Escape Lies Eastbound

by luceluceluceluce

Summary:

Gideon is driving across the country to start over after her life fell apart.

Harrow is an escaped eugenics project on the run from the government.

When their paths cross, things get complicated.

Notes:

Here it is, the first fic I've written in years because TLT has burrowed so deep in my brain I simply had no choice.

Chapter 1

1

Gideon was running behind schedule.

As a parting gift, Ianthe had started a stupid argument about who owned the air fryer. Gideon let her keep the damn thing and focused on cramming the rest of her belongings into her beat-up hatchback. A mix of boxes, suitcases, and taped-shut trash bags filled the back seat almost to the ceiling, the accumulation of almost five years of Stuff. Ianthe hovered around like a washed-out ghost, making various snarky comments that went largely ignored. Gideon let her trail behind as she did a final walk-through of the apartment, taking pictures on her phone as she went.

“Such a lack of trust,” Ianthe mused. Gideon stopped in the middle of the kitchen and turned to face her.

“Here,” she said, tossing her keys in Ianthe’s direction. They bounced off of Ianthe’s hands and onto the floor. There was an awkward beat of silence while neither of them moved to pick them up.

Finally, Ianthe sighed dramatically. “You’re making a very stupid mistake, Gubbins.”

“Suck my dick and balls,” Gideon suggested, and walked out the door.

She finally got onto the highway just after mid-morning. The traffic heading into the mountains was stop-and-go, the road thick with cars in both directions. The humid air hung heavy and still over the asphalt. Gideon cranked up both the AC and the radio until the sound of the blasting air was drowned out by angry guitars.

Her entire body just… hurt. The anger and frustration that had been driving her forward for the past few weeks had lodged itself as a tension in the back of her neck and the pit of her stomach. She had sort of expected to feel instant relief as soon as she walked out the door- a thrill of freedom and a new lease on life, or some such shit. Instead there was just a jittery restlessness in her chest. The idea of spending the next few days sitting in her car was already making her fingers twitch.

It would have been smarter, financially, if she had just waited a couple more months for the lease to run out, but she just couldn't stand it anymore. Ianthe would corner her as soon as Gideon got home from her job at the gym and spend hours picking at every reason to leave, trying to disprove every flaw of hers that Gideon brought up- and there were plenty. When Gideon would finally ignore her and try to get to sleep on the miserable little sofa-bed, Ianthe would crawl under the blankets to try to fuck Gideon into changing her mind. That last option was the only one that sort of worked, sometimes.

It still wasn’t enough to stop her from leaving. Anyway, Gideon had already made the horrible phone call to Dad to tell him she was coming back home.

The traffic began to clear out as she left the city behind and got into the mountains proper. They rose up on either side of the road, rolling green slopes fading into rocky peaks. Gideon eased off the gas of the overburdened hatchback and pulled into a rest stop. It wasn’t much more than a gravel parking lot off the shoulder of the highway, an outhouse, and a few picnic tables. She shook out her legs, did a few squats, and pulled up the route she had saved to her phone.

The plan was to make it through the mountains in one shot- about twelve or thirteen hours- and then find a cheap hotel in one of the towns on the other side. It would mean driving into the wee hours of the morning, but towns were few and far between in the mountains themselves and she didn’t feel like digging her camping gear out from somewhere under the mountain of Stuff.

The map ahead was dotted with a dozen tiny red and yellow symbols. Delays, delays, closed, closed, closed.

“Fuck!” Gideon panned along the squiggle of highway. The entire main road was shut down. Angry red lines of “high traffic areas” predicted hours of time added to an already stretched-to-the-limit day.

Gideon put her phone in her pocket, walked in a circle around the picnic table, picked up a fist-sized rock off the ground and threw it as far as she could.

Not feeling calmer in any way, she took her phone back out and returned to panning around. There were other routes. Not highways, but dirt roads and forestry tracks, winding in the generally correct direction. It would still be slower, but it was something.

“Okay,” Gideon mumbled. “Okay, okay, okay.” Two more laps of the picnic tables, and then she pulled back onto the highway and took the first turnoff she saw.

Her phone became useless almost instantly. Service was cutting between one and zero bars, and half of the dirt tracks she turned onto weren’t even officially marked. The first half hour was nothing but dusty farmland and the occasional RV park. Eventually the road began to slope upward and into thick conifers, blotting out the sun and any sign of civilization. Gideon gritted her teeth. The last thing she wanted to do was drive directly up a mountain, but with the thick spruce there wasn’t even enough space to turn around without risking smashing her bumper through a tree.

The climb continued, and the road faded into an overgrown track of dirt that could only be called a road by the most generous definition. Gideon was beginning to wonder if the track would just continue to get rougher and rougher until it turned into nothing at all when she spotted the fence.

It was chain link and barbed wire, double-tall with a slanted top to really deter any would-be climbers. The dirt track continued on through a double wide gate, held shut by a thick chain and padlock. A metal sign zip-tied to the chain read HIGH SECURITY ZONE: AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY.

Past the fence was nothing at all of interest. Just more trees, the dirt road continuing on until it finally curved away into the brush. To the right of the gate, running along the outside of the fence, the road split into an even rougher track. It was nothing more than a trail of tire marks overtaken in large patches by grass and cracked mud.

Gideon sighed and pulled onto the track along the perimeter. The undisturbed grass sprouting from the tire tracks didn’t inspire a lot of confidence that it would reconnect to the highway soon, but Gideon reasoned that a well-maintained fence was a good sign that people worked here and presumably had to drive to and from here. Hopefully somewhere along the fence would be an official-looking entrance, or a bigger road, or maybe the fence would end and she would be stranded in the forest in the middle of nowhere.

None of those things happened. Instead the fence just continued, curving very gradually around what Gideon realized must be the circumference of a mountain. Once in a while a sign was placed along the chain-link: DO NOT ENTER, NO TRESPASSING, RESTRICTED AREA. The track was rough enough that Gideon had to keep her eyes glued to it so as not to dip into a deep dried-up pothole, and almost missed a sudden movement on the other side of the fence.

It was already gone when she whipped her head around. A deer, probably.

There was a distant chuk-chuk-chuk that slowly resolved into the sound of a helicopter. It buzzed past overhead, low enough to knock a shower of pine needles onto her windshield. As it receded the noise was replaced by the whine of a distant siren.

This was all excellent news, Gideon decided. Sirens and helicopters meant that she must be close to looping back to the highway. The detours had added a couple hours onto her route, but it wasn’t so bad, and Gideon was just reaching for her phone to check if she was back in service when a figure burst through the chain link fence directly in front of her.

She slammed on the brakes, sending a shower of dirt onto the person now standing in the middle of the road. They flung their arms up in a “please don’t run me over with your car” motion, as if they hadn’t been the one who just jumped out in front of it.

Gideon stared at them through the windshield. A skinny girl stood there, wrapped in layers of baggy cloth that pooled over her feet and hands, with an ashy, gaunt face and hair shaven down to a buzzcut. She was covered in soot so thick that she was almost entirely grey except for two wide black eyes.

She began to walk toward the driver’s side window, and for a moment Gideon considered gunning it. Her heart was still hammering from the near-miss, and she was suddenly acutely aware that she had no phone service and nobody who knew where she was. But as soon as the girl started moving it was obvious that she was limping, and before Gideon could make a decision she was rapping smartly on the window.

Gideon rolled it down, just a crack.

“I’ve been involved in an accident.” The girl’s voice is stilted, formal. Up close she looked even worse- soot and dirt were caked to her skin, and her lips were chapped bloody. “Could I get a ride to the nearest town, please?”

“Are you okay?” Gideon asked in response, and then immediately wished she had asked a different question, because the answer was obviously no.

“I will be fine. I need a ride. Even just down the road for a while.”

“What happened?”

The girl’s mouth twisted in annoyance. “There was an accident, and I was forced to evacuate.” She gestured back to the forest she had stumbled out of. “There was a fire, and I had to run through the woods. We need to go now- it’s not safe here.”

Gideon followed her gesture back into the woods. The siren was still whining in the distance, but there was nothing but a thick canopy of trees.

She’d never picked up a hitchhiker before. Never had a stranger in her car that wasn’t someone she knew. She was out of cell service, far from civilization, and could almost hear her Dad’s scolding voice in the back of her head.

But the girl was shifting her weight onto one leg as if the other was hurting, and when she licked her lips there was no moisture left behind. If Gideon drove off, who knew when the next car would come by? Besides- she felt a restless, angry pang in her heart. What did she have to lose?

“Okay, get in.”

The girl limped around to the other side of the car and slid into the passenger seat. Her hand left ashy smears where she pulled the door shut, and Gideon took a moment to mourn the state of her upholstery. It’s not like the hatchback was in great condition, but it was about to get a lot worse. The girl smelled like smoke and burnt plastic, thick and acrid, and it seemed unlikely that it would ever come out of the fabric.

“I’m Gideon,” Gideon offered, starting the car back up. She felt doubly aware of how bumpy the ride was now that someone else was in it.

“Harrowhark Nonagesimus,” the girl said.

“What?”

“Harrowhark.” The girl was twisted in her seat to stare out the rearview window, back where they came from. Gideon could hear more sirens now, although they didn’t sound like ambulances or firetrucks- it was a repetitive whooping, coming from multiple locations somewhere deep in the trees.

“Okay,” Gideon said, deciding to focus on more important concerns first. “Are you injured? Should I be taking you to a hospital?”

“No!” The response was sharp enough that Gideon jumped, swerving slightly on the uneven track. “No hospital. I’m fine. I’ll just get out as soon as we get to a town.”

Gideon chanced a look over at the girl- Harrowhark. It was hard to get a read on her under all of the grime and dark fabric. A dried trickle of blood ran from her ear down her neck, and her nails were caked with dirt. She definitely didn’t look like she was doing great, but also didn’t look like she was about to keel over. Gideon supposed that was good enough for now.

“There’s water bottles in the back seat if you want,” she offered.

Harrowhark reached over and took one, turning it over in her hands as if taking it in from all angles before cracking it open. Gideon was sure she had to be thirsty, from how dry her lips looked, but Harrowhark only took a few small, suspicious sips. “Thank you,” she said finally, reluctantly. For the first time Gideon realized that the girl was probably as nervous about getting into a stranger’s car as she had been about letting a stranger in.

“Not a problem,” she said, trying to imbue the words with a cheerful I’m-not-a-threat energy. “You from around here?”

Harrowhark hummed. “Yes, I suppose so.”

“I’m from out east, originally,” Gideon offered. There was a beat of awkward silence where Harrowhark made absolutely no response, and Gideon continued. “I’m actually heading back there now. Most of my family still lives out there.”

Still no response, and Gideon had just resigned herself to an awkwardly silent ride when Harrowhark mumbled, “I know some people out east, too.”

“Hell yeah,” Gideon said, more delighted than she probably should be to find a similarity. “What brought you all the way out here? Pretty far from anything.”

