Alarms squealed, and TamLin cringed for another reason entirely.

Third could’ve kicked herself. She was in a high-security facility, so why had she thought it a good idea to let the security system suddenly detect her in an armory?

TamLin ran back to the door, Third following, and smacked the comms panel on the wall beside the entrance. “What the hell, Puce?!”

She grimaced. “Sorry.”

TamLin’s eyes narrowed on her, and he tapped the comms off a moment to say, “You shut up,” before continuing, “I told you I had a merger with me! Turn that off!”

Argument ensued with whoever was on the other end.

TamLin won; the alarms deactivated.

“—And have somebody bring our snacks before I grab Kasy and eat her arm! Thank you.”

He slapped the comms off, and her across the face.

The impact—the strength behind it, the familiar shape and sting—was comforting. Third felt faintly disturbed by that, but she mostly didn’t care. TamLin had touched her.

And she certainly had earned that strike.

This TamLin, though, seemed every bit as conflicted about hitting her as hers had been.

No! Third reminded herself. Not as conflicted. Her TamLin had loved her.

“Seriously?” Incredulity sharpened the pitch of his voice. “You get off on pain?”

He was a sensate.

Her face heated, and she looked away. “It isn’t the pain,” she admitted quietly.

Silence answered her, and she turned back to him. His brow was furrowed in a puzzled way, not pained.

“You’re Nameless,” he said at last. “You wouldn’t have been paired with—”

He and Janni were an assigned couple? Third struggled to imagine a life where she would’ve warranted that.

He pivoted on his heel to the door and opened it. The type of well-padded woman that Nameless were never fed enough to become stood on the other side, carrying a tray with beverages and…

Third frowned at the oddly complicated food. This was a public security office, not a restaurant.

“Hors d’oeuvres, Kasy?” TamLin asked dryly.

The woman took a half-step back and hunched her shoulders, red tinging her cheeks. “If–if you don’t want it…”

Third snatched a stick from the tray. She stared at the skewer of cucumber and carrot and… What was that? She sniffed warily.

TamLin sighed. “Eat one,” he told Kasy as he took one, himself.

His coworker blinked at him. “What?”

He indicated Third. “She can’t eat anything until after we do.”

Kasy frowned at him. “What do you mean? Of course she can eat—”

“It’s forbidden!” he snapped. “Her sister’s already off murdering her brother’s girlfriend because they broke the rules. She isn’t about to do something stupid that’ll get her euthanized.”

He was still upset at her for triggering the alarm.

“You had a cluster headache,” Third said quietly.

“Of course I had a—” He stared at her again. “You reverted to baseline because it would stop my headache?”

She nodded once.

He turned and grabbed one of the beverage cups, then stalked away. “Not from your universe. Not your responsibility.”

Nor was punishing her, his. She rubbed the cheek he’d struck.

He turned back before she dropped her hand, and he grimaced. “Either leave the tray or eat something, Kasy. We’re busy and have a prime to catch.”

Third jerked at his word choice and abruptly remembered another reason she needed to avoid being around that TamLin too much: As a sensate—and a highly sensitive one, at that—details from her universe would bleed into his psyche. She couldn’t keep her thoughts and such from leaching out, and he couldn’t help but overhear them. It had led to more than one sensate being considered insane until the scientists in alpha universes realized what was going on.

Kasy took a quick step forward and plucked a skewer for herself as she set the tray on a nearby shelf. She nibbled one of the things Third couldn’t identify. “Puce said I have to keep an eye on you.”

TamLin gave her a flat look, one eyebrow twitching.

She skittered back, slamming her hip into a counter. “I know! I know, okay? But he saw the vid of your friend here and claims you’re thinking with your dick.”

Third understood the words and their implication, but the concept was so foreign that it took what felt like forever to process. This TamLin? And her? Together-together? “I’m Nameless.”

She realized she’d spoken aloud, and she looked right at Kasy. Why would someone so obviously terrified be picked to ‘keep an eye on’ TamLin?

The woman swiped some limp curls out of her eyes. “Yeah, I noticed, but Puce… He wants…”

Kasy eyed her, suddenly looking serious, sedate. More her age—which was in her late thirties, if Third was reading her telomeres right.

And then the woman let out a long breath and deflated, losing the effect. “I’m Shadowborn, okay? Sensate, grade yellow.” Yellow was the bottom tier for primes, the one where sensates couldn’t identify details about what they felt. They just got a niggling feeling when something was in or from the wrong time or universe or both. “And Puce wants to breed us.”

“Orchestrated breeding is illegal in this somewhen,” Third said automatically, though she wasn’t naive enough to disbelieve the woman. She glanced at the closed door and merged into the surrounding systems enough to glitch up the cameras’ audio. “Breeder?”

Kasy grimaced. Third adjusted herself to check other details about the woman’s body…and realized the jitters and anxiety were biological, some kind of side effect. She wasn’t afraid at TamLin at all.

Third looked at TamLin. “Why isn’t Puce dead?”

“Moving against him directly will have repercussions on the others.”

Others, plural? Third wondered who else had come with Janni and TamLin from their universe.

But that was the kind of thing one shadow didn’t ask another. Instead, she ran her hands along her clothing, recognizing the various accoutrements by feel, and let her fingers linger on the vial of napalm-echo that was under her sweater.

She hopped over to the shelf and grabbed another one, which she stashed somewhere easy and quick to get to. She’d need it. “You said you had a ‘lead’ on things, so we’d better go talk to him.”

TamLin eyed her sharply, but she kept her expression the bland façade Nameless were required to wear.

Kasy looked from one of them to the other and back again. She let out something that might’ve been a weak snort or a cut-off chuckle.

“You will not touch Puce,” TamLin said firmly.

“I will not touch Puce,” she agreed—probably too readily, but the promise fit fine with her plan for whatever evidence or blackmail material he’d collected.

TamLin shook his head and headed out. Third and Kasy followed.

Kasy even gave her a wink.

Third missed a step. Surely she wasn’t that easy to read, not to someone she’d only just met?

The other woman smiled and fell back behind her, so TamLin and Kasy both escorted her through the security building.

Third wondered if that was meant as a protection or as a warning.