Adon rolled his eyes, annoyance creeping into his shoulders with a sigh as he turned off his water and realized he still had no idea where to start with Mykos or Troy. He’d tried to shake down one of Mykos’ old suppliers at Nyx’s a few nights ago and been lectured the entire next day by Xeri, who’d made him run time trials at the track with Phaios for forgiveness. Adon felt around his curtain for the towel waiting on the hook, “I can just talk about the Quartet stuff with X, you know. He probably knows more than you anyway.”

“He absolutely does no—”

“I’m right here,” X huffed.

They both jumped, Y and Adon peeking heads around mineral-stained shower curtains to find X sat impatiently along the narrow bench outside the showers, arms and legs crossed tightly. 

Y shrugged at Adon’s sidelong frown, uncurious as they both ducked back into their respective stalls, Adon gingerly followed by his towel. 

“You think Arty or the Conductor would hire a broken ladder like Troy to take a hit that was canceled?” Y fielded Adon’s question for him.

“Canceled by Artemis Diamond,” Adon added.

X exhaled meticulously, “no. They don’t play around with fish like Troy or Mykos.” X relaxed into his shoulders, leaning back on the bench, considering, “the families want Gideon gone. He’s a nuisance and he’s messing up their funding avenues for years. He keeps turning the Conductor’s head, which, as you know, isn’t allowed by Quartet rules—the Conductor’s not supposed to meet with anyone one-on-one. All the families are currently headed by traditionalists, even Sophia, so I doubt any of them would help Gideon out of his muddy shoes by taking an unsanctioned offer. One of the White kids might do it for fun, but the Quartet itself?” He shook his head to himself, “they don’t like change. They can’t see how Gideon’s meddling has kept the sec-offs distracted, how much of the Conductor’s pet he’s actually been for years, over a decade.” 

X sat forward, listening to the curtains flutter against Adon and Y dressing, trying to simplify it all for Doni, who wasn’t entrenched in Quartet politics, “Chrome thinks their Chroma status is enough to protect them on its own, with no understanding of how the leftovers of Gideon’s Flock actually benefit them by providing more obvious targets for upper enforcement, or how each time Gideon’s people get caught, the Quartet families are forced to update and adapt old systems. They hate him, they wouldn’t help him, and even airlock door-stops like Mykos and Troy can draw the connection between the ARC workshop hit and how it would help the Conductor. 

“The problem, or in your case, the blessing,” X rolled his eyes, annoyed he was helping Adon, “is that none of them are sure whether Gideon would approve of a hit on his son, and they don’t actually want to piss him off. Gideon is practically a Clearwater Head now, all reformed by his sentence and using his newfound faith to pull in workers. He has his own allegiant followers and he indoctrinates the Conductor’s workforce before they even get to the Quartet. Now that the pickings are slimming…” X held his hands out like a scale, rocking back and forth, then realized neither of them could see him beyond their curtains and sighed, dropping his arms with a shrug, “how do you get rid of a cockroach?”

“Kill it,” Y and Adon responded in unison. 

X rolled his eyes and sighed, “it’s an expression. Because another takes its place by the time you’ve seen it. Everyone has a different method. Arty set a trap—that’s you, Doni. Diamonds have always been more strategic, but the Conductor wants to keep it as a pet, to use against other people. The Whites would spray the whole house, no exceptions, then light it on fire and see who survives, but they’re too focused on the Vice contracts after Sias’ dumb stunt at the docks. Silvers would hire an exterminator after destroying their house trying to catch it, and Chroma…. Chrome would look for a way to sell it, and if they couldn’t, they’d convince the whole world that life is better with a cockroach pal to cure your standard-issue Caldera depression.”

Adon snorted, “and Orestes?”

“Who?” Y and X asked together.

“Gideon’s youngest….”

“Gideon has two kids?” X frowned. He didn’t like not knowing things.

“Three,” Adon added, “two sons and a daughter.” Adon spoke through the towel drying his face and hair, “you know Heranika? The other two are hers.”

“That Plastiques tycoon bitch?” Y whipped her curtain back in disbelief, “no.”

“Yes,” Adon mimicked, dramatically pulling his curtain as if he hadn’t been just as confused when Lu had explained it to him. He caught X’s glare and sneered back, sticking out his tongue, refusing to play nice even for the scraps of information he needed. 

“Hey,” Y snapped in front of Adon’s face, pulling his attention back to her as she twisted her base layer shirt over her damp skin, “she’s supplying like, half the gangs down here. That’s huge.”

