“So, um, hi, Lin’s friends,” Misha said, with an awkward glance around the distance shopkeepers and shoppers were giving them all. “I don’t guess you all know what a class-five breach is?”

All three women just looked at him without curiosity or confusion, proving that none of them were normal civilians. TamLin smiled.

Misha frowned a little but dropped the oblivious act. “Okay. That answers that question.”

Second studied him. “When’d she leave?”

Misha whipped towards her. “What?!”

“Your cyborg girlfriend. She wandered off and you never saw her again?”

TamLin stared at Second. Where were that conclusion and gregariousness coming from?

“What makes you think I’ve had a cyban girlfriend?”

“You aren’t staring at Raleigh’s gills.”

Kasy started. “Gills?”

Misha scowled. “Okay. And what makes you think it was a girl?”

And TamLin still wasn’t following how Second had sussed out that his male coworker had even known an apex universe refugee. Staring at the gills required noticing them, which Second shouldn’t have known had happened.

“Guy-lovers don’t usually get turned on by melons,” Second said wryly.

That…sounded like something he’d say.

Second was psy-positive. And she had taken a jolt tab. Was she still affected? It should’ve worked its way out of her system by now.

Am I bleeding into your mindspace? he tried to think clearly enough to warrant a response, but he was a sensate, not a speaker, and he had no way of knowing if she could hear him. She’d had a governor chip to throttle her psy abilities until yesterday, when she’d dug it out of her own wrist, so she probably didn’t know how to use them well, anyway.

“So which of you is arresting me?” Raleigh asked. “You’ll want to use spikers. I can override autos.”

Right. They’d been on their way to investigate a class-five breach and this was the side trip.

TamLin knew from much experience that his distraction didn’t show on his face. “We aren’t arresting you.”

“I attacked—”

“Is your indenture paid?” he cut in, because he really didn’t care to hear how Raleigh had beat up Second. His temper was already close to bubbling over.

Something patted the back of his hand. He recoiled and swatted the person away—or he would have, if Second hadn’t casually sidestepped the backhand headed for her face.

Sometimes he hated how he took after his mother.

Second’s glance indicated that she knew his turn-ons, which was deliciously cruel of her and made him wonder how many rules she’d broken with her native universe’s version of him.

She raised both eyebrows at him, letting him read …Really? from her face before she shifted back into the nonchalant mask that Nameless were required to wear.

Right. Psy-positive. Picking up on others’ emotional states was a basic part of that, even when it was throttled down to something more comparable to psy-sensitivity.

“Is it paid?” he snapped at Raleigh, annoyed by his own failure to focus.

Second rolled her eyes.

Raleigh blinked. “Indenture? I served my time, if that’s what you mean. I’m not sure how I ended up in this somewhen from that.”

Her indenture wasn’t paid, then. He grimaced.

He also gave Second a hard look. Janni would’ve recognized Raleigh as a cyban with an open beacon—and wouldn’t have cared or told him—but Nameless were responsible for the safety of the Named. Second could be held accountable for the consequences of what Raleigh was, to the point of death, and her blasé calm wasn’t telling him whether she’d known or not. She should have known.

“Janni didn’t tell you,” he said flatly, fishing.

Second’s expression and body language didn’t so much as flinch towards a hint.

Not your fucking business, he read in her eyes, and he had to take a step away from her before he kissed her or did something comparably stupid.

“So…” Misha said. “Would this indenture explain the class-five breach that happened last night?”

“Yes,” Second said.

“So it isn’t paid,” Misha concluded, so quickly that he definitely knew more than any native to this somewhen was supposed to. Maybe that comprehension was what had cued Second in.

Kasy and Raleigh each gave him an odd look, so they’d noticed his lack of ignorance, too.

TamLin and Second both had better control than to reveal that they’d caught that, themselves.

He headed back towards their vehicle. The others would follow…or not. Their choice.

He had a class-five breach to track down before Raleigh’s programming forced her to return to her owners. There weren’t many reasons why an apex universe would dump one of their cyborgs in another somewhen, and none of them were good for the person’s longevity once they were recovered.

Janni should’ve done something about that.