At that there was another long silence. Gideon had to bite her cheek to stop herself from rambling more and filling it. She didn’t mind silence, but the way Harrowhark’s eyes were darting around made her want to say something to reassure her- as if, if she could just say the correct thing, it would defuse the tension that kept Harrowhark pressed up against the passenger window.

Harrowhark seemed to choose her words carefully when she spoke. “It wasn’t my choice. I was… brought up here.”

Gideon waited for elaboration, but Harrowhark fixed her eyes on the forest, her mouth a thin line. There was nothing Gideon could think of to say that didn’t sound offensive or maybe insane, so she just said, “hm!” and tried to focus on the road.

The dirt track began to wind downhill, widening steadily until the spruce gave way to farmlands again. Gideon sighed in relief at the sight of a paved road and a highway sign. Harrowhark stared intently at the distant houses and outbuildings, and startled violently when a rusted pickup passed going the opposite direction. Gideon politely pretended not to notice.

“Might be a bit before we hit a town,” she warned. Harrowhark nodded distractedly. She reminded Gideon of when Dad went through a phase of fostering shelter dogs. There were the ones that would snap their teeth and then immediately curl back into a corner, growling while simultaneously trying to make themselves as small as possible.

Gideon fiddled with the volume on her stereo. “What d’you normally listen to?”

“Hymns.”

Gideon laughed before realizing that she was serious and quickly trying to squash it. “Oh! Okay, um, cool. I don’t think I really have any of that.”

“That’s fine.” Harrowhark turned back to the window, and Gideon poked through her playlists distractedly before eventually deciding that her mostly-instrumental sleep playlist was about as close to hymns as they were going to get. Harrowhark didn’t say anything, but she did finish off the rest of the water bottle over the next hour, which Gideon decided to take as a win.

The sun set early in the mountains, the peaks casting long shadows and the sky darkening to a dusky red. Black, unmarked helicopters kept buzzing past overhead, low above the tree line, and Harrowhark would track them intently with her eyes until they disappeared. Traffic was slowly picking up again, and then abruptly slowed to a crawl, making Gideon tap her brakes for the first time in over an hour. The queue of cars led to a couple of cop cars and ranger trucks set up in an impromptu traffic stop.

“Weird place for it,” Gideon said, mostly to herself.

Harrow had sunk down in her seat so low that her head was almost level with her knees. She sensed Gideon’s mildly concerned gaze and looked back at her, eyes wide and darting.

“You okay?”

Harrow replied in a hissed whisper. “I think they may be looking for me.”

“What? Why?”

“Because I ran away.”

Gideon chewed on her words for a moment to try to form a question that wasn’t hey girl, are you crazy? Maybe Harrow was from one of those doomsday cults that formed compounds and eventually all sacrificed themselves, or something. Or maybe-

“Were you in jail? Or- are you a child?” Gideon gave Harrow a quick look up and down. It was honestly hard to tell through the robes and grime. She was pretty tiny, easily half a foot shorter than Gideon, with bony fingers and deep bags under her eyes. There were holes in her ears where piercings had once been. “Please tell me I didn’t kidnap a runaway child.”

“What? No, you moron.” Harrow poked her head up briefly to look at the traffic stop ahead. They had been inching forward, with only about five cars in front of them now. “But they’ll be furious that I left, and they’re probably looking for me.”

Another point for the cult runaway theory, then. Gideon glanced at the approaching cops and wondered if she was about to do something monumentally stupid. “Okay, look, if it would make you feel better you can climb into the back seat. There are sheets back there, just throw one over you.”

Harrow moved instantly, clambering spider-like onto the mound of Gideon’s possessions. When Gideon glanced back a moment later, Harrow was barely visible- she had pulled a blanket over herself and then wriggled her way down into the footwell directly behind the passenger seat. Gideon could barely make out one wide, blinking eye.

“Don’t get squished,” she suggested, awkwardly, and turned back ahead. It was only a few minutes until she rolled into the traffic stop, where a pair of cops approached holding bulky long-range radios and flashlights. Behind them was a ranger truck, and behind that was a van, black and unmarked. One of the cops began circling the car with the flashlight while the other gestured at Gideon to roll down the window.

“Where you headed to, miss?” He was wearing mirrored sunglasses despite the darkness, and Gideon wondered if he could see anything at all.

“Driving through to the east coast.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Long drive.”

“Yeah. Just getting started.”

She handed over her license, and he passed it to the other officer, now returned from his lap of the car. He turned back to Gideon and shined the flashlight past her, over her mound of Stuff. “You see anything unusual on the road?”

“Like what?”

“People, animals, stuff like that. We’ve got a couple missing persons reports in the area.”

Gideon had read somewhere that liars avoid eye contact. She stared directly at her own face reflected in his sunglasses. “No, sir.”

He handed her back her license, his eyes already drifting to the next car in line. “Drive safe.”

Gideon rolled the window back up and looked straight ahead as she drove through the checkpoint, not even glancing at the back seat until she was back up to cruising speed and around the bend. When she finally risked a glance down, a single dark eye was staring back at her.

“I think you can come out now.”

Harrow unfurled in a tangle of limbs, pulling herself out of her footwell crevice with significant effort. She took a moment to rearrange Gideon’s bags back into their original messy pile.

“Thank you for not mentioning me,” she said, when she finally settled back into her seat.

“Sure. Do you really think he was talking about you, with the missing persons report?”

“I think so.” Harrow was back to staring out the window, tracking the route of a distant helicopter.

“You’re allowed to leave if you want to, though.” Gideon tried to modulate her tone into something patient without being condescending, and was unsure if it worked at all. “As long as you weren’t under arrest or something, nobody can stop you.”

Harrow just glanced at her with an expression somewhere between annoyance and disdain. Gideon hurried to clarify. “I mean, I’m sure it sucks, leaving things behind and starting over from scratch. It’s hard, but it’s better than staying in a shitty situation. That’s kind of what I’m doing too.”

Harrow whipped around to stare directly at her. “Are you being chased?”

“No! No, I just- I’m basically starting all over. I’m heading out east to move back in with my Dad for a while. I left behind my job, my apartment, my furniture… but I just couldn’t do it anymore. My relationship was shit, my apartment was shit, we lived in the middle of the city with no plants or green stuff anywhere. I just hated it.”

Harrow relaxed slightly, and nodded. “I also had to leave. I couldn’t stand it.”

Gideon considered her next words carefully. “Were they hurting you? The people you were living with?”

The reply was instant. “Yes.”

Gideon gripped the steering wheel tighter, a surge of adrenaline washing through her. She was suddenly doubly aware of Harrow’s tiny, frail frame, her sunken cheeks, and wished she could punch something. “You don’t have to go back. Nobody can make you.”

Harrow was looking at her, head cocked just lightly to the side. “I very much hope that’s true.”

Chapter 2

Notes:

Note the updated tags! Thank you for all the support so far <3

2

Signs dotted along the highway suggested to Gas Up Now- Next Station 200 km. Gideon pulled into the first decent-looking one she saw and popped the trunk, stepping out to dig through suitcases and bags while Harrow stared at her through the side mirror. Gideon eventually emerged with a hoodie emblazoned with her old MMA gym’s name and a pair of grey sweatpants. She handed them over to Harrow and pointed her in the direction of the bathrooms. “You can take these, and try to wash up a little, maybe. That much ash on your skin can’t be good for you.”

Harrow took the bundle of clothes and unfolded them immediately, looking into each of the sleeves and legholes suspiciously. Gideon shifted from foot to foot while she completed her inspection. Finally satisfied, Harrow marched off in the direction of the bathrooms, robes billowing behind her like a very dusty Dracula.

Gideon fueled up and then headed into the tiny convenience store attached to the gas pumps. She poured herself some coffee from an ancient-looking pot on the back wall, and, after a moment, poured one for Harrow as well. On her way out she grabbed a set of cheap plastic flip flops that read Summer Lovin! along the sole in what she hoped was Harrow’s size.

Prizes in hand, she returned to the car where Harrow was already hunched in the passenger seat. She had made a cursory attempt at cleaning her face, replacing an even layer of ash with smeared finger tracks of ash. She was practically drowning in Gideon’s clothes- the bottom of the hoodie ended halfway down her thighs, and the hood drooped over her eyes. Despite that, she had still put her cloak back on over everything else, now damp at the hems where it had been washed in the sink.

“You look like a wet bat,” Gideon said, passing her a coffee.

Harrow glared at her, and then at the coffee. “What’s this?”

“Coffee. Oh, and also these. I dunno what shoe situation you’re working with.” She held out the flip flops. Harrow’s eyebrows made a complicated expression somewhere between horror and disbelief.

“I’m not drinking this, and I’m not wearing those.”

“Damn, okay, suit yourself.” Gideon shrugged. “I’ll donate them to a baby store or something.”

Harrow opened her mouth as if about to speak and then shut it again, pressing her lips into a thin line. She seemed to be fighting some kind of internal battle. Finally, she snatched the flip flops out of Gideon’s hands and slid them onto, Gideon realized with moderate horror, bare and bloody feet.

Harrow’s face was still pinched into a glare that seemed to dare her to say anything. Gideon kept her mouth shut, put her two coffees in the cupholders, and pulled back onto the highway.

By the time they reached a town the sky was fully black, and almost everything was closed aside from a few fast food joints along the highway. Gideon pulled into the parking lot of a bar advertising Cold Beer and Hot Wings! and killed the engine. Her hatchback was dwarfed on all sides by camper vans and pickup trucks.

“Here we are,” Gideon said, feeling suddenly awkward. “This place isn’t huge, but it’s probably the biggest town for at least a few hours.”

Harrow met her eyes, then looked back down to where her fingers were curled together on her lap. “I don’t have any method of repaying you, but I thank you for your kindness.”

Gideon wrinkled her nose. “No need to make it a big thing. I was headed this way anyway, and I’m glad you’re okay.” She looked away from Harrow, out the driver’s side window. Behind the bright strip of fast food and gas stations, the rest of the town stretched out into the darkness, quiet. “What’s next for you?”

“I know a few people who escaped before I did. I plan to get in touch with them.”

The word escaped made Gideon frown. There was a story there, but it felt both too early and too late to ask about it. Instead she said, “Look, I’m gonna go get some dinner. Let me get you something to eat so I don’t have to worry about you starving to death overnight, and then I’ll head out.”

Harrow shook her head. “You’ve done me too many kindnesses. I refuse to be indebted to you.”

“Oh, my god, it’s not that big a deal.” Harrow’s intense sincerity was embarrassing, somehow. Gideon refused to meet her eyes, instead swinging open the door and stepping outside. “Come on. And leave the robe, you’re going to freak people out.”

Harrow glared at her stubbornly. For a moment Gideon was sure she was going to march away into the night and that would be the end of it, but then Harrow shook off her robe with a frustrated huff and stood. She kept the oversized hood up and pulled the sleeves down over her hands, an almost fully covered lump of grey and black fabric trailing behind Gideon into the bar.

