At 6 AM Tuesday morning, Avery woke up to the sound of his alarm. He listened to its obnoxious beeping for three minutes, staring blearily at the textured white ceiling of the dorm, before it finally faded in defeat. He lay in bed for a little longer and contemplated closing his eyes, but eventually, deciding that he didn’t want to hear his alarm again, sat up.

The blinds had been left open, and he could see the speckled grey hues of a rainy day. The hazy light bathed Lucas, who was still buried in his blankets just beneath the window, with a luminous glow that forced Avery to squint.

… Too bright.

Sighing drowsily, he slid out of bed, grimacing as his bare legs left the warmth of the blankets. Throwing open their closet door with a loud creak, he bent over and rummaged through his box of unpacked clothes for the first pair of sweatpants he could find, then lumbered over to the bathroom for a shower.

By the time he stepped back onto the grey carpet a few minutes later, Avery was feeling warm and awake. Lucas, on the other hand, had pulled his blankets even further over his head to shield himself from the morning light. Only a small tuft of the boy’s dusty hair was visible in the glowing mass.

Walking over, Avery grabbed a piece of the radiant mass and shook it vigorously. “Wake up.”

The tuft of hair jostled limply under his touch, then rolled over onto its face.

 Avery sighed, bent over to get a good grip on the blankets, and then tore them away with all his might.

There was a muffled shriek and Lucas managed to hug a large portion of the blankets before Avery could tear them away. He reeled them back in with strength that was far too powerful for a half-conscious person, then rolled away and turned his back to Avery with a serene sigh.

“Jeez, you...” Wringing out his sore fingers, Avery took a deep breath and raised his voice. “Alicia, play a song to wake –”

“I’m up, I’m up...!” A groan cut him off hastily, and Lucas threw the blankets off himself. As the boy sat up, his disgruntled face shadowed by a mess of shining hair, Avery huffed musingly and turned away.

“We're heading out in fifteen.”

“Ughh...” Lucas swayed a little, looking as though he would collapse back into bed for a moment. Avery eyed him warily, but thankfully the boy sighed heavily and managed to slide out of bed.

Turning his back, Avery headed for the kitchen. As he opened the fridge, he heard Lucas shuffle unsteadily behind him, and couldn’t help but add, “Morning, precious.”

“... I hate you...” Lucas mumbled as he slammed the bathroom door shut.

Lips twitching into a vague smile, Avery reached for the milk. Pouring two glasses, he threw one in the microwave for Lucas, then went to double-check their packed bags.

The company that they worked for – or rather, the company that basically owned them – was Ypsilon, although they weren’t allowed to mention that in public. Just like their machine-integrated brains, their identity as Sentinels, and their identifying Codenames – everything was supposed to be kept top-secret. The double life that they lived as second-year students at Point Grey University was the life of their ‘alter ego,’ an undercover personality that allowed them to blend into the masses that they were supposed to protect. It was a fanciful purpose spun up by the company that Lucas was very proud of, and one that Avery didn’t really care about. Alter ego, Codename... work shifts, school... it was all part of his one and only life. As far as he was concerned, he was just another young man going through the mainstream process of post-secondary... with a few unique extracurriculars on the side.

It was easier for him to say, though. He and Lucas, Codenames Hermes and Lamb, had only been released with real Sentinel duties last year. In the simplest sense, they acted as vigilantes, taking advantage of Ypsilon’s monopoly of national surveillance and highly sophisticated AI to respond to suspicious events as soon as they were detected. Being the newest, youngest, and also last Sentinels to be added to Ypsilon’s Sentinel experiment, the two of them were usually given low-risk jobs, like passively monitoring suspicious activity in case it escalated to a real crime. There were other Sentinels, like those in the Dispatch team, whose jobs were far more involved... For those Sentinels, Avery sometimes wondered how they could simply wake up and attend lectures as a normal person in the daytime.

As he was sipping on his cold milk in a bored daze, the bathroom door slid open and a rush of shampoo-scented steam poured into the room. His roommate stepped out with a towel over his shoulders – and nothing else.

“I heated up milk for you. But put some clothes on first.” Avery eyed the trail of water left by Lucas’s footsteps, but decided not to say anything. The poor guy had enough to worry about even without his constant nagging. And besides... there was no harm with a little bit of skin in the morning. Lucas was an airhead with the naivety of a ten-year-old, but years of strict physical training showed on his pearly body, if nowhere else.

“Oh, thanks...” Lucas’s voice was still breathy, but at least he sounded mostly conscious. He’d been called out to the suburbs late last night to monitor a vehicle that had been seen cruising around the neighbourhood with fake police lights. Avery imagined it should have been as simple as disabling the lights and reporting the license plate with some video proof, but then again – having to stay top-secret usually meant solutions were far overcomplicated.

As his roommate pulled his pants up and downed his milk at the same time, Avery added a phone charger to his bag and then grabbed both of their keys – leave it up to Lucas to forget his key card three times in the mere week that they’d moved in... He then pulled up a gacha game on his phone and waited by the door.

With exactly a minute left before they’d have to start running, Lucas lumbered over and puffed. “Ready.”

Lifting his gaze from his phone, Avery absorbed his roommate’s notoriously rumpled hair with a raised eyebrow. “You sure?”

“Yeah. Nobody’s gonna be out this early.” Lucas yawned, brows knitting together as he closed his eyes. “So nobody’s gonna see me.”

“Even if they did see you, they wouldn’t recognize you...” Avery agreed, turning and opening the door for them. It was largely due to Kairo’s influence over the past year, but usually Lucas was always careful to style his hair and wear nice clothes when going out in public. Or at least, when going out in public as his alter ego ‘Lucas’... and it was a surprisingly good disguise, considering how different he looked when his hair was neatly parted instead of sprawled all over his face.

The lobby was empty, and they spotted a few people on their way to the train station, but otherwise campus was quiet. The rain had calmed to a light drizzle, and though Lucas seemed too dazed to notice, Avery pulled up his hood.

There were a few people coming out from the station, but luckily nobody waiting at the elevators. Leading the way into the metal compartment, Avery mentally activated the hidden trigger for the lowest level – just one of the many conveniences of machine-integrated brains – and waited.

Once they had been carried down to their chosen floor, the door opened to a small underground platform, comfortably lit with warm white lights. It was completely barren, except for a single silhouette standing at the center of the platform. It looked like they had been on their phone, but as Avery dragged Lucas out of the elevators, they turned their head.

In an ideal world, he and Lucas would have stood at the other end of the platform, and they would have ignored each other in awkward silence, as strangers usually did in a quiet station. But they weren’t strangers, and this wasn’t exactly an ordinary station, either. The only people who could access this floor were Sentinels or Ypsilon employees. Feeling that it would be better to just try and act natural, Avery grabbed Lucas by the arm and hauled him towards the figure.

“Yo.” He greeted the young man matter-of-factly and dipped his head in a curt nod.