“Are you okay, Skylar?” Bry asked when he noticed that she had ceased working at the motherboard before her.
“Hmm?” Skylar said, turning to look at him, her eyes coming back into focus. “It’s nothing.” She sighed, rolling her dark eyes and returning to the job at hand.
KANE CHECKED his wrist chron as the three of them strode, shoulder to shoulder, down the wide corridor that stretched the length of the Cerberus redoubt. “It’s 12:34 local time,” Kane told his colleagues, his jacket and holstered Sin Eater slung over one shoulder.
“One, two, three, four,” Brigid stated, smiling as she broke down the time into separate numbers. “That’s lunchtime.”
“Then we should eat,” Grant stated practically.
They slowed, purposefully looking around the twenty-foot-wide corridor as they realized that they were its sole occupants. The vast corridor was carved directly into the mountain rock, with curving ribs of metal and girders supporting its high stone roof. The air never really seemed to heat up here, and it often felt more like working in a mine shaft than being inside a high-tech military facility.
Brigid stopped walking, and her eyes rolled back in her head as she brought to mind the floor plan of the redoubt. After a moment, her emerald eyes reappeared and she pointed to a doorway a few paces behind them. “This way,” she said. “Stairwell B.”
Kane nodded. “Lead the way, Baptiste,” he encouraged as the redhead pulled at the door handle.
The door didn’t move and Brigid turned and smiled with embarrassment. Then she pushed the door to open it and the three of them walked through.
THE CANTEEN WAS BUSY when Kane, Brigid and Grant entered the room. The lunchtime rush had begun, and the cooks and serving staff were busy trying to keep the lines moving as almost forty people waited to be served, trays in hand. Several friendly faces turned to acknowledge the three newcomers as they entered the room and Kane nodded back—albeit self-consciously—in return.
At the far side of the room, Domi sat with Shizuka, the lone occupants of a long table. The remnants of a late breakfast remained on the table between them. Domi rested back in her seat, keeping her back to the wall while Shizuka faced her, bemoaning some of the more mundane political aspects of her leadership of the Tigers of Heaven.
“Sometimes,” Shizuka was saying, her eyes on the water jug that stood a few seats along from her in the middle of the table, “I wonder that there might be more to life than politics and war. And by more, quite naturally, I truly mean less.”
Domi nodded, enjoying the company of the fascinating warrior woman whose background was so unlike her own. The two hadn’t always seen eye to eye, but they had a healthy respect for each other. Domi certainly felt more comfortable around Shizuka than she did around many of the big brains who resided at Cerberus on a permanent basis.
As Shizuka took a sip of her green tea, Domi noticed the new arrivals and waved them over. “I think lover boy’s returned,” she told Shizuka with a meaningful wink as Kane, Grant and Brigid spotted her and approached the table.
Shizuka’s eyes flicked delicately to the silvered surface of the water jug that sat just beyond her grip once more, then she smiled indulgently at the albino woman. “You’re slowing down, Domi,” she said. “I saw them enter almost a minute ago. Everything after that was just distraction.”
Domi shook her head, a cardsharp solidly outplayed. Shizuka’s eyes went back to the water jug as she watched the three figures approach, and unconsciously her left hand reached beneath the table to where her katana rested in its scabbard.
“Hey, guys,” Domi said, gesturing to the empty, molded seats of the table. “How did everything go?”
Kane looked at the albino woman for a long moment, blue-gray eyes like steel lingering over her small frame before affixing on the quiver of arrows that she had propped against the wall behind her. “It went fine, Domi,” he stated. “Planning a hunt?”
Domi looked confused for a second, before she saw where the ex-Mag was looking and realized what he meant. “Ha, no—just doing a little exploring this morning,” she explained. “Haven’t had the time to put things back.”
Kane nodded, then he glanced back to Brigid and Grant before he sat down. In that moment, it seemed, a significant look passed between the three, and Domi wondered if they were mocking her. “You could join me sometime,” she said defensively, though she didn’t relish the thought of company on her morning jaunts.
Grant took the seat to the left of Shizuka, and a broad smile played across his face as he watched her sip from the teacup. “Miss me?” he asked as she placed the cup delicately back on its saucer.
“An infinitesimal amount, perhaps,” Shizuka allowed, turning to look at him. After a second, a smile broke across her face and her hand reached out to entwine with his beneath the table.
Kane took the seat on the other side of Shizuka. Brigid walked around the table and took the seat opposite Kane, leaning back and surveying the other denizens of the cafeteria.
“Aren’t you guys eating?” Domi asked, looking from Kane to Brigid. Neither of them responded, and she snapped her fingers to get their attention. They both looked at her, their expressions inscrutable. “What’s up with you? Hey, you’re not doing that anam-chara thing again, are you?”
Brigid tilted her head indulgently as she looked at the albino woman. “Anam-chara?” she asked. Then, after a long blink, she continued, looking significantly at Kane. “The bond of the soul friends. No, Domi. Why do you ask?”
“Because the last time we were all together like this,” Domi began, “you were all—” she waved her hands around “—wooo-ooo! Soul-friend magic shit.”
Kane smiled. “We’ll try not to do that,” he assured her before pushing back from the table and standing. “I’m going to grab a tray and see what’s cooking,” he announced.
Excusing herself, Brigid followed him to the rear of the queue.
Shizuka leaned close to Grant and asked in a soft voice, “Are you not going to acquire something to eat, Grant-san?”
“In a minute,” he told her, still clutching her hand beneath the table.
“Keep your energy up,” she whispered, a tantalizing twinkle in her eye.
“Careful, Shizuka,” Grant whispered back. “That’s a threat I may just hold you to.”
BACK IN THE OPERATIONS room, Lakesh was placing Brigid’s discarded satchel of gold coins back in a secure cupboard, having removed the hidden stash of flash-bangs and other minor weapons and sent them on to the armory for secure storage.
“You’re pleased to have them back on-site, aren’t you?” Donald Bry said, calling across from the desk where he worked with Skylar.
Locking the cupboard, Lakesh turned and smiled. “Somehow, Donald, the three of them seem to complete Cerberus. The place always feels a little empty in their absence, present company notwithstanding, of course.”
Sitting beside Donald, a soldering iron in her hand, Skylar Hitch tsked.
“Something bothering you, Skylar?” Bry asked.
“Just thinking,” she said as she replaced a burned-out chip on the motherboard, “how you can get too attached to people sometimes.”
Lakesh joined the two of them, wheeling over a chair. “Now, then, what is that supposed to mean?” he asked, concern in his voice.
Skylar looked up at him for a few seconds before averting her gaze and turning back to her soldering. “Nothing, Dr. Singh,” she said quietly.
Lakesh and Donald shared a look; neither of them was quite sure what was going on with the normally quiet Miss Hitch.