The interior looked like it hadn’t been updated since the 80s, with dark wood panels that still held a lingering scent of tobacco. Country radio was playing just a bit too loudly for comfortable conversation. The tables were half-full with truckers and loggers, a few exhausted looking construction workers, and a gaggle of bikers sitting next to the window so they could keep their eyes on their Harleys through the glass. Gideon asked Harrow what she wanted and was met with only a tight-lipped stare, so ordered two baskets of wings and pointed at the line of taps.

“Pick a drink.”

“Water.”

“They have beer, or soda, or-”

“I’ll take water.”

Gideon ordered herself a beer and Harrow a water and led them to a table at the back of the room. Harrow sat with her back to the wall, tracking the movements of people as they cycled between the bar and tables. Her nervous energy was contagious, and Gideon found herself drumming her fingers on the table nervously.

The waitress brought their wing baskets, and Gideon forced herself to focus on eating. She’d barely eaten a thing all day with all the detouring. At first Harrow just sat and watched, and Gideon got to experience the excruciating awkwardness of eating wings while being observed. Thankfully, after the first few, Harrow began mirroring her movements, raising the buffalo wing to her mouth for a tiny, cautious lick.

Gideon couldn’t contain her curiosity any longer. “Have you ever had wings before?”

“Maybe,” Harrow replied. She took the tiniest nibble before making a face and putting it back down. “I can’t remember. But I’ve never been in a place like this.”

“A bar?” Gideon tried to remember if there was one in the area she picked Harrow up. It was in the middle of nowhere, but if there were two things that were ubiquitous along the highway, it was fast food and alcohol. “Were your family like, super hippies, no-processed-food type people?”

“My family weren’t the ones who fed me,” Harrow said, matter of factly. “But the people who kept me mostly fed me porridge, or soup.”

There was so much to unpack from that admission that Gideon didn’t even know where to begin. She had a lot of questions- are you running away from a cult, or are you just lying? Are you crazy? Who did this to you, and can I introduce their knees to a baseball bat?- and was trying to figure out what to say next when there was a commotion by the entrance. Harrow’s head snapped around to look.

“Please remain seated.”

A group of four men in tactical vests and visors filed through the door. One of them had a mini-megaphone that they were speaking into, and the others flanked behind him, hands on their holsters. Their uniforms looked vaguely military, but not like any police or army uniform Gideon knew. The one with the megaphone spoke again.

“A manhunt has been ordered for a missing and possibly dangerous individual, last seen in this area. We will be conducting a search of this location. Do not move from your seats and prepare to show a government-issued ID.”

Gideon turned back to Harrow, who was now staring down at the table with her hood pulled low. Her hands were gripping the table so tightly that her knuckles were white.

The officers- soldiers?- fanned out, moving systematically between tables. An older woman at the table behind Gideon stage-whispered to her husband, “I bet it’s gang related.” The bikers were grumbling to each other about government overreach. Past them, outside the window, a man stood staring through the glass and smoking a cigarette. For a moment Gideon swore she met his eyes.

Fear ran through her, something instinctual and gut-twisting.

“They’re looking for you,” she breathed. “All of this is just because you ran away?”

Harrow nodded. “The’re determined to take me back.”

Gideon felt her heart pounding in her throat, adrenaline shooting through her shoulders and arms. “This isn’t right. They can’t just… steal you. You have rights.”

Harrow didn’t look at her. She was trembling, just slightly.

“Go to the bathroom,” Gideon said, before she could second-guess herself. She nodded toward the stall door in the corner of the room. “Stay in there and let me talk to them.”

Harrow met Gideon’s eyes, seeming to search them for something. Whatever she found in them must have been good enough, because she nodded. There was no hesitation as she slipped out of the booth and disappeared through the door.

“Hey!” Called the nearest officer, the one who had been holding a megaphone. “Everyone is to remain seated!”

“She had to go to the bathroom,” Gideon interjected, lifting her hands in a placating gesture. It didn’t seem to help- two of the officers looked at each other, and after a moment of wordless communication, the megaphone-holder walked past Gideon and to the bathroom after Harrow.

“Hang on-” Gideon scrambled out of the booth, trailing after him. “Who exactly are you, cops? What right do you have to-”

The man slammed open the door, raised his arm, and fired from something small and black. Harrow’s voice cried out, wordless and pained.

There was something almost relieving about finally having a reason to act. All day, Gideon had felt like she was drowning under Harrow’s anxiety. The paranoia, the glimpses of some horrible past, it all set her on edge not just because of all the questions but because there was nothing she could do about it. Finally, here, Gideon could do something.

She ducked low and slammed her full weight into the officer’s back, shoulder first. He was larger than Gideon, bulky under his body armour, but he clearly hadn’t been expecting something to hit him from behind. He stumbled forward into the bathroom, giving Gideon a view of Harrow over his shoulder. Curling wires extended out from the taser clutched in the man’s hand to where Harrow was slumped under the sink.

Gideon stepped around the man toward Harrow, trying to put her body in between them. The tiny stall barely had enough room for the three of them, even with Harrow half-hidden under the sink. The man righted himself and put his hand to the holster on his belt. Gideon was terrifyingly aware that he was armed and she had nothing at all.

“Ma’am, go back outside now,” the man said, clipped. “You are interfering with the arrest of a violent and dangerous-”

“She isn’t violent! You just tazed her for no reason!” Gideon extended her arms, simultaneously trying to look not-violent and to block more of Harrow from his view. She could hear the other men in uniforms rushing toward their stall, but could barely see them around the first officer’s shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Harrow moving, putting one hand into her hoodie pocket. The movement alerted the officer as well, and this time he did draw his gun, pointing it past Gideon directly at Harrow’s chest.

“Hands in the air!” The officer barked. Harrow stared at him. For a long, breathless moment, nobody moved.

Then Harrowhark complied, pulling her hand out with a handful of chicken wings clutched in her palm. Gideon made an involuntary noise, somewhere between what the fuck? and are you serious right now, and then the man fired.

The blast of the gun was deafening in the small space, and then the man and the gun were both gone. In their place was a lumpy white wall that split the tiny bathroom in two. A spiderweb of cracks radiated out from a bullet hole in its center. In places, smears of something orange that looked remarkably similar to buffalo sauce was mottled into the wall’s uneven surface.

Gideon was screaming, although she could barely hear herself over her ringing ears. She turned back to where Harrow was still slumped under the sink. There was blood running from her nose, and the wings in her hands had vanished. She was staring down at a blooming splotch of blood at her stomach.

Gideon dropped to her knees in front of Harrow. “He shot you,” she breathed. Adrenaline was flooding through her, but she felt strangely calm, trying to think back to her first aid classes. The wall blocked them off from most of the bathroom, but there was a paper towel dispenser mounted on the wall next to the sink. Gideon grabbed a thick wad of paper towels and balled them up, pressing them to Harrow’s stomach. Harrow hissed.

“Hold that there,” Gideon said, taking Harrow’s hands and placing them on top of the paper. They were smeared with buffalo sauce, and now hers were too.

There was the sound of shuffling feet from the other side of the wall, and then an officer was shouting, “Come out immediately with your hands up!”

“You shot her!” Gideon shouted in his direction, and then to Harrow: “He shot you!”

“We need to leave,” Harrow said.

A wave of dizziness washed over Gideon, making her rock on her heels. Nothing was making sense, and the adrenaline was starting to make her hands shake. “What’s going on? Where did the wall come from?”

“We need to leave,” Harrow repeated unhelpfully. She was beginning to look very, very pale. “Immediately.”

From the other side of the wall there was more commotion, people shouting and chairs clattering. A second male voice spoke. “Clear the door,” and then something heavy and solid hit the wall. It shook, and white chips clattered to the ground. Gideon flinched.

“Please,” said Harrow, reaching out and grabbing Gideon’s hand. Her skin was cold. “We need to leave. They’ll kill us if we stay.”

“Okay- okay,” Gideon said, forcing herself to focus. The door to the bathroom was on the other side of the wall, but a tiny ventilation window was set high above the sink. Gideon pointed at it.

“There.”

She wasn’t sure if Harrow would even be able to move, but Harrow just nodded and dragged herself to her feet. Blood gushed from her stomach at the movement, hitting the floor wetly. Gideon gritted her teeth.

“Help me,” Harrow ordered. Gideon obediently put her hands together and crouched down, and with some difficulty Harrow stepped up onto them. She weighed practically nothing. Gideon hoisted her up until Harrow’s armpits were level with the window, and did her best to stay still as Harrow fumbled with the latch. Then the window swung open and Harrow tipped herself forward, folding gracelessly out of the window and disappearing. Gideon followed after her, stepping onto the sink and pulling herself up. It was a tight squeeze around her shoulders, but she wriggled through, dropping down to the other side and almost crushing Harrow.

“I thought you would’ve moved,” Gideon said by way of apology, and received a glare that she was already getting used to.

They were at the back of the bar, between a dented dumpster and a metal door that presumably led to the kitchens. Gideon crept forward and stuck her head around the dumpster to get a look at the parking lot.

It was chaos. People had run out of the bar at the sound of the gunshot, some fighting through the crowd to get to their cars while the rest mingled around uncertainly. Already a crowd of rubberneckers was gathering, staring curiously from a safe distance. Gideon could just barely see her car, tucked behind a large camper van.

“I don’t think we can get to my car without them seeing us,” she whispered. Harrow frowned.

“I can distract them for a moment, and we can run.”

“What? They’ll shoot you. Again.”

“They won’t.”

Harrow wasn’t making any sense, and Gideon crouched down, trying to force her adrenaline-flooded brain to think. Harrow made an impatient noise. “I am going to distract them now. Run when I say.”

“Wait-”

But Harrow was already stepping forward, putting one hand on the dumpster. As soon as her hand touched the metal something inside it began shaking. The shaking grew more vigorous, and then the lid popped open, revealing a monster. That was the only way Gideon could define it. It was almost the shape of a human skeleton, but not- the bones were thin and birdlike, and it was covered in scraps of meat and oil and unidentifiable rotting trash.

“Oh my god! Holy fuck!” Gideon grabbed Harrow under the arms and yanked her backward, dragging them both away from the horrible thing as it began to move. It mechanically swung one leg and then another out of the dumpster and dropped to the ground.

“Let go of me, you absolute moron. That’s the distraction,” Harrow snapped, squirming in Gideon’s grip. Their balance tipped, and Gideon dragged them both down as she fell on her ass. This was the end, then. Gideon decided she would have preferred being shot by some fake cop rather than eaten by a chicken-skeleton-monster.

“Let go!” Harrow repeated, shriller. “Listen to what I’m saying. You can freak out about this later. I made that-” Harrow pointed at the skeleton-thing- “as a distraction. Ignore it for now and focus on getting us to the car.”

“Ignore it?” Gideon demanded, but Harrow had already turned her attention back to the skeleton. It turned away from them, its motions smooth and mechanical, and began to lumber toward the parking lot. Instantly there were screams and the sounds of scrambling feet. Gideon figured that was warranted.