“So, who isn’t taking?” Adon shrugged, refusing to be impressed by Lu’s evil stepmother. He moved pieces around in his mind as he yanked on the out layers of clean clothes Y had given him, reverse engineering Lu’s safety with every ragged sewn-together sleeve. 

“Forest,” X announced, shoving Y’s clothes at her chest and pushing her back into her stall, sliding the curtain closed, eyeing Adon darkly. 

Y giggled at Adon’s scoff as he looked X up and down, annoyed by everything about him. “Not that you deserve any kind of explanation, but I’m not particularly romantically inclined toward people whose guts I’ve seen.”

Y stuck her head out, wriggling her eyebrows jokingly, “I am!”

X shoved her head back in and she laughed, jumping into the rest of her suit. 

X glared.

Adon glared back, crossing his arms and falling against the narrow cinder block wall between the two showers, avoiding the wet curtain he’d left open with a wink, looking X up and down sarcastically, “maybe people who leave my friends dying in the middle of nowhere are more my type.” 

X continued glaring until Adon threw up his arms, knocking on Y’s curtain with a whine, “make him stop.”

X narrowed his eyes further. 

Adon stuck out his tongue a second time, “Y, make him stop or I’m gonna—”

“Don’t fuck with Adon, boss” Y smirked from inside the shirt she was struggling to pull over her damp base layer, “he’ll win.”

X’s sneer vanished in betrayal, “what?”

Adon crossed his arms over his scars Y had embroidered herself, shifting his weight forward proudly, “if one of us gets to be overbearing and protective here, I think it’s me.”

“She always gets hurt with you!” X pushed Adon out of his personal space. 

“No,” Adon laughed dryly, “I get hurt with her. Cus she always calls me for the shit jobs you set up.” Adon stepped forward again, glaring up at him, “because I don’t abandon her at Med-Pods!”

X gritted his teeth, inhaling slowly as he straightened.

Y slid her curtain open, fully buttoned and tucked, surprised by their standoff. She pushed them apart, “hey, stop.” She massaged her hands, a warning that she wouldn’t hesitate to force peace between them. 

Adon let her push him, falling slowly backwards, shrugging, “I guess I’ll go check in with our best friend, Sophia. Maybe Forest Green will look good on her.”

Y smirked knowingly, nudging X out of the room ahead of her, “Pen-Ten might help, Doni. They really hate Heranika right now.”

☆

Pen-Ten did hate Heranika. They gave Adon an entire case of junk knives and the workspace to fix and sharpen them himself. After his third successful round of sharpening, Adon yelled at Pen for hovering and over-correcting his every move, and by the fifth weld, Ten had taken over the entire project while Adon tried to track down contacts for the Forest kids so he could plan a decent raid to even get a word in with their dear friend, Sophia Silver. 

He wasn’t sure what exactly he was looking for from her, which was uncomfortable, to say the least.  Probably anything that might hint Arty was bullshitting him, that Gideon was more cemented in the Quartet than X thought, or that Mykos and Troy were working for anyone other than Orestes and his childish inheritance grudge one party had given up on a decade ago. If it was just Ores, Adon chuffed at the idea, if it was only Orestes going after Lu, well, Adon would be keeping his promise sooner than later.

When he didn’t find any reliable contacts, Adon put on his coat, grabbed the dogs, and sat them in an ally with the crate of knives and chains while he stormed into Nyx’s until he found a kid in a dark green coat and dragged him to the alley and, despite his snivelling, bribed him with just a few tokens to bring him to the Forest Guard crew. 

Based on their painted coats, Adon surmised that not a single one of the Forest Green District kids actually knew what a tree looked like. He felt old. He wanted to drag them all to his greenhouse and show them, make Lu do an impromptu workshop on the art of tagging turf and how it was useless if even your rivals couldn’t identify or discern one tag from another, or if the people who helped invent the symbols didn’t even know what was written because imitators were everywhere. Not that they needed to standardize, but Forest was chaos, and Adon didn’t even know whether their crew was considered a proper gang competing with the likes of D’Arjon, or if they were still just a doghouse. 

He stared at the Forest kids as his bribed hostage led him down a narrow alley into a wide dead-end of stacked containers rusted together, windows cut out and ladders turned into balcony rails, cobbled together all the way up into the dark of the rails above them. Adon  grimaced tightly at their round faces as they poked out of tunnels and pipes. He felt like he was breaking the Mid’s child labor laws, even though anyone younger than sixteen would have been dragged back to their assigned academy by determined Janes, kicking and screaming (otherwise dropped to the cold ground with the other Duster, Sweeper, Loser, Keeper druggies). 

