amidst the carnage, looking like Carrie on prom night, is Gray. He doesn't drip gore, he is gore. Looks like he took a bath in hamburger meat. Under the blood, he looks younger. Soft-jawed. Doe-eyed.

Zef says, "Do you have a garbage bin?"

Rylan provides one, and Zef—for the second time in as many days—up chucks. His shrimp lunch ends up in the basket of Rylan's paper shredder.

She instructs her receptionist to bring water. When said receptionist appears, Rylan has removed the photo from the projector, but Zef still sees it painted behind his eyelids. I got in a car with that maniac. I'm attracted to psychopaths. There is something so wrong with me. A tall glass of water, sweating condensation, is placed next to Zef on the desk. He ignores it. The receptionist leaves.

Zef says, "You're telling me I went on a date with a serial killer?"

"Unfortunately."

"How did he do that?"

"Grayson Nash is a soldier outfitted with prototype cybernetics used in the Capital War."

The Capital War. Zef's dad fought in that war. At least, until he lost his legs to a proximity mine.

It wasn't a war in the traditional sense. Not country versus country, or political factions butting heads. As companies became conglomerates, as those conglomerates became greedy for endless growth, tensions flared over which of those companies could stake a larger claim of the market. The profit pie. The war started with sabotage and spies. Then, eventually, armies. Companies as big as Bionic Capital and CyberSuite had their own militia, the purpose of which was ostensibly to defend against aggressive competitors.

Really, these companies were just out to destroy each other.

People like Zef's dad had joined up on the promise of benefits, like putting your kids through college. He'd served under CyberSuite for six years when he stood on a proximity mine and lost his legs. CyberSuite, a company whose speciality was cybernetics, discharged Matthias and slashed his benefits without so much as providing him a complimentary pair of cybernetic legs.

Which is why Zef would rather eat shit than work for them. Still, he couldn't help but feel nothing but resentment over the mere mention of the war. It was the fight of the wealthy elite over money they would never live long enough to spend, while the soldiers who fought it for them were maimed, killed and dumped like refuse.

"It's extremely dangerous technology," Rylan continues. "It allows Gray to interface with implants and other tech." A flash of memory. Gray's arm shooting out across Zef's chest, the tattoos just visible and aglow. The brakes of the oncoming car locking up. Rylan continues, "He used this to overload the factory machinery, and the security personnel not killed in the shrapnel were disabled when he detonated their implants." She folds her hands on the desk and lets the weight of her words connect with the horrors of the photo she showed him.

"Which company hired him?"

"CyberSuite."

Zef grits his teeth. His mind drifts to the implications of what Rylan's saying. What reasons she could have for telling him.

"You want me to catch him," Zef guesses.

Rylan spreads her hands. "In exchange, you can keep your position here."

"Isn't that blackmail?"

"Bargaining," Rylan argues. Despite the fact she turned off the empathy dampener, she seems—to Zef—pretty detached all the same. "Your gender-affirming care will also be covered."

"He could kill me."

"His attacks aim to disturb company production."

"Well, I'm a part of company production now. And killing me would be disturbing. Why not send your army? They, like, know how to operate a gun."

"Neither the police, the military, our company's personnel, or my own privately hired security detail have had any luck in capturing him. His implants are too powerful. I believe Gray requires a subtler hand." She gestures at the screen again, retrieving the photo of Gray and Zef in the car. Gray's laughter looks different now. The bloodbath adds context. Unsettling context. "He seems to enjoy your company," Rylan concludes.

Zef's blood pressure is about to make a lunar landing. He can see where she's going with this. Seduce Gray. Right. Because Zef is smooth moves for days. It's the most unhinged thing she's spouted so far. Moreover, Zef decides he doesn't really like her. She's cold, mechanical, and views Zef as a tool. Leverage. He's got no illusions about that, but...

He sees her and this job the same way.

He pictures it. Going home a failure. Surgery and testosterone out of reach. And it's not just listening to strangers stumble over his pronouns again. Or the anxiety of taking a piss in a public restroom. Or any of the other myriad bullshit that gets the most attention from upsettero cisheteros.

It's looking in the mirror and deciding to wear clothes that hide himself rather than show who he is. It's living his life quietly in the margins instead of loud and on the page. It's the quiet indignity of knowing who you are without the tools to tell the world—here I am, this is me. His dad once said, 'do the labels really matter if you know who you are in your heart?' He meant well when he said it, but it wasn't just about choosing new labels. Not for Zef. It was about shedding the ones people assigned him the moment he popped out of his mom's vagina. The moment they looked at him.

He's only been on T for three months. Enough to start seeing changes. Changes he likes. For the first time, he could build a body that was home. Brick by brick. Leg hair. Low voice. A home he wasn't just renting, a home he owned. He could decorate how he wanted. A dangly earring, a crop top and booty shorts, and instead of reading girl he'd read gay.

If he leaves now, he can't afford his prescription, let alone the rest.

And if Gray kills him...

The memory of that note on the fridge resurfaces. Zef swallows a stone of hurt.

"I'm not necessarily agreeing," he says. "Not yet. How do I capture a guy who's capable of interfacing with all technology?"

"I feel your knowledge of cybernetics engineering will give you the ingenuity required to find his weakness. Use your creativity. I won't have you go in blind, however. In order to circumvent his implants, you'll need to understand them. Here."

She moves to her desk and opens a drawer, pulling out a small box. It looks like the kind that might contain an engagement ring. Zef opens it. A clear implant about the size and shape of a contact lens sits inside, with a circular disc at the centre shining gold as a coin.

"This will allow you to download data on his implants, provided you can make physical contact. It's installed on your fingertip. A brief touch is all it requires."

"Right. Touch the madman. No problem. Great."

"Perhaps an incentive, then..."

Rylan swivels in her chair and clears the screen. In place of photographs, she calls up the Bionic Capital benefits database and displays a catalogue search for gender-affirming care.

There are photos of surgery results and implant technology. New bodies. Cyber dicks and vulvas. Lots of them aren't, well, traditional. There is a particularly garish, bright purple phallus with moving beads inside, for a start. But it's the before and afters which speed Zef's heart. Trans men with sculpted, masculine chests. Trans women with broad hips and soft jaws. Nonbinary people across the spectrum of gender expression, pushing definitions of gender off a cliff or embracing all of them. People transformed in themselves. Grinning broadly, sparkling like they've got drag glitter in their pores.

The display is artificial and shiny, yes, but god, Zef can't stop looking.

He looks at the box in his hand. This tiny little implant and a dangerous job. In exchange for all this. The impatient yearning of years spent in an awkward body tugs more insistently than ever.

It breaks his rules. Stay out of trouble. Don't take risks. Don't trust anyone you wouldn't take home.

Zef places his index finger against the concave centre of the implant and feels a light zap as microscopic filaments inject into the skin and hang there. His main implant registers a ping, and he approves the software installation that will allow him to use it.

When he looks up at Rylan, she's smiling. "Let me pull up the surgeon's schedule."