“Now,” Harrow said, “We have to run.”

Gideon dragged herself and Harrow to their feet and began to stumble forward in a daze. They emerged from behind the bar, but nobody was paying them any attention- the skeleton was near the front door now. There were more shrieks, and the sound of a gunshot.

They were only a dozen feet from the car when Harrow collapsed, her feet giving out under her, and Gideon only barely managed to catch her before she fell face-first into the pavement.

“Harrow?”

Harrow was limp in her arms, almost dead weight. Her nose was bleeding again, and the red patch on the hoodie had spread all the way down to her thighs. “M’fine,” Harrow mumbled, trying to get her feet back underneath her and failing. Gideon swore.

There was another gunshot, somewhere behind them. Gideon grabbed Harrow’s arm and swung it around her shoulders, and half-walked half-dragged her the remaining distance to the car. It took Gideon four tries to get the keys into the keyhole, and when she finally swung the passenger door open she deposited Harrow unceremoniously in the seat. She clambered over into the driver’s seat and started the car, peeling out of the parking lot. There were other people trying to leave too, driving at terrified erratic speeds, and Gideon had to swerve onto the sidewalk at one point to get around a car full of teens. Then they were back on the highway, and Gideon’s entire body was wracked with full-body shakes.

“What the fuck is happening,” she said, but there was no reply from Harrow, barely conscious in the passenger seat. Gideon choked out a half-sob. An ambulance and two cop cars blew past them, back the way they came, followed by another two unmarked black vans.

“Harrow,” Gideon reached over and shook her shoulder, too panicked to be gentle. Harrow flopped pitifully under her hand, no resistance to her. Gideon’s ears were still ringing. “Don’t you dare fucking die without telling me what’s going on.”

Harrow made a tiny cut-off whimper. She moved, slowly and with great effort, to lift a hand over the bullet wound. “I’ll be fine,” she mumbled. “Just give me some time.”

“You aren’t going to be fucking fine,” Gideon half-shouted, “you’re going to die! You got shot! I need to take us to a hospital-”

“No,” Harrow cut her off. “They’ll find us. Just keep driving. I can fix it, but we need to get away from here.”

After a moment, Harrow added, “I’m sorry.”

Gideon took a breath. The shakes hadn’t stopped. “Okay,” she said, when she was sure she could speak without screaming. “I’m going to drive, but if you die in my passenger seat, I’m going to be so fucking PO’d.”

“They’re going to be looking for us, but they likely don’t know which car we took. Stay on the highway and don’t do anything suspicious.”

“You’re pretty bossy for a dying person,” Gideon muttered, but kept driving. She didn’t feel there was much else she could do. She navigated the hatchback through a flow of light late-night traffic, enough that she didn’t feel like they completely stood out on the road, but sparse enough that they made good time. After a few minutes a helicopter whirred by in the dark, and Gideon stiffened, ready for a bullhorn or a siren or maybe for some cartoon net to drop down and scoop the car up. But there was nothing, and then the buzzing receded into the night.

After about forty minutes Gideon dared to slow down at a Scenic Lookout Ahead sign, pulling off and killing her headlights as they crunched onto the gravel offramp. She kept driving until they were out of view of the highway, on the edge of an empty parking lot with a few benches and a low stone wall overlooking nothing but pitch-black pine forests.

Gideon stumbled out of the car and made it about three steps before doubling over and vomiting. She stayed crouched, retching into the scraggly grass until she was relatively confident her stomach was empty, then wiped her hand on her sleeve and forced herself to walk around to the passenger side and open the door.

In the grey-darkness of the night she could just make out where Harrow was slumped in the seat, head lolled to one side, the tendons of her neck stretched in a way that looked painful. Her entire front, from the neck of the hoodie to her knees, was stained red. She didn’t move as Gideon reached a shaking hand out to her throat, slotting her fingers under Harrow’s jaw to feel for a pulse.

Her skin was still cold. It took Gideon a moment to calm down enough to focus, but when she did she could feel a shallow thumping under her fingers. She let out a relieved sob.

“You’re still not dead.”

Harrow moved her head minutely, her eyelids fluttering but not opening. “I told you I wasn’t dying,” she rasped.

“Don’t jinx it, because you look most of the way there.”

“I need you to pull the bullet out.”

At this Gideon actually did gag, which she had been doing a remarkably good job at not doing so far. She composed herself and turned back to Harrow. “No way in hell! I’m not a doctor, I’ll fuck up your guts.”

“My guts are already fucked.” Harrow was already beginning to pull the hoodie off with great effort, immediately getting stuck with her head inside the sopping bloody mess. Gideon took pity on her and reached over to pull it the rest of the way off. The fabric was heavy with blood.

Without the hoodie the damage was more obvious. The bullet wound was just above Harrow’s right hip, where already a mess of scabbing blood and fabric had started to crust.

“Oh my god,” Gideon said, and threw up next to the car again.

Harrow waited impatiently for her to finish.

When Gideon finally straightened up her face was flushed from both the vomiting and shame. Harrow was the one who had been shot, and she was the one being a big baby about it.

“Okay,” she said, “I’ll help. I need something to get it out with.”

“It’s not deep.” Harrow, to Gideon’s horror, poked the hole, causing a trickle of blood to run from it. “The wall blocked most of its speed. Do you have tweezers?”

“Probably somewhere,” Gideon said. She turned her phone flashlight on and pulled open the back door of the car, stopping a minor avalanche of stuff from falling out with her hip. It took several minutes of digging, but eventually Gideon found a battered toiletries bag that may have once been Ianthe’s. Inside were makeup wipes and a pair of tweezers. Gideon also grabbed a water bottle and, after several more minutes of digging, the travel first aid kit her Dad had insisted she keep in the trunk. She placed her supplies carefully on the gravel next to Harrow, who had returned to slumping half-conscious in the passenger seat.

“Okay, ready,” Gideon said, snapping her fingers in front of Harrow’s face. Harrow startled, glared, and shuffled around so that she was sitting sideways in the seat, facing Gideon.

“I think it’s still in one piece.”

Gideon swallowed, her mouth full of bile. “Okay.”

She knelt on the gravel in between Harrow’s knees, ignoring the sting of the rocks. She wiped away as much blood as she could from Harrow’s hip, although it just kept oozing slowly out of the bullet wound. Eventually she gave up and focused on positioning her phone flashlight in one hand and the tweezers in the other. As the tweezers touched the edge of the opening Harrow made a tiny hissing sound that she quickly bit off. When Gideon pushed the tweezers deeper, Harrow remained silent.

Gideon couldn’t see the bullet from the outside, so was left feeling around blindly with the metal tips inside Harrow’s stomach. It didn’t take long for her to find it- a hard, unnatural edge contrasting against the meaty give of flesh- but it took several tries for Gideon to get a grip on it while everything was slippery with blood. She teased the misshapen metal pellet out of the hole, moving in tiny nudges, horrified of pressing it in further. When it finally emerged in a gush of blood and plopped to the footwell, Harrow’s only reaction was a shaky exhale. Gideon hadn’t even noticed her holding her breath.

Gideon mirrored her exhale and sat back on her heels for a moment before reaching back in and pouring water over the wound, following up with disinfectant wipes. Harrow batted at her hands weakly, but said nothing, and so Gideon continued patting the wound dry. It seemed already less ragged and open than it had a few minutes ago, and the flow of blood was finally stemming. Gideon finished by taping a large patch of gauze over Harrow’s entire hip, and then finally sat back, looking up at Harrow’s face.

Harrow’s face was bloody, but not from any visible wound- every pore across her forehead and nose was beaded with individual droplets of blood.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Gideon demanded, trying very hard not to throw up again.

“Blood sweat,” Harrow replied, as if that explained anything. “I’ve stopped the bleeding for now. It will take me time to repair it.”

“Alright, time to tell me what the hell is going on,” Gideon said, rising back to her feet. “What do you mean you’ve stopped the bleeding? Who the fuck are those guys chasing you- and what the fuck was that thing that came out of the dumpster?”

Harrow closed her eyes. She suddenly looked very tired, and very young. She had to be younger than Gideon, but the dark bruises under her eyes seemed permanent on her narrow face.

“I’m a necromancer.”

Chapter 3

3

“I’m a necromancer.”

The statement was so absurd that Gideon barked out a laugh. Harrow just blinked at her, and Gideon trailed off, sobering. “A necromancer. Like, the-” Gideon wiggled her fingers- “summoning demons kind?”

“What? No.” Harrow looked somewhat offended at the insinuation. “I have the ability to control dead human or animal matter, as well as living matter to a limited extent.”

Gideon’s mind was spinning back to anything she’d ever heard about necromancers, but almost all of it was horror-movie shlock. She decided on one of the least insane questions she could think of. “Do you make summoning circles?”

“I use blood wards, which…” Harrow wrinkled her nose and waved Gideon’s question away with her hand, deciding to answer the question she thought Gideon should have asked instead. “Most necromantic theorems only require organic matter- bones, meat, blood.”

“Do you work for the devil? Is there a devil?”

Harrow sighed, and stared out at the darkness for a long moment. “No. Obviously not. Please at least pretend you were listening to me.”

“I’m listening, but none of this makes sense.” Gideon began to pace back and forth beside the car, her sneakers crunching in the gravel. It felt absurd that she was even considering accepting what Harrow was saying. Necromancy was the area of fairy tales and horror movies, but Gideon couldn’t deny the things she had seen over the past few hours- the chicken monster, the wall of bone, the healing bullet wound. Even allowing for that, though, nothing made sense. “Who are you and why are there a bunch of cops chasing you?”

Harrow curled up on the seat, arms wrapping around her blood-stained, sweatpant-clad knees. Her next words came out in a choppy rush, as if she were determined to get through them all in one go. “I am from a research facility run by a private bioengineering contractor. I was born there as part of a project to breed necromancers. Shortly before we met, something happened- I’m not sure of all the details, but I believe a third party broke into the facility intending to either destroy it, or free the necromancers living there, possibly both. In the chaos, I escaped.”

“So you’re on the run.”

“Yes. The First House- the bioengineering contractor- will want me back, as will the government. They believe I am too dangerous to be allowed to walk freely.”

“I mean, you are dangerous,” Gideon said, and then immediately felt like an asshole. Harrow simply blinked at her.

“Yes. I am.”

“Okay, but,” Gideon desperately tried to prioritize what to ask next, “why? Why was the government… breeding necromancers?”

“Multiple reasons. Some were used in military applications. Some for medical experimentation to see what human body parts could be regenerated or healed. The majority were used for gene splicing and the development of necromantic labour.”

“Necromantic labour?”

“Skeleton workers. Cheaper than robots. This was my specialty.”

“Okay,” Gideon said, “you said there were multiple… necromancers? What happened to the rest of them?”

