Bologna, Italy.

  The cold water was chilling Alex to the bone. By the time they’d caught the pale glow of light from an opening to the city, it had wicked up his body until it felt like his inner core was shaking. He’d expected the light to be dawn; it felt bright enough after sloshing through the tunnels, but it was only the dim glow of street lamps as the night sky began to fade to dull grey.

  The opening emptied out to a sandy incline with worn ruts of footsteps. Still, their shoes and pant legs became encrusted with dirt as the dry sand clung to their wet clothes.

  “Now what?” he asked at the top of the incline, leaning his back against the edge of the stone wall that lined the entrance to warm himself. The wall wasn’t really warm, but it was dry and that was close.

  “Keep moving. It’s going to follow us.”

  “Where?” Hannah’s voice was loud.

  “Somewhere it won’t follow us,” Misha snapped. “When are you going to get it through your skull that I’m never going to answer that question when the people trying to track us down might have psychometrists?”

  They followed him silently, walking until dawn. The dim rays were more comforting than most things in Alex’s life these days. Misha bought them bus tickets and they boarded a long bus and sat together on a bench. Alex thought there couldn’t be much worse than riding a bus when you’re varying levels of damp to soaked from the waist down. He immediately regretting the thought as his mind began spitting out things that were much worse: monsters, Neptune, dislocated shoulders, being this cold, Reeve, being shot at, being away from Gareth, Entropy, sleeping in communal beds, car crashes, Norovirus, living with bigoted fanatics… He let out a deep sigh and begrudgingly added being away from Reeve to the list.

  The commuters and other passengers avoided looking at them except to glance at the corner of their vision with a look of disgust. Alex realized they must look homeless, with their dirty clothes and ratty, overstuffed bags.

  He sunk into the seat. They were homeless. Really and truly. He hadn’t missed it, though it was familiar.

  Alex rested his head against Hannah’s cold, tense shoulder. She grabbed his hand.

  Alex woke up some time later as Misha shook him roughly. He jumped, disoriented, not remembering falling asleep. The pinched look on Hannah’s face told him she felt the same way.

  “We’re walking from here.”

  Alex stood, a little unsteady, and gathered his things. “How long have I been asleep?”

  Misha shrugged. “Three or four hours. Let’s go.”

  They walked, half staggering, with only the sun as a comfort. He had no idea for how long. The ground under his feet burned with Story. Like he was standing in a puddle of water in a burning house and it was only a matter of time. They ended up on a busy Italian street, crowded with small rounded cars, buses, and scooters. It looked like a small town downtown, but he could tell this place wasn’t small. Both sides of the street were lined with little shops, cafes, and temporary stands under white canvas tents. Many were clearly geared toward tourists.

  “We’re in Rome,” he said quietly.

  Misha didn’t answer. The people they shouldered past on the narrow sidewalk looked at them knowingly, like they’d spit on them if they could. Alex studied the stores as they went by, passing everything from designer clothing with stylish mannequins in the window to American fast food burger joints. Everything seemed alive under his feet and he grabbed onto Hannah’s arm to anchor his Reading. He let his vision unfocus, letting Hannah guide him along, half-blind, and hid himself into the weave of her Story.

  He was startled out of his trance when Hannah loudly asked, “There?”

  They’d come to a stop at the corner of an intersection and he rocked like he was seasick, getting his legs under him. He blinked hard, realizing his eyes were nearly shut. In front of them was the corner of a tall stone wall. It was taller than a five-story building with some sort of ornate statue set into the corner near the top of the wall. The sight of it next to windowed buildings just as tall made the wall look like something out of a bad dream.

  “What is it?” Alex asked. He shook his head trying to wake up.

  “It’s Vatican City,” Misha said blandly.

  The light turned and Misha urged them across.

  “And that’s where we’re going?” Hannah pressed.

  Misha made a face at her but nodded. “It won’t follow us there. It can’t. All the faith here would twist the flesh right off its fucking bones.”

  They followed, keeping the wall on their right for long, silent minutes, watching as it slowly became shorter and shorter, some of its height being replaced with iron bars. The wall turned right down a street and they followed, walking past a military jeep and soldier in full camo. The road dead ended at the set of imposing stone arches admitting them through the wall. A forest of tall, ivory Roman columns towered over them, looking impossibly heavy and light at the same time. This kind of overwhelming grandness was offset by a hexagonal information desk and a hundred tourists all wandering in different directions. Misha pulled them off the side to sit on the short set of steps with their backs to one of the massive columns, warm from the sun.

  “Now what?” Hannah groaned.

  “We hide out here for a bit and pray they’ve lost us.”

  “At a Sanctuary?”

  “No.” The frown etched deep lines in Misha’s face. “There isn’t one. Nothing to hunt here.”

