The mont had finally co.
I walked alongside Sydney, Rachel, and Cindy, our steps slow and deliberate as we made our way toward the State Marina. The Golden Nugget rose up ahead of us, tall, gaudy, the kind of building that had no business still looking impressive in a world like this. Glass and steel catching the pale morning light, its casino signage dark and dead but the structure itself still standing like it hadn’t gotten the mo that everything had fallen apart. It sat right across from the marina, massive and unmissable.
We made sure we were visible. That was the point, walk in plain sight, no sudden movents. Let them see us coming and make their own calculations.
Behind us, positioned further back and spread wide enough to cover angles, were the three people Marlon had sent. And yeah, even I had to do a double take when I saw who he’d chosen. Maribel, Rico, and Molly. His closest, most trusted people, the ones he kept near him like an inner ring. It took a second to understand why he’d send them here of all places, but then it clicked.
The Golden Nugget. We’d had our eye on that building—it was a target, a future conquest, sothing we’d need to move on eventually. Marlon hadn’t just sent backup. He’d sent people he trusted to gather intelligence, to study the hotel’s layout from the front, count the guards, clock their positions, and bring that information back. Smart. Cold, maybe, but smart.
Rico had a sniper rifle. So did Molly. Maribel was carrying an AK-47, which I’ll admit looked slightly out of place on her, but the sight of all three of them back there settled sothing in my chest that had been wound tight all morning.
We weren’t going in unprotected.
The four of us were ard too, Rachel, Sydney, and I each carried fully loaded handguns, and Cindy brought up our rear with an M-16 resting across her arms like it belonged there. If things went south and shots started flying, Rachel would throw up a barrier imdiately, we’d already talked through it. Quick evacuation if needed: Sydney takes one, I take the other, and my Ti Freeze buys us the gap we need to get clear.
That was the worst case. Callighan turning this into sothing ugly. Gaspar being here.
We’d planned for it. Didn’t make feel much better.
My nerves were doing what nerves do, tightening everything, making sounds feel sharper, distances feel longer. This had to work. We’d co without Lucy, which was its own weight, but this was about i. That mattered enough.
As the hotel drew closer, I could make out figures standing in front of the entrance. A loose cluster of ard n, watching us approach. None of them raised weapons yet, which was sothing. One of them broke away almost imdiately and jogged back inside, probably to warn soone higher up.
We slowed our pace without a word passing between us. Instinct. You stop pushing forward when the other side starts making moves you can’t read yet.
I hoped Callighan was already inside. I hoped i was too.
"Damn," Sydney said beside , her voice low and easy, like we were taking a morning stroll. "i’s inside that? She’s living pretty well for a hostage, isn’t she?"
"A luxury hotel with a psychotic Symbiote Host for company," Cindy replied drily, eyes still forward.
"Fair point." Sydney tilted her head. "Still though, we got lucky with Ryan, didn’t we? Think about it. Any other unstable guy walking around with the power to cure Infection the way he does? He could’ve gone completely off the rails with that. Done a whole lot of damage."
"Ryan isn’t like that," Cindy said simply.
"He’s been perfectly decent to you, sure," Sydney said with a smirk. "But from what I heard, he wasn’t exactly a saint when it ca to Rachel."
My expression went flat instantly. "Are we seriously doing this right now?" I asked, voice strained sowhere between annoyed and embarrassed.
"No," Rachel agreed sharply, a flush climbing her neck as she kept her eyes fixed ahead. "There’s really no need."
She’d clearly told Sydney at so point and was already regretting it with every cell in her body.
Sydney sighed dramatically. "It’s just, what a missed opportunity for personally. Ryan hitting you with that look and saying ’I want your body as compensation’—" she pressed a hand to her chest like she was containing sothing. "God. Hot and funny at the sa ti. That’s a combination you don’t find every day."
I was doing a terrible job of keeping my composure.
God.
Even now, just hearing it said out loud like that, I felt heat crawling up the back of my neck. I hated that it was still a story, sothing Sydney could pull out and use whenever she wanted a reaction. I regretted putting Rachel through that more than I’d ever said out loud. I should’ve just shown her what I could do from the start. Demonstrated the power, skipped the whole ss. But I’d been terrified back then, terrified of what it ant to let soone see exactly what I was. So kind of superhuman. Sothing that didn’t fit neatly into any category anymore. And so instead of being honest, I’d been a coward dressed up in confidence, which might be the worst combination possible.