Harrow shifted uncomfortably. Being curled up like that had to be putting pressure on her wound, but she didn’t lower her knees. “Some were still there when I left. I assume that some others may have escaped when I did. There weren’t many of us. There was an incident a few years back, where a similar event occurred. Many of the necromancers at this facility escaped during that time, but I was not among them.”

Gideon was still pacing. Her hands were still shaking, and her head still hurt, and none of this information was helping. “So when you said you were trying to find others, you were talking about the people that escaped earlier.”

“Yes.”

“You know where they are?”

“No. I know of someone who can take me to them.”

“Who?”

“She’s called the Angel,” Harrow said, and had the audacity to roll her eyes as if that was the only ridiculous thing she’d said so far.

“Is she…” Gideon stopped pacing and stared at her. “Is she an actual angel?”

“No. She’s just a non-necromancer who works with necromancers. Stop thinking that this has anything to do with demons or angels or hell.”

“Can you really blame me?” Gideon demanded. “So, where is she?”

“About four hours east of here.”

Gideon sighed, deflated. “Okay, that’s not too bad.”

Harrowhark nodded primly, as if they had come to the end of the conversation. “I will be able to get there after some rest. I appreciate all of your assistance in getting this far.” Gideon gaped at her as Harrow stood on shaky legs and began walking away from the car.

“Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” Gideon demanded.

“I’m going to find a location to recover, and then make my way to the Angel,” Harrow said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“What, you’re going to pass out in the forest and then walk?”

“Yes.”

“Oh my god, Harrow.” Gideon dragged both her hands down her face. “You got shot.”

“It’s already healing.”

“I’m not letting you do this. Get back in the car.”

Harrow stopped in her tracks and glared at Gideon. “Why exactly would you want me back in the car? They’re likely already trying to track your vehicle down, and having me with you is putting you in incredible danger.”

“I think I was already in incredible danger when that guy shot at us,” Gideon countered. “But seriously, you can’t. You’re just going to get caught, or fall off a cliff, or get eaten by a bear.”

“I can,” Harrow said, even as she wobbled on her feet. It looked like it was taking all of her willpower just to stay upright. Gideon sighed.

“Please get back in the car, Harrow.”

“Why are you doing this? I refuse to continue to endanger you like this.”

It was Gideon’s turn to glare at her. “And I refuse to let you walk off to your death!”

“That’s not-” Harrow said, and then buckled to the ground.

Gideon lunged and barely managed to catch Harrow’s head before it impacted the gravel. She slowly lowered them both to the ground, cradling a limp Harrow in her arms. Gideon managed to stay silent for several whole seconds before saying, “Okay, I think I win.”

Harrow glared up at her, the effect of which was significantly dampened by the fact she was draped across Gideon’s knees. “If you insist on this, at least throw your phone away. They’ll be tracking it.”

Gideon placed her gently on the ground, fished her phone out of her pocket, and pitched it into the darkness.

“That work?”

“I suppose.”

“Can I put you back in the car?”

“Alright.”

Gideon lifted Harrow as gently as she could and transferred her back to the passenger seat. By the time she circled the car to get into the driver’s seat, Harrow was already asleep, her chin pressed to her chest and breathing softly.

Gideon rolled her window down to allow the crisp night air to keep her awake as she got back on the highway. The road was mostly empty this late, with little to interrupt the endless pine except for the occasional billboards advertising hotels and fast food chains. Hours passed before Harrow stirred, and when she finally did she woke with a start, gasping.

“Hey, all good,” Gideon said, trying to modulate her voice into something comforting. “We still have a while to go.”

Harrow relaxed into her seat after a moment, glancing over at Gideon. “Was there trouble?”

“Nah. It’s been quiet.”

Harrow nodded, seemingly satisfied. They lapsed into silence for another moment. Finally, Gideon said, “I was thinking, I know tonight has been horrible, but at least it was a distraction. I think I’m feeling less stressed than when I started out this morning.”

“Then you’re an idiot,” Harrow said flatly. “You are almost certainly in more danger than you have ever experienced.”

“I mean, yeah, for sure,” Gideon allowed. “But this morning I was all stressed about, y’know, my ex, and how disappointed my Dad’s going to be- it seemed like this huge deal. But compared to necromancers existing and the government trying to kill me it doesn’t seem so bad, you know?”

Harrow responded with a quiet hmm, studying Gideon’s face. Feeling inspected, Gideon admitted, “I kind of left on bad terms. He wanted me to come work with him, but... I think he’s always been kind of disappointed that I was never smart the way he is. But that’s okay, you know, I’ve always been good at my own thing.” Gideon’s eyes were starting to burn from exhaustion, or maybe unfallen tears. “And I actually met my ex because she worked for my dad, and then we had to move out west because she was transferring labs. So I left all my friends and everything I knew for her. She’s really smart too, but just used it to be a bitch in smart ways, you know? So it took me way too long to leave.”

There was silence again, and Gideon tried to subtly wipe her eyes with her sleeves. It seemed stupid to cry over this, of all things, especially after everything that had happened in the past few hours. Gideon blamed it on the exhaustion.

Harrow said, quietly, “It also took me too long to leave.”

Gideon glanced at her, then back at the road, unsure what to say. Harrow continued, “The first time some of us escaped, I could have left also. But I didn’t. I had a sense of… misplaced loyalty.”

Gideon smiled. “Guess we’re both kind of dumbasses, huh?”

“No, you’re the only dumbass.”

Gideon laughed, and continued driving.

Her eyes were starting to involuntarily droop by the time they reached the city. The first sight of it was nothing but suburbs, the outer sprawl of an expanding population. Gideon instantly missed having her phone to navigate, but managed to to find her way to a cheap motel on the edge of a strip mall. She made Harrow change into a different hoodie before they got out of the car.

“You’ll be accused of murdering someone,” Gideon insisted.

It barely mattered because Harrow insisted on wrapping herself in her dusty, damp cloak anyway. Thankfully the middle aged woman at the front desk barely glanced at them as Gideon paid for a room in cash.

The hotel room was simple in that copy-paste way that most cheap hotels were. Two twin beds, an aging tv on the wall, a chair awkwardly placed in the corner more to fill the space than to be of use. Gideon instantly flopped down on the closer bed, burrowing her face in the sheets and only belatedly worrying about how clean they were. Whatever.

“I’m passing out for a few hours,” she told Harrow. “Don’t start bleeding again.”

“I have no intention to,” Harrow replied, and then Gideon was out.

She woke up disoriented and achy to a cold finger jabbing her in the ribs. Harrow was looming over her, not far from where she had been standing several hours ago.

“What,” Gideon croaked.

“It’s morning.”

“Harrow, we got here at like 3am. Let me sleep.”

“Time is of the essence,” Harrow insisted, jabbing Gideon in the ribs again. Gideon let out a long, pitiful groan and sat up, scrubbing her eyes with the heels of her hands. The clock on the bedside announced it was just past six, which meant that she had only been asleep for three hours. Gideon groaned louder and then looked past the clock to the other bed, which was still neatly made.

“Did you sleep at all?”

“No,” Harrow replied matter-of-factly. “Let’s go.”

“Listen, not to be an ass, but you should really take a shower.”

Harrow just blinked at her. “I don’t want to.”

“Dude, you have blood in your hair. If we go anywhere with you looking like that it’s going to draw attention.”

Harrow scowled, but relented. “Fine.” She disappeared into the bathroom, and Gideon took the opportunity to walk out to her car. There was a part of Gideon that was expecting to be rushed by a crowd of men in black suits, but there was nothing but a mostly-empty parking lot and the sound of cars rushing by. She dug two fresh sets of clothes and her toothbrush out of the trunk, for once she was thankful that her job at the gym had resulted in a mountain of free t-shirts and sweatpants. Both of their outfits from yesterday were unsalvageable.

She returned to the room and knocked on the bathroom door. “I’m leaving a change of clothes on the counter,” she called. There was no response. Gideon waited for a moment. “Harrow?”

When there was still no response, she tentatively pushed the door open.

The shower was running, but Harrow was crouched, knees to armpits, beside the tub. She was still fully clothed in the blood-caked clothes from yesterday, and was cupping her hands under the water, taking one tiny handful at a time and patting it into her skin until it was damp. Gideon stared for a moment.

“What?” Harrow demanded. “You can leave the clothes.”

“Harrow, this isn’t showering.”

Harrow glanced up at the shower, then back at her. “I don’t like submerging myself in water.”

“Okay, but…” Gideon paused, not sure the right way to go about this. It’s not like Harrow was a child who she felt comfortable bossing around, but at the same time, she couldn’t allow whatever this was to continue. “Here.” Gideon grabbed a washcloth off of the towel rack and passed it to her. “Strip down and wipe yourself with this. It’s easier.”

Harrow took the cloth, inspected it- Gideon was learning that she did this with almost any item given to her- and then wet it under the water. Gideon hovered awkwardly until Harrow turned back to her. “Leave so that I can disrobe.”

“Yeah, okay. Here’s fresh clothes.” Gideon set them on the sink and left. Then she stood in the middle of the room for a moment, unsure of what to do, and decided on pushups. She didn’t stop until Harrow reappeared to loom over her.

“I have showered. Can we go now?”

Gideon flipped onto her back and peered up at her. She was wearing one of Gideon’s t-shirts that read Practice Safe Sets. The short sleeves almost reached her elbows, revealing wrists that were even bonier than Gideon had imagined. Her ear piercings were no longer empty, but speared through with tiny bones that Gideon realized after a moment were chicken wings. At least they looked clean.

“Let me get cleaned up,” Gideon said, blinking to stop herself from staring. Harrow sighed as if incredibly inconvenienced by this, but stepped back to allow Gideon space to stand up.

In the bathroom Gideon found Harrow’s robe drying on the shower rod, dripping and dusty and disgusting. Gideon avoided touching it as she rushed through showering and brushing her teeth. She dressed in her own track pants and t-shirt- plain, although she would never admit to giving Harrow the one with the slogan on purpose. As a show of kindness Gideon wrung out the disgusting robe before carrying it out to the bedroom. Harrow was standing impatiently by the bed, wearing the hoodie that Gideon had been planning on using. Gideon said nothing: it was better than the robe.

Gideon wrapped their bloody clothes from yesterday in a trash bag and led the way back to the car, where she stuffed the bag deep into the recesses of her trunk. She tried to ignore how gross that was.

“Okay,” she said, straightening up. “Where are we actually going?”

“We need to meet with the Angel.” Harrow had already perched herself in the passenger seat, hands folded neatly on her lap.

“Yeah, I got that. Do you know where she lives?”

“No.”

“Okay, well, I’m gonna need a little more information.”

“She works as a caretaker for exotic animals.”

“...do you mean a zookeeper?”

Chapter 4

4

Gideon pulled into a convenience store to get a coffee and some protein bars, and the cashier was willing enough to pull up directions to the zoo on his phone. Gideon returned to the car and passed a protein bar to Harrow, who immediately squirreled it away in her pocket, and Gideon took them on an only-slightly-meandering route to the local zoo.

