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“I did.” Phuong pulled the gold key pass out of her pocket.
“Look. I’ve got blueprints.” He pulled a roll of paper out of his pocket and waved it around.
“Blueprints? Blueprints of what?”
“The tunnels under the Alrech Auction House.”
Phuong took in a sharp breath. “You can’t be serious. Xuan, we steal to live. We don’t take the treasure of the mega-wealthy.”
“Everything there would help us, but I want something that’s going to set us free. We’ll never run out of money again. We can live the life we’ve always dreamed of. We can afford to pay healers to take out our implants.”
“Xuan...”
“I know that you don’t like stealing or nudging people to help us, but if we do this one last time, we can be safe and happy forever. Do you want to scrounge in the tanks for the rest of our lives?”
“No.”
“I need to keep you safe. There are too many people who take notice of you. In the last year, you’ve...grown up.”
Phuong blushed. What he was trying to say, in his brotherly way, was that she’d developed in the last year...developed in ways that caught a lot of glances from random strangers. She was getting to be too remarkable to be an effective thief. If she was ever caught, Xuan wouldn’t be able to get her out.
“You’re crazy to try to steal from Marc.”
“I know. I know. His reputation...”
“Xuan, if we get caught by Marc, then it’ll be worse than going to jail. At least in jail, we’d have a roof over our heads, food to eat, and a bed to sleep in. If we get caught, we’ll probably be fish food.”
“Phuong, we have to try. He has Illinium ore that is worth thousands upon thousands of credits in the black market. I won’t even have to arrange for transport off-planet! All I need to do is get it out of the auction den. I know that we can do it. We can do anything.”
“Xuan, he’s a Drakan. He’s a shifter, and he can smell everything. He’s going to know that we’ve been there.”
“Not necessarily.” Xuan pulled out a small bottle. “Smell this.”
Phuong took the little bottle from his hand and unscrewed the cap. She took a good whiff and gagged.
“What is that?” She wiped her watering eyes.
“It’s the essence of peppermint.”
“It’s...strong.”
“Strong enough to mask our scents, I think.”
Xuan looked at Phuong.
“I know you don’t like stuff like this, but I swear, we can do this and be done. We can figure out a way to stop the group home from getting us back until we turn 21.”
“I...I don’t want to go to the auction house, Xuan. I don’t mind taking a fish here and there, but stealing from Marc is a whole other level.”
“We have to. There’s no other way.”
Xuan pulled out a sheet of paper and began to scribble down notes in his shorthand. For their whole lives, they’d seen symbols in their sleep, symbols that weren’t anything like the Drakans’ writing system. Xuan could use it perfectly, but Phuong took extra time to decipher the symbols.
Since they’d left the group home, they’d seen it in a couple places. When Xuan had finally worked up the nerve to ask what it was, they’d been told that the symbols were chu nom, not widely used but sometimes used for decorations.
Neither Xuan nor Phuong knew why they dreamed about decorative characters, but it was part of their past...something about which they’d never been able to learn much. Maybe they never would.
At least when Xuan wrote in chu nom, nobody could figure out what was going on.