That had been maybe three months ago now. Three months, and the world had sohow managed to get both worse and more structured at the sa ti. We’d found Margaret’s community. We’d found Marlon’s. We’d built sothing resembling a defense, a real one, with people watching each other’s backs and actual systems in place. The need to cure anyone the way I’d cured Rachel and the others hadn’t co up again, and I was reasonably confident it wouldn’t, not with how seriously we were all taking protection and guard now.
But Sydney had a long mory and absolutely zero restraint.
"W...Wait, is that actually true?" Cindy asked, and from her tone it was clear she was hearing this particular story for the very first ti.
"She’s obviously exaggerating," Rachel said, her voice a little too quick and a little too flat.
Sydney turned to look at her with the most serene smile imaginable. "Am I?"
Rachel’s face went scarlet. She turned her gaze forward and made the executive decision to pretend Sydney no longer existed.
rcifully, the conversation died on its own because Callighan walked out of the hotel.
He ca through the front entrance at an unhurried pace, two of his n flanking him at a loose distance. He looked like soone who’d never learned to rush, like the world had reorganized itself around his schedule and he saw no reason to question that arrangent. He moved until he was roughly ten feet from us, then stopped and let his eyes travel slowly over our group, , Sydney, Rachel, Cindy taking his ti, reading each of us like we were items on a list he was deciding whether to purchase.
Then sothing almost like amusent crossed his face.
"You’re all quite young," he said. "These are the companions you rely on?"
"I don’t see i," I said.
"Neither do I see Lucy," he replied.
I drew a slow breath and made the call I’d been turning over in my head since before we’d left.
"She ran away," I said.
The silence that followed had weight to it. Callighan’s gaze stayed fixed on , unreadable, letting the words sit between us.
"She... ran away," he repeated. Not a question, more like he was turning the sentence over in his hands, checking it for sothing.
"We lost her," I said. "She may already be heading back toward you for all we know. We’re looking for her."
Callighan was quiet for a mont longer. "I don’t know how to understand these words," he said finally. His tone didn’t change, no anger, no suspicion that he let show. Just that sa asured, distant calm. "And I don’t understand what you thought you’d accomplish by coming here without her."
"We wanted to see i." I kept it simple, kept it honest, or as honest as this situation allowed. "Make sure she was alright."
He studied with a long, searching look.
"You understand the deal is void," he said. "She stays with ."
My hands tightened at my sides, not a fist, not quite, but close. "We’ll find Lucy."
"Perhaps," he said.
I couldn’t tell if he believed or not. What I could tell, watching his expression, was that he was puzzled more than anything, trying to work out why I’d bother lying about losing Lucy when the lie made my own position worse. Honestly, I was asking myself sothing similar. Every passing second, a part of was calculating what it would take to just send Lucy back. Force the trade, accept whatever fallout ca from it, and get i ho where she belonged. But the practical side, the side that had kept us alive through worse than this knew that wasn’t the move. There were cleaner ways to get i out. We just needed ti and the right angle.
I just hated what that ant for right now.
"You ca all this way hoping to see her?" Callighan asked.
"Yes," I said.
Another silence. Then he turned around without a word and started walking back toward the hotel entrance.
"Only you," he said over his shoulder.
"What?" Cindy’s voice ca out sharp and loud. "We all ca to see her—"
"One," he repeated, not breaking stride, not looking back.
I glanced at the others before Sydney or Rachel could start in on it.
"It’ll be fine," I said.
"Ryan—" Rachel began.
"I have the Ti Freeze," I said quietly, letting the words do the work they needed to do. "If anything goes sideways, I walk out. Simple." I held Rachel’s gaze just long enough for her to believe . "Stay here. I’ll check on i, I’ll talk, and I’ll co back."
Rachel pressed her lips together but gave a tight nod.
"And Sydney." I turned to her. "Don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone."
She crossed her arms, the annoyance clear on her face even as she held it back. "You got it."
"I’ll keep an eye on her," Cindy said with a quiet laugh, nudging Sydney with her shoulder.
I managed a small smile at that then turned and followed Callighan toward the entrance.
His n quickly stepped aside as I approached, each of them running their eyes over suspiciously and warily. I kept my gaze level and fixed on Callighan’s back as I followed quietly behind him while keeping a good distance.
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