It was morning on a weekday and the parking lot was only a quarter full, mostly young families with children on summer break. Gideon led the way through the entrance, Harrow trailing close behind her.

“There are a lot of people here,” Harrow commented, the first thing she’d said since they started driving.

“Yeah.” Gideon was suddenly very aware that Harrow had grown up in some kind of lab, likely far away from crowds of screaming children. “Is that… okay? You can wait in the car if you want.”

“It’s fine,” Harrow said simply, but she remained glued to Gideon’s side as they made their way along the asphalt paths. Gideon stopped them in front of the first uncrowded exhibit she saw, where a pair of red pandas were climbing along a diagonal branch. Several more slept curled into fluffy circles on a bed of grass. Harrow pressed her face close to the glass and stared at them in silence, her eyes tracking as one of them dropped down from the branch and lumbered to a water dish.

Gideon said, “I guess you’ve probably never seen most of these animals before,” and Harrow jumped and turned to glare at her as if caught doing something she shouldn’t have. Gideon raised her hands in a peace offering. “We can look around a little, if you want.”

“The longer we spend here, the more danger we’re in. We need to find out where the Angel is. How large is this facility?”

“Pretty large,” Gideon admitted. “But we can look for staff buildings, I guess? Do you know her real name, because I don’t want to be asking random people if they’ve seen an angel.”

“The Angel,” Harrow corrected automatically. “And no, but I’ll be able to sense if we are near her.”

“...how?”

“She has a necromantic implant that outputs thanergy at a constant rate. It will be imperceptible to you, but obvious to any necromancer in her vicinity.”

That was pure gibberish to Gideon, so she simply said, “guess we try to stand close to some zookeepers then. Let’s go look at the tigers.”

They go look at the tigers. Then the rhinos, tapirs, and gibbons. Gideon watched Harrow closely as she moved from exhibit to exhibit, inspecting each animal silently and with intense focus. They avoided anywhere with crowds, although the one time a child bumped into Harrow she made such a horrified face that his mother quickly came and guided him away. Eventually Gideon led them to a concession stand and bought them both hot dogs, then sat them at a picnic table with a view of the flamingoes.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been to the zoo,” Gideon commented between bites of hot dog. “The last time was probably when I was a kid. I used to get annoyed because my Dad would always have trivia about everything. Sometimes you just want to look at an elephant, you know?”

Harrow just blinked at her. She was flaking off tiny bits of hot dog bun and nibbling at them, ignoring the meat entirely. Gideon was reminded of how completely different their lives must have been, and felt suddenly embarrassed for the question. She amended, “What did you do at the research place? When you had free time, or when you were a kid?”

“I read,” Harrow replied. “They had a library that we were permitted to access.”

They watched the flamingoes in silence for a few moments, and then Harrow continued, “I wanted to be prepared for when I left the facility, to have enough knowledge to move through the world. I interviewed the staff when I could and took notes on what their lives were like outside of work.” She huffed a bitter laugh. “It didn’t work. I am woefully unprepared. For one, I completely underestimated how… large the space out here would be. I don’t even have the tools to travel efficiently without your help.”

Gideon swallowed the last of her hot dog. “The world’s big,” she agreed. That got her an eyeroll, although there was something different about Harrow’s face. There was a pink flush across the bridge of her nose and the top of her cheeks. “...are you blushing?”

Harrow reached up and touched her own cheek gingerly, then grimaced and pulled her hand away. “No. I haven’t had much reason to spend time in the sun before now.”

“Oh my god, you’re sunburned,” Gideon laughed. “From just walking around for a couple hours.” Harrow glared back at her, although the effect was lessened by the rosiness of her cheeks. The color made the angular planes of her face seem softer somehow.

“Enough of this,” Harrow snapped. “We need to get back to searching for the Angel.”

Gideon was still laughing as they walked to the next exhibit.

They wandered until Gideon began to get bored of the animals. Most of them were asleep, and she felt like she was spending most of her time guiding Harrow away from increasingly thick crowds of children and buggies. She was just about to suggest that they call it a day when Harrow froze, every muscle in her body going stiff. “There,” she breathed.

Gideon whipped around. “Where?”

Harrow was already hurrying forward, and Gideon trailed behind her as Harrow walked toward the penguin exhibit. There was a zookeeper inside the enclosure, tossing out fish for a jostling crowd of penguins. The windows were crowded with families pressing close to watch the penguins throw their heads back and choke the fish down their gullets. Harrow began to push through the crowd, and Gideon hurried after her, grimacing out apologies to the angry parents who Harrow barged past. Then they were directly against the glass, and Harrow pressed both her hands against it, staring intently at the zookeeper inside.

The zookeeper was a middle aged woman with curly grey hair and a cheerful, round face. She was lifting a fish out of a bucket to toss to the crowd of penguins, but suddenly paused. The dead fish she was holding began to wriggle, and then leapt from her hands to flop to the ground, where the nearest penguin lunged forward and gobbled it up. The zookeeper blinked at where the fish had fallen, then stared up toward the glass window. She looked directly at Harrow, who met her eyes in return. The zookeeper blinked, and then turned her attention back to the penguins.

“What was that?” Gideon hissed, watching over Harrow’s shoulder. It wasn’t hard- her shoulders were very small.

“I momentarily reanimated the herring,” Harrow whispered, as if it was obvious. “She knows that there is a necromancer in her vicinity now.” She stepped back from the glass. “Come, we should find the exit to this exhibit and wait for her.”

Mildly unnerved, Gideon followed Harrow as she led the way back through the throng of penguin-watchers. They looped around the side of the enclosure, to where a gate reading Staff Only blocked the rear of the exhibit from view. Harrow went to unlatch it before Gideon caught her hand.

“We can wait here.”

Harrow looked at her skeptically, but shoved her hands into her hoodie pockets and stepped back. Gideon noted that the tips of her ears were also pink and flaky, and made a mental note to dig some sunscreen out when they got back to her car.

After a few long minutes the staff gate opened, and the grey-haired woman stepped out. Close up Gideon could see a smattering of freckles across her cheeks, and she stank horribly of dead fish.

“Why don’t you follow me?” She suggested conversationally, and Harrow nodded.

They followed her back through the gate she had exited from, through narrow staff walkways to a squat building. She led them inside, past a break room with a few staff drinking coffee, to a small office at the back. She closed the door behind them and walked behind a desk stacked high with folders and charts. She gestured at a pair of worn looking chairs. “Please, sit.”

Gideon sat, while Harrow remained standing. From her new vantage point Gideon was only slightly shorter than her.

“You are…?” Harrow asked, trailing off intentionally. The woman cocked an eyebrow at her, but when it became clear Harrow wasn’t continuing, she nodded.

“Yes, I sometimes go by The Angel. You can call me Aim.” Aim said this as she climbed onto the chair behind the desk and reached up to the ceiling. She pushed a panel to the side, showering the room in a scattering of dust. Gideon coughed. Aim pulled down a small metal lockbox from the ceiling, setting it on the desk before reaching back up and replacing the panel. “I was hoping I would be seeing you soon.”

“You were aware we were coming?” Harrow asked sharply.

“I heard that there was an escapee,” Aim clarified, “and I was hoping you would make your way here. There’s also been greater activity of First House agents in the area.” Aim pulled a crowded keyring from her pocket and unlocked the metal box. Gideon had kind of been hoping it would be something cool, like guns or cash, but inside was just a thick stack of papers. Aim paused, then looked at Gideon. “I had only heard of one escapee,” she said, the question implied in her pause.

“She isn’t a necromancer,” Harrow clarified. She turned to Gideon and waved her hand. “You can leave now, Gideon.”

Gideon felt a weird pang of hurt at how nonchalantly Harrow dismissed her, but was halfway through standing when Aim shook her head. “Better not. I’m pretty sure they’ve got an idea of which car you’ve been using.”

“Shit,” Gideon said, “Really? Then I’ve got to go, all my stuff is in there.”

Aim shook her head again. “It’s not safe. Better to leave it for now.”

“I can’t leave it,” Gideon insisted, trying to get her to understand. “Literally everything I own is in there.”

Aim gave her a pitying look, which only annoyed Gideon further. “Returning to it now would be as good as confirming that you are who they think you are,” Aim said, reaching over the desk to pat Gideon’s arm. “But not to worry. We’ll figure out your next steps.”

Gideon sank back down in her chair, her gut twisting. The Angel began leafing through papers in the metal box, pulling one out and sliding it across the desk toward them. Harrow snatched it up before Gideon could, and Gideon shamelessly craned her neck to look. It was a page of printed out GPS instructions to somewhere across the city. The address meant nothing to Gideon, although it looked like a residential area. Harrow studied the page intensely, and Gideon had the sense that she was committing it to memory.

“That’s where you’re going next,” Aim said. “Do you have money? You shouldn’t use cards.”

“Not that much,” Gideon admitted. Most of her cash had gone to the hotel room the night before. Aim pulled out her wallet and handed Gideon two twenties. Gideon took them graciously and tried not to look underwhelmed.

Aim checked her watch, and nodded. “There’s a bus that’ll be arriving by the north entrance in twelve. If you take that you should be able to get there in under an hour.”

“Hang on,” Gideon said, “that’s it? We found you just to get bus directions?”

Aim smiled. “That’s it, I’m afraid. My main purpose is just to be recognizable to you,” she gestured at Harrow, and Gideon understood that she was avoiding the word necromancers, “and to point you in the right direction. There are others who are better equipped to do much more than that.”

There was an awkward pause where neither Harrow or Gideon said anything, and Aim stood. “You should get going,” she prompted.

“Thank you,” said Gideon, because one of them had to say something and Harrow was already turning to walk out the door. Aim nodded.

“Be careful, and good luck.”

Gideon guided them toward the exit. Harrow was noticeably walking slower, and when Gideon glanced back her teeth were gritted. “You okay?”

Harrow nodded tightly. “It’s not entirely healed,” she admitted, gesturing toward her gut. Gideon had somehow almost forgotten that she had been shot yesterday. It still felt unreal, like she had spent a day in a world where walking skeletons existed and people were shot in front of her, and then woke up the next day back in the real world.

“Want me to carry you?” She offered.

“Absolutely not,” said Harrow.

Gideon slowed her pace to match Harrow’s pained shuffle, and they limped their way to the bus loop. They barely made it on time, but once they were seated on the bus Harrow seemed relieved. She curled in on herself and made it clear she didn’t want to talk, so Gideon spent the majority of the ride staring out the window and mourning her hatchback.

The bus dropped them in an older suburban neighbourhood, the houses an eclectic mix of century homes and new renovations. It was a short walk to the address they were directed to, which turned out to be an older but recently-painted single story home with tall hedges blocking most of the view from the street. They both paused on the sidewalk.

“Do they know we’re coming?” Gideon asked.

“I’m not sure,” Harrow said, glancing back at the directions in her hands to confirm. Mind seemingly made up, she began walking down the brick walkway leading up to the front door. She moved stiffly and purposefully in a way that made it only slightly less obvious she was in incredible pain. Gideon rushed behind.

