"Why did you leave me like that, man?" Grant demanded.

Kilian glared at him. He knew exactly why, it wasn't personal, it was a time crunch. Grant was a bonehead but he had extensive training in strategy.

Grant shook his head, the tight bundle of his braids bouncing against the crown of his head. "I don't care how close the call was. This crowd isn't playing with guys that look like us. It was like getting caught in an undertow."

Kilian shrugged. Though Grant could maybe pass as a normie in the right setting, that setting was definitely not a busy street in the capital city during a shift change. 

The street had been brimming with fuzzy scalps, all standing between 5 and 6 feet. Everyone was dressed in gray to match the concrete streets, the concrete walls — the gray city full of gray people. Only the altered men, the aristocrats, the very rare Dyad among them would stand out, and none in a good way. "You know I had to make the meeting, man."

Grant raised a thick eyebrow, his dark eyes punching through Kilian in the aether. "And did you?"

Kilian didn't answer, he just opened the door to the cafeteria and motioned for his friend to go through. He knew that ultimately, Grant understood him. He would give him a hard time, but he knew if the situation required it, Kilian would do it again.

Grant stepped through and joined the line for food.

"Everything is sideways here," Kilian spoke under his breath, half in the audible world and half in the aether as he put on a fake smile for the servers and the other men in line.

Grant answered silently a beat later. "You weren't born yesterday, my man."

"And just who the hell does this Lane jerk think he is?"

"He thinks he's bossman, K. And chain of command makes his assumption a fact."

"Chain of command ends at Hector."

"And yet we spent our day chasing Councilman Lane."

Kilian shook his head at Grant, but the server thought he was refusing the protein. And when he realized he'd have to speak up — his macros were already crazy — the wires crossed, "I've no want to visit my dad," He said out loud, holding his tray out to the dead-eyed altered man, to the camera on his neck.

Beside him, Grant spoke up. "He's talking to me, friend. We're both going to need triple portions of that muck."

Kilian shuddered as the altered man followed the order, watching the mechanical movement of a very human arm never ceased to unnerve him. The people running this place were a special breed. The crowd had a whole religion focused on the otherworldliness of the royal line, the alleged purity, the closeness to whatever source had created all life. To be fair, he supposed you'd have to be close to the alpha and omega to sleep after coming up with a scheme to screw a bunch of wires into a man's brain with intent hijack him and force him to dish up protein slop for 20-hour shifts until his body physically failed.

But it was the Mystics who were the monsters. Because they were born to stand a head above the crowd with severe faces, strange birthmarks, and long-limbed, heavy bodies. Because they had minds with access to extra senses that manipulated and read the unseen aether that lingered around everyone all of the time. Those were just accidents of birth, and in his opinion useful accidents. But despite any advantage, the crowd was many and loyal to the line of Boren.

When they reached the end of the line, a scowling, conscious face glared into Kilian's and motioned to remind him to hold his wrist, his buried identification chip, up to the scanner. The unpleasant man had dark eyes and pale skin, a line of what could have been dark hair had receded high up on his forehead, muted by the crowd's closely shorn style.

He nodded to him momentarily, "You related to Hector?"

"We aren't all related, you know." Grant piped up from behind him.

An obvious shudder that seized the stranger. The aether around him filled with the stink of fear. "Didn't say that. Asked if he was — You know. I just didn't think they let Mystics around women."

Revulsion bubbled up in Kilian, for as low as he was, this man was still technically lower — and the question wasn't a curious or honest one. The words were steeped in revulsion, in judgment.

"He's my father," Kilian responded in a clipped voice, staring at the man as intensely as he could manage without physically burning him.

Grant sighed. He was tugging on him in the aether. "Come on my man, let's go."

That's when another voice interjected. "Captain Malloy here is the glorious result of genetic research and artificial surrogate technology. He is the product of great scientific success in a project patronized by his majesty King Boren of the first blood."

Kilian's face fell. How did he not smell that rat coming a mile away?

"Of course, sir," The man nodded, his eyes dropping immediately. "Hail King Boren of the first blood."

The next thing he said came silently through the aether. "I have a table over by the window."

Kilian felt a heavy hand on his shoulder as the man wished the server a good day. He turned on his heels and fell into stride next to the man he'd long considered his greatest rival, his nemesis even.

Harlowe Gaines had started out the same as Kilian and Grant — in Concord, training to be a Dyadic officer. But fate had intervened, had given Gaines an opportunity that Kilian was convinced had initially been for him.

Gaines stepped ahead of them and slipped into the bench, his back to the bank of portal windows at the front of the building. He motioned for Kilian and Grant to sit across from him with hands as wide as shovels.

Kilian managed a sidelong glance to Grant, who nodded to him.

He slid his tray across the table. He supposed he didn't have a choice otherwise.