The handful-and-a-half of years between him and the Guard kids sneering blackout teeth at him, faces lined in glow paint, the entire alley lit in blacklight, they felt immeasurable, an eternity. Their arrogant glares peering over window ledges brought every grueling memory of the Pits to the surface of Adon’s memory, preparing him for any outcome, his adrenaline pooling recklessly. He felt a brief pang in his chest for Medo, using the surge of energy to dodge through the suspicious glares and hesitant whispered attacks. 

Their leader finally emerged, baked out of her mind and absolutely wrecked. She had bruises on bruises, but smiled down at him anyway, “what do you want, Finder?” She flipped a long braid over her shoulder, swaying from drugs or exhaustion, clearly fresh from a fight. 

Adon kicked the Pen-Ten crate forward over the scrape of the graveled ground, hands still in his pockets, “I want a talk to Sophia Silver. In person.”

“Haaaa,” the Forest leader scratched her head with a long nail, “you don’t even know what name to put on my brick, what’s with the death sentence?”

Adon shrugged, nodding at her waking crew starting to assemble in the shadows, “figured they knew.”

She snorted, unconvinced, “some of them, maybe.”

Adon shrugged a second time, keeping careful nonchalance, “you don’t know mine.”

She blinked, realizing Finder was a title, not a name, then laughed, “okay, tell me why anyway.”

“Because Gideon’s the target.” He would be eventually, after Lu was safe. It wasn’t a lie.

Several kids booed until she kicked a steel drum, sending sparks into the smoked out ceiling of the corridor she hovered in. The crew quieted as she stepped onto an overlook above Adon, hands on hips, nearing him one step at a time, until she was hovering just above him on the final step, “...so?”

“So… Gideon’s family register includes Heranika….” 

She folded her arms, scowling impatiently, “so…?”

Adon sighed, drawing out the HN logo in the gravel with a toe, “you know, the ghost guns? She makes them.”

“Oh, fuck her up,” several kids jumped up, shouting excitedly. 

Their leader measured their enthusiasm, nodding at the small crate with a cocked brow, “and you brought us a present?”

Adon smiled, turning it to reveal the Pen-Ten logo to several excited whistles and whispers as he pulled a crow bar out of his coat and cranked off the lid. He held his hand up to the Forest Guard leader still above him, hovering over the pile of knives and chains he’d brought, “Adon.”

She sucked her teeth suspiciously, glanced around at her nodding crew, then nodded and slapped his hand, “Matty.” She hopped over the railing and bent to inspect the goods before calling out, “ay kids, are we an escort service this week, or what?”

She was met with several cheers and a few lusty elbows shoving friends forward with jokes about an Arcade interpretation of escort. 

She shrugged at Adon, “alright. Am I planning or executing?”

“Already have the plan,” Adon watched the Forest Guard Crew pick though the knives, noting how each of them turned over the weapons, judging them by who picked what and which pieces they fought over, happy to see most of them knew quality over crusty decorations. 

“Is it a pretty-princess kind of plan or a revolutionary-coup kind of plan?” Matty laughed, tucking an animal-printed switch into the pocket of her ratty gym pants worn over a useless fishnet base layer, grinding out a cigarette with her heel and waiting for his answer. 

“I just need to send a message…. Tonight.” Adon flicked his eyes to the gaudy district ID band on her wrist displaying the time. 

She sighed exasperatedly, then straightened with a wink and called down the alley, “colors off if you’re coming. Mask up, phantom mode, let’s go. Tonight we’re an illusion,” she slugged his shoulder, approving when he didn’t flinch or move, “we’re the Finder’s crew tonight.” She tilted her head at him, “he’s going to stop those waterlogged dart shooters the Chartreus fucks keep aiming at us, clear?”

There was a collective grunt of agreement as two dozen people, both older and younger than Adon, moved to change into non-green gear. Some excitedly pulled on orange coats and base layers from the bins of recycled and stolen clothes. They laughed at his neon pink hair already faded to baby pink, mimicking the oranges and muttering amongst each other about who Matty had meant until they all understood the Chartreus fucks were the sec-offs. They lined up and followed along until Adon faced a rag-tag group of orange- and pink-clad strangers ready to charge into a fire fight to protect Lu, because it would protect each other. They joked as friends, nudging him while he laughed, and there was an instant camaraderie that left him warm but melancholic.