Harrow knocked, ignoring the doorbell. Almost instantly, a woman’s voice called, “coming!”, although there was another long moment before the door finally opened.

A familiar figure filled the doorway, long blond hair tumbling over her shoulders, dressed in shorts and an off-the-shoulder top in a way that would have looked lazy on Gideon but looked straight out of an athleisure ad on her. She looked at Harrow, and then at Gideon, and then her eyes went round.

“Gideon?”

“Corona?”

“Don’t call me that! Hold on, don’t say anything, come inside.” Coronabeth stepped back and ushered them in. Harrow glanced between her and Gideon nervously before stepping forward.

They stood in an impeccably decorated entryway, with a table by the door covered in cute ceramic key dishes and an entrance mat in tones of white and gold. The instant she shut the door, Coronabeth rounded on Gideon. “My darling, it’s good to see you, but what the hell are you doing here?”

“Don’t answer that,” Harrow snapped, before Gideon could speak. “Who do you work with and how do you know each other?”

Coronabeth’s eyes were still flicking between the two of them, confusion clear on her gorgeous face. “Please call me Crown,” she said carefully, “I’m a friend of the Angel.”

Harrow relaxed, only slightly. “Then how do you know Gideon?”

Coronabeth laughed. “She’s my beloved twin’s embittered ex girlfriend, of course. I’ve been getting a lot of very long, angry phone calls about you,” she added to Gideon.

“Good to see you again,” Gideon said, feeling flat-footed in the way she always did around Corona. They had only met a handful of times, mostly at extremely fancy Tridentarius family dinners back east, where Gideon spent most of her focus trying not to make a fool of herself by daring to cut her asparagus wrong.

“This is entirely against protocol,” Coronabeth said, and she looked quite cheerful about it. “Please, come sit down. Want some tea? I left out some bites in case you’re hungry, considering the Angel probably only offered you kibble.”

Gideon looked at Harrow, who nodded slightly, and the two of them followed her deeper into the house. It looked exactly as Gideon had imagined Coronabeth’s house would: tastefully decorated in a way that could have been gaudy if not so carefully curated. Art crowded the walls, and lamps with strategic bulb temperatures lit the room invitingly. The couches were white, which already made Gideon nervous about eating on them. A plate of cookies and geometrically cut sandwiches sat on the coffee table.

As soon as Corona was out of the room, Harrow leaned in to her. “You never mentioned that you know her,” she hissed.

“I had no idea she was part of all this stuff,” Gideon said, raising her hands defensively. “I just knew her as my girlfriend’s hot sister. They had some kind of falling out a couple years ago and haven’t seen each other since.”

Harrow’s eyes were still narrowed, but she lowered herself carefully onto the immaculate couch. Gideon immediately followed and scooped up the nearest sandwich.

Corona came back into the room carrying two cups of tea and asked Gideon, “do you know how to shoot a gun?”

Gideon nearly choked on her delicately buttered cucumber sandwich. “Uh. I’ve shot at a range before.”

“That’ll do,” Corona said, placing the teacups in front of each of them and then settling into the loveseat on the other side of the table. “Before I catch you both up to speed… Gideon, are you still in contact with my sister?”

“Fuck no,” Gideon said.

“Has she tried to get in contact with you?”

“I don’t know. I threw my phone into the forest.” Gideon paused, and then, “Are you a necromancer?”

Corona threw her head back and laughed, and Gideon watched somewhat entranced as her shoulders shook. When she calmed, she folded her hands on her lap in a lets-get-down-to-business motion. “No,” Corona said, “I’m going to be getting you both the supplies you need to make the rest of the journey.”

“Where are you expecting us to go?” Harrow asked. She hadn’t touched the snacks or the tea, and was perched on the very edge of the couch as if ready to leap up at any moment. More cucumber sandwiches for Gideon.

“That’s partly up to you,” Corona said, and Gideon got the sense that she was choosing her words very carefully. “If you completely swear off doing necromancy ever again, and consent to being surveilled for a set period of time, I can direct you somewhere that you can live peacefully and nobody will find you.” She paused, but Harrow remained still. “If you are interested in continuing necromancy research on your own terms, and in assisting in exposing the government’s crimes of human experimentation, I can direct you to others who are working toward that.”

Harrow stared at her. “Those are my options,” she said flatly.

“Yes,” Corona replied. “Well, actually, I suppose you could turn around and walk out of here, and be caught by the First House within a few days.”

Harrow bristled. “I have no interest in working for you.”

“You wouldn’t be working for me. My job is simply to get you supplies and send you where you need to go. You probably won’t even see me again.” Perhaps sensing Harrow’s building anger, Corona held up a hand graciously. “You don’t need to decide now. I’ll get the guest room made up for you, and you can rest here for a few days while you decide. Please don’t take offense, but you both look exhausted.”

“We are,” Gideon supplied, and Harrow shot her a withering look.

Corona showed them to a room at the end of the hall, saying “I’ll leave you to settle in,” before disappearing with a flounce. The room was small but expertly decorated, like the rest of the house. A queen bed piled high with pillows and quilts took up the center of the room, and a wardrobe revealed a collection of unisex outfit staples in various sizes. Gideon once again mourned how little she now had. It’s not like the stuff in her car had been particularly valuable, but she missed it already. She missed her collection of stupid t-shirts, her broken-in boxing gloves, and her phone. She resented the casual way she had been asked to give up all of her things, and the fact that nobody around her seemed particularly concerned about the fact she’d just lost everything she owned.

Harrow, oblivious to Gideon’s sulking, was inspecting the room thoroughly. Gideon watched as she lifted every pillow off the bed, one at a time, and set them back in place.

“Why were you so pissy at Coro– at Crown back there?” Gideon asked, as if she wasn’t also feeling fairly pissy.

“I didn’t escape the First House just to be used by someone else,” Harrow replied instantly. “If my freedom is conditional on helping Crown’s organization achieve their goals, it’s no freedom at all.”

Gideon frowned. “What’s the alternative, though? If you believe what Aim and Crown are saying, we’re being tracked pretty closely.”

“I’m sure we are,” was Harrow’s only response. Gideon took that to mean she didn’t have any better ideas. She waited for Harrow to complete the inspection of the sheets on the bed before flopping down on top of it.

“I guess there’s worse things to do than hang out here while you figure it out,” she suggested.

Harrow paused in her inspections, straightening. “You shouldn’t have gotten so involved in this,” she scolded. “Now you’re unable to leave as well without putting yourself in danger.”

Gideon shrugged. She was annoyed about her car, and still freaked out about the bone stuff, but mostly right now she was bone-tired. “I’d do it again,” she said.

Harrow muttered something that sounded a lot like “complete goddamn moron” as she turned to inspect the dresser.

Gideon drifted to sleep to the sound of Harrow clattering around the room.

Chapter 5

5

Gideon woke feeling more rested than she had in weeks. The clock on the bedside table revealed she had slept through almost the entire day. The room was dark, quiet, and empty.

Gideon stood, whispering, “Harrow?” to no response.

She crept out of the room and into the hall, where the first door on the left opened to a bathroom. Inside was Harrow, curled in the bottom of the tub, fast asleep. Gideon watched her for a moment. The sunburn of the morning had faded to a pink warmth on her cheeks and ears. Her lips were still chapped and bitten, parted slightly now as she slept.

Gideon blinked and walked out of the room, pulled one of the quilts off the bed, and returned to the bathroom to drape it gently over Harrow. Harrow stirred slightly but didn’t wake. Her head was pressed against the side of the tub in a way that looked horribly uncomfortable, but Gideon didn’t dare lift to put a pillow under it. The blanket would have to do.

Gideon wandered further down the hall, to where another door opened to what was obviously Coronabeth’s bedroom. The light was on and she could be seen digging through an enormous walk in closet. Gideon knocked against the open doorframe.

“Come in!” Corona said cheerfully, not looking up from the pile of clothes. “I’m sure you saw in your room that we keep a stock of outfits for people who come through. They’re all pretty basic, because we never know what size the necros who come to us will be- although lets be honest, usually extra small.” She laughed at her own joke. “But I figured since you’re close to my size I can at least give you something a little nicer.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Gideon said, suddenly not sure what to do with herself. She perched on the edge of the bed and watched for a moment as Coronabeth thoughtfully added another blouse to the pile. Most of it looked like things Gideon would never choose to wear, but she was sure Coronabeth already knew that. Instead she said, “is it all true, what Harrow’s been telling me? There are actually a bunch of people the government’s been breeding and just… keeping?”

Corona turned around, her face suddenly serious. “It’s probably worse than whatever she told you,” she said quietly. “It’s really bad, Gideon. Some of the necros who’ve been through here… the physical abuse, the brainwashing, the experiments…” She shuddered, then shook her head. “I can’t imagine what Harrow’s been through.”

Gideon sat for a moment, digesting that. Somehow it all felt more real coming from Corona’s mouth. Harrow was an oddity, a strange thing that almost seemed apart from the normal world, but Coronabeth had a normal house, and normal clothes, and was telling her it was all true. “I can’t believe they can keep it a secret,” she said, finally. “Why haven’t you gone to the news?”

“It’s more complicated than that, my love,” Corona said, stepping away from the closest to sit beside Gideon on the bed. “Going to the news would mean revealing the existence of necromancy to the world. Can you even picture it? People would lose their minds.”

Gideon could picture it. It would be chaos. “But what’s the alternative? Just do nothing and let them keep doing this forever?”

Corona laughed in a polite titter that Gideon was sure she must have practiced. “Of course not. That’s why I’m working with people who are trying to put an end to it.”

“The people you want Harrow to help.”

“Yes. The Edenites. We need all the hands we can get, and she would be a huge boon.” Coronabeth sighed. “I do hope she makes the right choice. But either way, Gideon, I’m glad you’re with her.” She patted Gideon’s knee. “No matter what happens, it’s a weight off my mind knowing she has someone like you to protect her. The First House is never going to stop going after her. They invested too much time and money into her existence to let her go.”

Gideon clenched and unclenched her fists. “I’ll keep her safe,” she said.

Corona smiled, and it seemed genuine this time. “Good. Come with me, I have something for you.”

She led the way down the hall to a basement staircase. Gideon followed her down into a room clearly used mostly for storage, although there was a treadmill and a set of free weights in one corner. Gideon stared at them longingly.

Corona pushed a stack of boxes aside to reveal a safe, which she opened to reveal several handguns and boxes of ammo. Gideon felt her heart rate spike in nervous anticipation. Coronabeth pulled out one of the pistols, deftly checking that it was unloaded before handing it to Gideon. Gideon took it carefully and turned it over in her hands. It had been years since she held a gun, and she had never done more than target practice. The thought of pointing it toward a real human being- even a human being trying to kill her- made her feel slightly ill.