  Alex pulled his aching knees up to his chest and rested his head on them. “So we’re just sleeping on the ground for a few days?”

  “No one will bother us here as long as we’re gone by morning. You’ll see.”

  Hannah sat up suddenly. “Does the actual church know about the Church?” She squinted at her own question.

  Misha shrugged. “Maybe. Not in any way that makes a difference.”

  “If Entropy found us,” Hannah continued, barely listening to his first answer, “do you think they’ve found Gareth and the others too? Or that they only followed us?”

  Misha leaned forward, his face contorted. “I don’t know, I’ll let you know when I find a pre-cognitive to mimic. For shit’s sake, they better be alive because I can’t wait to hand your skinny ass back to your twitchy, PTSD-ridden healer.”

  Alex rolled his eyes and turned to glance at Hannah. She was bobbing her head in a fast nod, eyes scanning the horizon. He really didn’t want to have to deal with what might go down if there was a fistfight in Saint Peter’s Square. Then she leaned forward and extended her palm to Misha.

  “Money,” was all she said.

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Excuse me?”

  For all the muscle exhaustion they were feeling, her arm didn’t waiver.

  “You’re going to give me money now.”

  “I am?”

  “Yes, you’re going to buy me, Alex, and hell, maybe even yourself, an ice cream.”

  “You’re out of your fucking skull.”

  “No, I’m not. We passed a gelato truck on the way in here, so this is all very plausible and I’m sick of your bag full of sat-on protein bars.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “No. You can rip Reeve to shreds for all I care and I don’t give a shit what you think about me, but Gareth got more fucked by Reeve in this thing than anyone. If this is the hill you really want to die on, you’ll die on it. Give me your wallet.”

  Misha stared hard at her, face blank. But he reached into his pocket and pushed a thin fold of euros into her hand. “Could use some time away from looking at your cunty face, anyway.”

  Hannah stood up and looked at him with mocked surprise. “Oh, so you are a pre-cog, because I was about to say the exact same thing.”

  Alex watched her stride away and disappear in the crowd.

  After a moment, Misha said, “I like that,” with a laugh, snapping Alex back to attention.

  Alex’s eyebrows shot up. “Hannah?”

  Misha’s face looked like someone had thrown shit at him. “Fuck, no! You. That shit-eating grin on your damn face. Been a while since I’ve seen it.”

  He felt his face drop in surprise. Alex hadn’t known how much seeing the two of them squabble would cheer him up. Wasn’t even sure why it did. Maybe after so many arguments with real venom—well, no, that wasn’t it. There was real venom there, just no lethal consequences.

  “You all deserve each other,” Misha continued, lighting a cigarette.

  Alex reached to touch Hannah without thinking, to ground himself, and only felt stone and tugging Story. The sun was fading behind the dome of the basilica. “Tell me something about Reeve when he was a kid.”

  Misha sobered, hesitating. “Not really my place.”

  Alex cocked an eyebrow. “What have you done with Misha?” he asked, deadpan.

  Misha smiled around his cigarette. “What do you want to know?”

  “Anything.”

  “He was a prick.”

  “Yeah, I think you covered that.”

  Misha shrugged.

  “Forget it.”

  “You know you’re a psychometrist, right?”

  Alex let out an involuntary bark. His chest silently heaved with laughter as he could feel his edges blending with the Story of the stone around him, the euphoric moments of overwhelming faith, joy, and old pain.

  “I just mean, what the fuck do you need me for?”

  “Reeve’s a control freak. He takes it out of my head.”

  Misha puffed on that, quietly. Then, “What a fucking asshole.”

  The sky was darkening quickly and Alex watched as the tourists slowly filtered out and folks bent under packs filtered in to find nooks and crannies by the walls to settle in for the night. He remembered the streaks of bad luck when he and Rick wouldn’t have a place to crash and they’d piled cardboard sheets on top of each other to cushion the concrete. Maybe life wasn’t so much one long line, but a series of circles. More like a spiral, looping back on itself but still moving forward, because he wasn’t back at square one. He wasn’t the same kid.

  Misha waved in their general direction, interrupting his thoughts. “The Pope decreed the cops can’t hassle us at night, so it’s a safe place to sleep.”

  Alex's mind wandered and he tried to ignore the sick feeling in his chest.

  "I know the twins are together, but do people who travel in the Church have relationships?"

  "Sure," Misha replied, quick and matter-of-fact.

  When he offered nothing else, Alex asked, "Do you?"

  Misha regarded the burning end of his cigarette. "Yes. We travel together a couple months a year and other than that, we do our own thing."

  "That's so little time." If Alex was ever going to be with someone, he didn't think he'd want it to be short bursts like that.

  "There are people who travel together full time. This is just what works for us. More time than that?" He shrugged and flicked some ash. "He struggles with some Catholic guilt. And I struggle to have patience for his Catholic guilt.”

