After Third and First finished eating, she led the way up on the roof of a building owned by one of the more notorious gangs in town—they were actually honorable and took care of their own, but their retaliation against threats was unusually thorough. Third tended to think of them like a huge clutch of Nameless. She treated them accordingly, and they returned the favor.

The wind tried to pull Third’s hair out of its ponytail and First’s out of its carefully arranged mess. Third kept her arms at her sides, tucked in the folds of her sweater, since she didn’t have a coat. She had long been used to cold, due to the decrepit space habitations she’d grown up in, but appearances mattered.

And her weapons were under the sweater.

“No…beetles?” her brother asked.

“Bugs,” she corrected, even as she sensed that something far worse than an eavesdropper had joined them on that roof, on the other side of the lookout post. “No.”

The gang’s leader wasn’t from another universe himself, but his parents had been—from two different universes, if she read his bio-identity right, though Janni was better at that than she was—and he didn’t give her any trouble. But by that same token, he accepted any other shadows—escapees from other universes—as well.

First let himself smile a little. It even reached his eyes. “You make friends fast, don’t you, Third?”

“Allies.” Nameless didn’t have friends.

His expression darkened, but he nodded once.

“Nice of you to worry about the laws now, Breach.”

First started. He’d gotten far too complacent for his own good…and Third had the sick feeling that complacency was what would be the death of Second.

“Nev?!” First sounded startled, as if still shocked, but he was scanning their surroundings for escape.

Third already knew where they were, what was around. She sidled toward one edge of the roof. “Not Breach,” she said quietly, as their Named sister came into view.

Nev’s mods were fully active, her biotech phased and plugged into a netsuit that resembled a black spiderweb worn between skin and clothes—and there was shattersilk over it, so Nev had been in this universe for at least a day, maybe two, to find that and poison the owner for it. Slow, but she wasn’t stupid.

Or, at least, Nev hadn’t been stupid when they were in their own universe, but now Third recognized the hardness to Nev’s gaze. Nothing Third could say or do would shake her sister’s conviction that a breach had occurred.

First was beyond Nev’s authority to hunt—she could arrest a first, but firsts could only be hunted by keepers—so Nev wouldn’t try to hurt him unless he tried to interfere.

Third took another step, ostensibly away from Nev, but it put her on the roof’s edge.

First didn’t look at her directly, but he did tense, so he’d noticed. “Third isn’t a Breach, Nev.”

Nev glowered at him, her expression admitting who had given her the hunt order: their mother. “You consummated?”

The question was directed at First, and he blanched, following Nev’s meaning before Third—

“Oh,” she whispered, suddenly understanding why Second was about to die, and Third herself had nothing to do with it.

Second was pregnant.

Nameless weren’t permitted children. Childbearing defeated the purpose of being Nameless.

Third leaped off the roof to drop and roll atop the neighboring building below and started running, illogically hoping she could find Second in time to save her.

Maybe the Second she’d seen die had been another universe’s, or a paradox, and she could stop it if she only fought it, tooth and nail, making use of everything her original hellverse had taught her.

Or so Third tried to convince herself.