Once TamLin was satisfied with what he’d searched on his console, he indicated for Third to precede him back down the building’s emergency stairs and toward the front door. She glanced at him, wondering what he’d do if she refused or tried to bolt. The bland expression and raised eyebrow suggested the result would be comparable to her TamLin’s.

She forced a swallow and refused to let herself try, to test him. He’s Janni’s, she reminded herself.

As she reached the door, she read the energy eddies of the scanners and merged her bio-identity with their expected parameters. She entered without raising so much as a buzz.

The receptionist on the other side, however, frowned at her. Not that the expression was all that visible beneath the beard. “Who are—”

“She’s with me.” TamLin caught Third’s upper arm in a light grip and guided her toward one hallway. “Tell Puce I have a lead on the latest entrant.”

They were tracking Nev? She planted her feet against the tile floor and gave him a pointed stare.

He spun toward her, hand going to a hip holster as if he expected her pause to be due to a threat. His scan of the room took less than a second, and then he gave her a dark look. “I know your laws, kid. Don’t make me hurt you.”

Kid? She put her hands on her decidedly adult hips, resting her weight against the balls of her feet in case he retaliated appropriately.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, which sometimes helped with his headaches. Rarely. “All right. What’s wrong?”

She jerked her chin toward the receptionist. “Nev would cut him up and feed him to Mom.”

TamLin froze, reminding her whose he was. Her TamLin had known what Nev put in their mother’s special meds. She winced.

His throat worked for a long second. “Ribald? Send vegetarian refreshments to Room Zed, please.”

“Zed?”

“Yes.” He stepped up to a door, waved his wrist at the panel, and it buzzed open.

Third slipped through behind him. “Zed?”

Her curiosity was going to get her killed, someday. She wasn’t supposed to ask questions.

TamLin didn’t react nor respond, just led her through the halls and stairwells and more doors, every so often rubbing his temples. She nearly winced, but if he really wanted her to stop merging with the security systems, he had only to ask.

Some of his coworkers frowned at her, some raised eyebrows, and a few smiled at TamLin. He’d built a good reputation, apparently. Good enough that he could bring a strange girl deep into the building without anyone stopping him, though he did have to sign something at a few different checkpoints.

They finally reached a door with so many different types of security before it that Third assumed it was their destination.

“So how is Janni, these days, when she isn’t playing chicken with assassins from hellverses?”

His question was timed to pull Third’s attention from what he was doing with the door. She hadn’t seen that particular type of lock, before, combining physical keying with a specific combination of timing, energy, and authorization code that couldn’t be bypassed with the normal merging or lock-picking skills.

His attempt at distraction failed, but Third saw no reason to rub it in. “She’s well.”

Wait. Why was he asking her how his bondmate was doing?

“Glad to hear it.” He gave a quick peek in the room before he opened the door all the way and strode in.

She followed and palmed the door shut behind her. He’d brought her straight into an armory that would’ve suited an alpha universe, pre-apocalypse. She’d never even seen a room this full of goodies back home.

Third took a tentative step toward one aisle and glanced at TamLin. He was already cycling through the shelves on a firearm rack, not looking at her.

She took that as permission and beelined for the vials. The ones out front were fairly innocuous, like liquid smoke and eye irritant. She found the rack’s controls and tapped for it to drop that out of the way and to rotate the next shelf into view. The rack required an authorization code, but she easily nudged it into thinking that authorization had already been unlocked.

On the fourth shelf, she found napalm-echo. She stared at it for a long moment before helping herself to a vial. “I thought this universe was…”

TamLin rounded the edge of the aisle to join her, wielding an edition of pulse weapon that definitely wasn’t from that universe. “Fourth shelf’s only accessible to the brass, a few shadows and shadowborn who know how to use them, and any merger who happens to be brought in this far.”

For all his insistence that he knew the laws, he wasn’t treating her as a Nameless. The privacy of the room gave her the courage to let out a little curiosity on purpose. “Could you get in trouble for letting me in here?”

“No. You’re documented as a consultant.” He scanned the shelf, himself, and palmed one too quickly for her to identify it. “Janni brought me some of your hair, for me to log in.”

But he hadn’t known Raleigh, so they hadn’t done the same thing for her.

Then again, Raleigh, from an apex universe, would be in a lot less trouble, if the Shadow Corps found them all. Primes knew better than to go universe jumping without proper authorization. Refugees from apex universes didn’t.

Third sent the vials back to the first shelf and continued down the aisle. “Thanks.”

TamLin followed, not acknowledging her breach of protocol.

She let herself sigh, though she kept it silent. Two more birthdays. She just had to make it through two more birthdays, and the timer would disintegrate and she could take a name, be a person.

Third knew better than to think she’d ever get over the trauma of her origins enough to be normal, but maybe she’d learn to pretend, in time. First and Second had.

Only a few years in, and they’d gotten so comfortable that Second was about to die for it. Unfortunately, the personhood only applied if you took a name, and since they hadn’t…

Third pressed her lips together and hoped her brother wouldn’t revert to ‘proper’ Nameless behavior after that happened. They’d been forced to flee the first few universes they’d tried to take refuge in, because their attempts to acclimate had gone that badly. If First wanted to leave, Third would help him Jump universes, but…she couldn’t be sure she’d go along. She liked this somewhen.

Though, now that Nev knew their location, they’d probably have to leave, anyway.

Where would she find any miscellaneous gadgets that this universe didn’t precisely know what to do with? Third considered the question for a moment, then headed for the corner furthest from the door.

She rounded the end of an aisle, and her steps faltered.

Third stared at the device before her. It was a nightmarish cross between a dentist chair and a web or claw…though admittedly some of that impression was because she knew what the spindly-looking frame did. Infants were supposed to be too young to remember them, but…

She swallowed hard.

“The brass leaves that out to help ID who’s from universes like ours,” TamLin said quietly at her back. “A shadowborn would take a moment to recognize it, because they’d only know it from descriptions. A prime doesn’t expect to see it and therefore freezes immediately.”

His bosses knew he was a shadow, then…unless he’d controlled his reaction?

She gave him an inquiring look.

He answered with a wan smile. “I’m flattered, but I can be startled as readily as the next person.”

Perhaps. TamLin’s mother had been a keeper for clutches, herself, so very little caught him off-guard.

He grimaced and rubbed his temples again.

Third turned back toward the corner and sought the shelf featuring miscellaneous not-from-this-universe paraphernalia.

And, to stop hurting TamLin, she let the security systems notice her and reverted her bio-identity back to its native default.