“Could just be stress,” Prepper offered, still rubbing the scar tissue on his face. “You’ve been running hard lately. Suppressants work less good when you’re burnt out.”
“Suppressants don’t workas well,“ Stave corrected absently.
“Fuck off with your grammar, I’m trying to be supportive.”
“Try harder.”
Despite everything—the jealousy, the desperation, the pressure of real life crushing in on him—Riot felt his mouth twitch. This was them. This was his family. Stave with his sarcasm and his complete refusal to express concern in any way that might be mistaken for warmth. Prepper with his rough-edged earnestness and his determination to be emotionally available even when the modifications were making it physically difficult to stand still. They’d survived the lab together, survived the abandonment, survived ten years of scraping by on the margins of a world that wanted them dead or controlled.
They’d also survived the day they tried to take Orion and the shame of what they’d almost done, what they’d become. Lilacburned half of Prepper’s face off to stop them, and now here they all were, standing in her living room like it was normal. Like family. Which, Riot supposed, was what family meant when everyone in it had been manufactured in a lab and then returned to sender.
We’re better now. We have to be better now.
“I don’t think it’s mod decay,” Riot said finally, because he owed them honesty even if he didn’t have answers. Even if every second of this conversation felt like holding a door shut against a flood. “It doesn’t feel like that. It feels like...” He struggled for words that weren’t justCass Cass Cass. “Like my body decided the suppressants were optional. Like it just... stopped recognizing the chemicals.”
“That’s not better,” Prepper said. “That’s maybe worse.”
“I know.”
“We should test ours,” Stave said to Prepper. “Make sure the batch is still viable. If Riot’s failing and we’re next—”
”Iknow,“ Riot repeated, sharper this time. He didn’t want to talk about batches and viability and contingency plans. The pull toward the hallway was so strong it felt physical—a hook behind his sternum, a gravitational anomaly localized entirely in a five-foot-eight Omega who smelled like caramel and cinnamon and the complete disintegration of everything Riot had built to keep himself functional. “But right now I can’t exactly—”
He heard Cass’s voice again, clearer this time. Upset. Riot was moving before he could stop himself.
“Riot, no—” Lilac grabbed for his arm.
He shoved her back and kept going. He just needed to check. Just needed to see that Cass was okay. Just needed—
“Brennan Loudon!”
Riot stopped mid-step.
His whole body had gone rigid, frozen by two names he hadn’t heard spoken aloud in years. Not since the lab.
He turned slowly.
Stave was still by the wall, arms crossed, his expression utterly flat. No sympathy in those blue eyes. No hesitation. Just the cold practicality of someone who’d identified a problem and selected the most efficient solution.
“Sit the fuck down, Brennan,” Stave said, “and use your actual brain for five fucking seconds.”
“Don’t—” Riot’s voice came out strangled. “Don’t call me that.”
“Why? Because it reminds you that you used to be someone who thought before he acted?”
Brennan died in that lab. Brennan was an idiot who trusted Gensyn’s promises and volunteered for enhancement and woke up six months later as something else entirely.The fact that Stave knew this—knew exactly where to aim, exactly which name would cut through the noise—was either a testament to their bond or a compelling argument for never letting anyone know him well enough to weaponize his past.
Stave pointed at the couch. “Sit. Down.”
Riot’s legs folded. He didn’t decide to sit—his body just did it, dropping onto Lilac’s worn couch like a puppet with cut strings. His hands kept shaking.
“That’s not my name anymore,” he said to his bloody palms.
“No,” Stave agreed, moving to sit on the coffee table across from him. His knees almost touched Riot’s—close, grounding, the kind of proximity that would have felt threatening from anyone else. “It’s not. But Riot’s about to do something monumentally stupid, so I figured I’d try appealing to whoever’s left underneath.”
Prepper had moved closer too, settling against the arm of the couch in that easy, familiar way. Present without crowding. Support without smothering. They’d done this for each other a hundred times—talked each other down from the edge, reminded each other that the modifications weren’t all theywere. It was, Riot supposed, the closest thing any of them had to therapy. Cheaper, certainly. And with more swearing.
“Talk to us,” Prepper said quietly. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”