  “But aren’t you Catholic too?”

  He gave Alex a heavy-lidded, unimpressed look. “You’ve identified the problem.”

  Alex gave an empathetic grimace. “What’s his name?”

  “Noah.” He said it flatly but it still nearly made Alex cough. That Noah? The one who connected us with you? Before he could make his mouth to work, Misha sat up. “Ah, here she comes.”

  He spotted Hannah walking through the thinning crowd with her hands full of small paper bowls. Alex wanted to ask more but the fact that Misha had answered him so plainly felt like an olive branch of connection he wouldn’t have extended if Hannah were there.

  Hannah handed a bowl to him and one to Misha.

  “Oh my god, Hannah,” Alex said with a little wonder. She just sat and began to eat.

  “Is it good?”

  She smiled at him.

  “You two ever panhandle before?”

  Alex nodded, though he had really hoped he was done with all that.

  Hannah looked up. “No.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to. That was basically the last of my money.”

  Hannah laughed so hard she fell onto her side.

  ---

  SolCorp’s Entropy-Controlled Kyiv Office.

  Anise loitered in the hallway by the training rooms. She hadn’t run across Asher, her old classmate, since that first time they ran into each other and she wanted to know how he was doing.

  The hallways felt different now, since her Post-Breathe. Part of it was that there was a measure of comradery that hadn’t been there before. Everyone there was working toward the same goal: a freer, reformed Sol with expanded rights for knacked people, and the fact that it was covert intensified that. There was a sense of, I know you know, and getting one over on the rest of the world that her little Saturn heart was uniquely built to appreciate.

  But part of it was her telepathy. The newly enhanced awareness was overwhelming and distracting at first, but over the course of the first week, with the help of Adler’s training, the sea of thoughts shifted from pawing at her to being more like an extended sensory map that provided knowledge without her even being that conscious of gathering it. She imagined this was what it must be like to be a cat with long whiskers, or, perhaps more accurately, a shark, with its lateral line allowing it to understand all the information the endless ocean waters have to offer, and using it to track down its next meal.

  Finally, an older man came down the hall with a group of young teens and headed into one of the training rooms. She stuck her head inside. It smelled like vinyl mats, sweat, and cleaner.

  “Excuse me,” she smiled. “I’m looking for one of your students. Asher?”

  The old man shook his head at her. “I don’t know any Asher. Are you sure he’s part of the program?”

  She gave him a look. Anise leaned on her knack with all the finesse Adler taught her so he wouldn’t feel her in his head. He really didn’t know Asher. There was no trace of his face in his mind. Or in the minds of the kids.

  “Sorry to bother you,” she said and stepped back out of the room.

  “Hey,” came Nina’s voice. “Do you just not answer your phone?”

  Shit. Anise patted her pocket. “Sorry, I left it in my quarters.” She’d gotten used to not having one in the months before the Post-Breathe.

  Nina set her hands on her hips. “Come on, you’ve got an assignment.”

  Her heart raced and she cracked a smile. “Then get walking.” On their way to the Saturn office, she still couldn’t get Asher out of her head. “I was looking for someone I went to Academy with,” she explained. “I saw him here a while back, but no one seems to remember him.”

  Nina shrugged. “You’d have to ask Mark. We’ve had some teachers cycle in and out.”

  It didn’t feel quite right, but it was true that there was nothing she could do in that moment. Adler had gone off to wherever it was he went off to when he wasn’t in Kyiv. She’d sit on it. Once they’d gotten to the office, Anise stood anxiously in front of Nina’s desk.

  “So what type of assignment?”

  “A real one. Not as a messenger anymore. You pass field requirements now and Mark’s trusting you with something important.”

  There was a swell in her chest. She was ready. “What is it? Is it undercover?”

  “Nope, not a long term thing. A simple assassination.”

  Anise frowned. She’d never killed anyone. “That sounds like a job for a Moon.”

  “Not this. This needs to be clean and traceless without bringing in Cleanup. We want zero scrutiny after the fact.”

  She nodded. It was part of the gig sometimes, she understood. “Who’s the target?”

  “You’ll be sent a secure file when you get there.”

  She felt the worry show on her face and locked it down. “Where am I going?” she asked, lifting her chin.

  Nina kept her voice even. “Manchester, England. Tonight.”

  There was no ignoring the fact that Sol had an office in Manchester, but Anise matched her tone without addressing it. “I’ll go pack.”

  Nina handed her an envelope. “Here are your papers, flight, and hotel information. Don’t bring your gun.”

  Hotel information meant she wasn’t going to be staying in company housing. She nodded, took the envelope, and headed to her room in a nauseous, cold sweat. She was ready, she told herself.

  ***