"Hey," Seth said.
"Hm."
"I'm staying."
"I know."
"Not because you asked. Because I want to."
"I know that too."
"And I'm going to be really annoying about it."
"You're already really annoying."
Seth tilted his head up. Looked at Zain with those green eyes that had measured him from inside a cage six weeks ago andhad never stopped measuring and had somewhere along the way decided that what they measured was worth keeping.
"Your annoying," Seth said.
Zain kissed his forehead. His nose. The corner of his mouth.
"My annoying," he confirmed. "My brat. My person. My everything I didn't know I was allowed to want."
Seth's breath hitched. Just once. The crack in the armor where the real person lived.
"Sap," Seth whispered.
"Don't tell Jack."
"I'm absolutely telling Jack."
"Seth."
"He deserves to know his teammate hasfeelings."
"I will end you."
"You won't." Seth smiled against his mouth. Warm. Certain. Home. "You like me too much."
Zain pulled him closer. Pressed his lips to Seth's hair. Breathed him in.
Outside, the train whistle faded. The city settled. And in a safehouse in Corktown that smelled like risotto and gun oil and two people who had chosen each other in the ruins, Zain held Seth against his chest and felt the last wall he'd ever built turn quietly,finally, to dust.
EPILOGUE
The name on the screen was Diana Vega.
Ghost had found her. Traced her. Compiled enough evidence to end her career and begin her prosecution. He'd done it with the same surgical precision he brought to everything, cold, clean, complete.
But it wasn't enough.
Because behind Vega was a network. Behind the network was a system. And behind the system were people, in boardrooms and precinct houses and congressional offices, who had decided that some lives were worth less than others, and had built an infrastructure to profit from that decision.
Ghost closed his laptop. Opened it again. The data was still there. Always there. The digital ghosts of suffering, preserved in code, waiting for someone to make them visible.
The basement was cold. It was always cold, the thermal signature of a space that existed underground, insulated from the safehouse's warmth by concrete and silence and Ghost's preference for conditions that discouraged visitors. The cold kept him sharp. The cold kept him honest. The cold was the only honest thing about the digital world he inhabited, where every identity was a mask and every connection was a potential threat and the only person you could trust was yourself, and even that was provisional.
His real name was irrelevant.
