Shift end, TamLin clocked out and prepared to head home and face the bondmate he’d left there, whom he really needed to chat (and start plotting a jailbreak) with.

“Hey, wait!” Misha hurried through the clock-out and ran to catch up to him, huffing. “We need to talk.”

TamLin’s neck prickled as they passed through the foyer. “Weren’t we just doing that?”

Misha cast a self-conscious glance around, as if checking for listeners, which didn’t help TamLin’s mood. “I checked the security feed,” he muttered—far less stealthily than he doubtless thought he was doing. “I can’t find Kasy. She went to the snack room and never came out.”

Well, fuck.

They were also being watched.

TamLin quietly grabbed Misha’s arm and upped their pace towards the exit and scanners and guards there. Just two more faces among the folks getting off-shift for the day. Nothing to see here…

Yeah. That worked as well as he’d expected.

He redirected a door guard’s punch away from Misha and elbowed the attacker in the diaphragm—being a shorter-than-average male had its uses—and yanked his coworker out of the way of an incoming something he glimpsed in his peripheral vision.

The flash bomb loosed its light and non-sound, affecting vision and eardrums. As his physiological adjustments kicked in, TamLin rolled away and through the exit, pulling Misha with him.

Thing was, the flash bomb had come in through that exit, so they did that against the flow of people who were now pawing around, blind and deaf for the next few seconds.

Oh, they made it, but TamLin was annoyed and crabby due to the new shit that was going to be held against or somehow pinned on him. He managed to drag Misha into a building across the street and into the elevator before the man recovered enough to yank himself free.

“What the hell was that?!”

TamLin hit the button for the top floor. “Flash bomb.”

“Your girlfriend.”

He shook his head. Flash bombs were useless against too many types of mods—primes, as Second’s native somewhen called them—so they’d be a liability to carry with her as part of her arsenal. She couldn’t afford to waste valuable equipment space with something that wouldn’t affect anyone hunting her as a Breach.

The elevator stopped partway up, well before the floor he’d selected. He stepped in front of Misha before the door opened.

Second was on the other side, kitted out for a breakout and standing comfortably despite the backpack and gear that might well have weighed as much as she did.

“You’re alive?” Misha asked blankly.

She gave him a pointed glance…and the ever-so-slight annoyance in her expression as she joined them and set the elevator back on its way said she knew who had thrown the flash bomb.

“Raleigh?” he asked.

Second shook her head. “Some coworker of yours, said he shares your office.”

That took TamLin a moment. “Icarus?”

“What about Icarus?” Misha asked.

“He showed up at your apartment today,” Second said, still addressing TamLin. “Said there was a plan to force you into a fight on your way off-shift that would give them cause to hold you for assault. The distraction was his idea.”

And she’d come along to block the building scanners from picking up Icarus’s bio-identity, to spare him prosecution for helping. Kind of her.

“Why a flash bomb?” he asked, to distract himself from the thought that Janni wouldn’t have bothered.

She glanced at him. “Generally non-lethal to bystanders, and your emergency patch would give you an advantage in dealing with it without draining it too much.”

“Icarus knew about my emergency patch,” he said flatly, the tone itself saying, ‘The fuck he did.’

Second gave him a flat look of her own, wordlessly telling him, ‘No, I didn’t protest the flash bomb because I knew about your emergency patch.’

He wondered what she’d do if he kissed her.

Her eyes widened slightly, and discomfort flickered on her face. She adjusted her shoulders and stance to take guard position—

“No,” he said quietly, catching her arm before readied herself to take point against any threats.

‘Are you crazy?’ ran through her expression.

Then comprehension flashed in her eyes, making his stomach twist.

She let out a soft sigh. “You aren’t your mother.”

He flinched. “Second—”

“I’ve been thinking about what name to take.”

And thanks to TamLin’s fuck-up that got them bonded, she probably wouldn’t survive long enough to be allowed to do that.

“I think I like Gosia. It’s pretty, but nobody will guess it, based on my alternates, or even pronounce it properly unless they already know it’s a ‘zh’ sound and not ‘s’.”

The elevator reached the top floor and dinged. Misha stepped out, but TamLin didn’t move.

“You really think you’ll live that long?”

Second studied her fingertips. “You’re thirty-four.”

And the neurological implant that marked her as Nameless wouldn’t self-destruct until she’d earned the right to a name by surviving to her twenty-seventh birthday—assuming it had been installed correctly. His father’s hadn’t been.

The year and some months that they’d have to wait was going to be rough enough. If her implant was bad…

She sighed again. “There are ways to remove it.”

He gave her a sharp look. Removal was fucking dangerous. They’d been outright designed that way, to keep Nameless from being able to free themselves.

“There is precedent.”

Yeah, if some accident wiped out too many Named and a community needed an emergency boost of childbearing persons—and a de-chipped Nameless could still be declared Breach if the wrong person found out.

That was entirely aside from the ‘childbearing’ aspect, or how it was biologically safest for female Nameless to be pregnant during the surgery. His mother had intentionally conceived him as a tool to improve her own situation. He wasn’t going to do that to anyone, himself.

Second glanced between the door and him, silently asking which of them was to go first, even while her shoulders and expression displayed hesitance. “I like children.”

Right. Janni would play the same way, in awkward social positions. Feeding someone what they wanted to hear was manipulation 101.

He stepped out first. “You don’t know what to do with children.”

She shrugged as she followed him, back tight, and said quietly, “I still like them.”

…She wasn’t toying with him.

That realization left him hot and bothered and swallowing hard. “Kids are a big responsibility. You gotta prepare them for life, based on who they are rather than what you want them to be…”

He wasn’t telling her anything she didn’t already know.

And there were hostiles coming up the stairs.

“What if they’re unstable?” he asked softly as they both stepped quickly to maneuver Misha out of the way and take cover in doorways. “Nameless or euthanasia?”

She gave him a flat look. “Janni.”

In other words, hide the handicap and fuck the consequences.

Hostiles burst through the stairwell door, thankfully giving him something to distract himself with before he did something stupid like kiss his bondmate in public.