Corona dug into the safe again and emerged with a box of ammo and a concealed belt holster. Seeing Gideon’s face, she smiled reassuringly. “I’m not asking you to shoot anyone. Just in case. The people coming after you will be armed, and they won’t be afraid to shoot. The best I can do is put you on even footing. Understand-” she paused and faced Gideon fully, an air of gravity about her. “I know this isn’t fair of me to ask, but by giving you this I’m asking you to use it to protect Harrow.”

Gideon nodded, taking the proffered items. She considered the gravity of the moment, and resisted the urge to flex demonstratively. Instead she said, “I will. I promise.”

Coronabeth nodded, then brightened again. Gideon was going to get whiplash. “Want to help me with a late-night dinner? I haven’t eaten yet, and I’m sure you’re hungry. Do you have any dietary restrictions?”

Harrow slept straight through dinner, and although Gideon tried to nudge her awake all she received were some angry grumbles in return. Eventually Gideon returned to bed, feeling moderately guilty at enjoying the plush bedding while Harrow spent the entire day in a bathtub. When she woke, Harrow was sitting at the foot of the bed, legs crossed, watching her.

“Mornin’,” Gideon mumbled, sitting up. “What time is it?”

“Seven thirty.”

“Nice,” Gideon said, stretching. Harrow’s eyes followed her outstretched arms and, for the second time in as many days, Gideon resisted the urge to flex. Instead she asked, “did you sleep well in the bathtub?”

Harrow sighed. “I’m recovering slowly. I am not adept at flesh magic. If I were-” she cut herself off. “I know others who would be able to heal this wound almost instantly. With my skills, it will take at least another day.” It was clear that the admission pained her, but Gideon just nodded.

“Well, good thing we’re here, then. Corona’s already said we can crash for a while.”

“I’m loath to be more indebted to her organization than I already am,” Harrow grumbled. Gideon noticed she’d changed into one of the spare outfits: nondescript black slacks and a black long-sleeve, and, of course, the cloak. Gideon had a strange moment of jealousy that Harrow was no longer wearing her hand-me-downs. She shook it off and forced herself to focus on more important matters.

“So what’s the plan when you’re healed? Are you going to work with Corona’s people?”

Harrow was slow to answer, chewing on her bottom lip. It was still chapped to hell, and Gideon was realizing this habit was at least partly why. “I don’t know,” Harrow admitted. “There are still others back at the First House… I was hoping they had escaped when I did. Not all of them are capable of leaving on their own.” She met Gideon’s eyes, and at her questioning look, sighed again. “The breeding methods the First House employs to create necromancers don’t work every time. Many of the offspring end up with no powers at all. They’ve recently resorted to… other, more intensive methods, to attempt to ensure that subjects are necromantic and powerful.”

Gideon’s stomach churned. “More intensive,” she echoed.

“Something worse,” Harrow said, and her voice was very quiet, almost a breath.

They sat in silence on the bed. Finally, Gideon said, “Corona– sorry, I mean Crown– she gave me a gun.”

Harrow raised an eyebrow. “Good for you.”

“She gave me a gun so that I can help protect you.” Gideon amended. “So just so you know, whatever you choose, I’ll be coming along. And,” she added, “so are these babies.” She finally gave in to the urge and flexed each bicep, and kissed each one in turn. Harrow made a somewhat horrified expression, averting her eyes to the ceiling.

“I do want to take them down,” Harrow admitted to the ceiling lamp. “I can’t live knowing that the First House is still active, still… doing what they did to me.”

“Then it sounds like we know what we’re doing,” Gideon said, and reached over to take Harrow’s hand. Harrow continued to inspect the ceiling, but she squeezed Gideon’s hand back, once.

The rest of the day Gideon mostly spent working out in Coronabeth’s basement while Harrow lay very still in bed, creepily staring at the ceiling (“I’m not staring, I’m focusing on healing.”). Gideon helped Coronabeth cook dinner and fielded many awkward questions about Ianthe, mostly about if she seemed happy and if she had friends and if she was eating right- the answers to all of which were no- before forcing Harrow to get up and join them at the table to eat like a human being. Harrow picked at her pasta and mostly ignored Coronabeth’s cheerful attempts at conversation, although Corona didn’t seem phased. Maybe all necromancers were like this.

Gideon was brushing her teeth before bed when she caught Harrow slinking out of the bedroom. “Hey,” Gideon said, mouth full of foaming toothpaste, “stop right there. You aren’t sleeping in a bathtub or in some other freaky place tonight.”

Harrow glared at her stubbornly, as if daring Gideon to stop her. Gideon spat into the sink and continued, “there’s plenty of room on the bed. Or I can take the couch if you want. But seriously, my spine was crying just looking at you last night.”

“Fine,” Harrow said, and turned around to march back into the bedroom. Gideon finished getting ready and resigned herself to a night of mediocre sleep on the couch. She’d gotten plenty used to it during her prolonged breakup with Ianthe, at least.

Gideon had just settled in on Coronabeth’s beautiful but uncomfortable couch when Harrow reappeared, staring down at her from over the armrest.

“What,” Gideon said, after a beat of Harrow staring at her wordlessly.

“Why are you out here?”

“To sleep, you freak.”

“You said there was plenty of room on the bed.”

Gideon sat up, blinking at Harrow. “You sure that’s not going to disturb you and your creepy healing process?”

That glare again. “There’s plenty of room,” Harrow repeated, and disappeared back toward the bedroom. Gideon followed, grinning.

They slid into the bed from opposite sides, and Harrow instantly returned to her coffin-like pose. Gideon took more time to settle. She was used to kind of splaying out on her back, but was suddenly very aware of how much of the bed she was taking up- definitely more than Harrow- and how noisy her breathing was. It took her a while to find a comfortable position, and even longer to fall asleep. Every time she cracked her eyes open, Harrow’s eyes were still open too, boring through the ceiling. Gideon watched her for a moment, curious if she would blink.

“Why are you looking at me,” Harrow whispered.

“You’re so creepy,” Gideon replied honestly.

Harrow finally broke her staring contest with the ceiling to glare at her. It was a relief. “Go to sleep, Gideon.”

Gideon grinned at her. “Goodnight, Harrow.”

She didn’t remember falling asleep, but she could feel Harrow’s eyes on her. She woke hours later to an empty bed. Gideon rolled onto the side where Harrow had been, but it was already cold. Maybe Harrow had never slept at all.

Gideon sniffed the sheets before she thought better of it. There was only the slightest hint that Harrow had ever been there, a slight copper tang and a rich, musky scent like fresh earth.

“What are you doing?” Harrow asked from the doorway.

Gideon instantly flipped onto her back. “Just woke up,” she lied, faking a huge yawn. It worked too well and she followed it up with an involuntary real yawn. Harrow just stared at her.

“I spoke to Crown,” she said.

“...oh?”

“I’ll help the Edenites. We should get going as soon as possible.”

Gideon leapt out of bed, beaming. Finally, something to do. Not that she minded Corona’s house, but she was already going stir crazy.

Corona was in the living room, packing two hiking backpacks with clothes, water bottles, and toiletries. She smiled at them as they entered. “Here,” she said, handing a thick envelope to Gideon. Gideon opened it to find several hundred dollars in cash and two very convincing fake IDs. She blinked.

“I’ve bought you tickets on a long-distance bus that’s leaving in an hour,” Corona said. “It should take you most of the way. Here-” she added, and passed Harrow more printed out gps instructions. Harrow studied them intently.

“This says three days travel,” she said.

“Yeah.” Corona frowned apologetically. “The buses are slow, but it’s safer than renting you a car. They’ll be scanning license plates.”

It all seemed to move very quickly after that. They shouldered their backpacks- Gideon noticed that Harrow staggered slightly under the weight of hers- and Corona stuffed Gideon’s hands with a bag of sliced fruit and granola bars. “Be careful,” she insisted. “Don’t tell anyone where you’re headed, and keep your heads on a swivel.” She wrung her manicured hands together nervously. “Oh, this is the hardest part. I wish I could do more. Please be safe.”

Gideon gave her a hug, which was returned with enthusiasm. Harrow simply nodded at Corona, and then they were out the door, heading back to the bus stop. It was a straightforward ride to the long-distance terminal, where the employee barely glanced at their fake IDs before waving them by. Gideon’s palms were sweaty. She felt sudden déjà vu to using a fake to buy liquor in high school. Then they were on the bus, settling into seats toward the back as other passengers slowly loaded in around them.

Harrow was nervous. She wasn’t showing it much, but Gideon could sense her jittery, tense energy from the way her eyes were glued to the window. The passengers boarding were an eclectic mix, from students to the elderly to backpackers with their trail beards grown down to their chests. But no cops, no black vans, and no rangers. Gideon relaxed into her seat as best she could as the bus started to roll out.

“It’s going to be a long ride,” she told Harrow. Harrow just nodded, and didn’t take her eyes off the scenery as it rolled by. Gideon watched her for a while as they made their way out of town and back onto the highway. The mountains had given way to rolling hills dotted with pastures for cows and horses. Fields of corn and canola formed yellowing blankets along the side of the road. Gideon said, “the world’s big, huh?”

“Yes,” Harrow said, and she sounded very small.

Chapter 6

6

The bus stopped every hour or so, and a few passengers would board while others left. They passed through town after town until Gideon could no longer tell them apart. Once in a while she and Harrow would get off during a stop and Gideon would do squats in the parking lot while Harrow stood beside her, eyes scanning their surroundings. The tiny bus stations had vending machines, and Gideon entertained herself convincing Harrow to try every new chip flavour they encountered. Harrow didn’t like any of them. Gideon ate a lot of chips.

Night fell, but the schedule of the bus didn’t change. Gideon would just be dozing off when they would hit a new stop and the lights would flick on, the speaker would announce the town name, and everyone would begin shuffling around. By the wee hours of the morning, Gideon felt delirious, oscillating between exhaustion and boredom. She was desperately tired of sitting on her ass. She slouched in her seat and groaned despairingly. Harrow pointedly ignored her, eyes locked to the window.

The bus was entering yet another flyover town, this one slightly bigger than the previous ones. Gideon looked past Harrow as streetlights appeared lining the highway, and rolling fields gave way to fast food chains and suburbs. The bus rolled into the station, bumping and rumbling, and the lights flicked on yet again. For a moment, the doors remained closed. When they opened, a man in tactical gear stepped onto the bus and grabbed the microphone. Ignoring the driver indignantly reaching for him, he began speaking over the muffled sound system.

“Good evening passengers. We are searching for two fugitives we have reason to believe may be passengers on this bus. We will be conducting a search. Please remain calm and remain in your seats, and prepare to show government issued photo ID.”

“Fuck,” Gideon said, ducking her head low. Harrow was already hunched over, pulling bones from her ears and cupping them in her hands with a determined look. Gideon reached out and grabbed her hand, holding it closed. “Hang on,” she hissed. “Not here- not with all these people. You’ll hurt them.”

Harrow stared at her for a moment, then glanced up to the front of the bus. Already a second man had joined the first, and they were moving slowly down the aisle, glaring over the faces of passengers and glancing at IDs. “There’s no exit,” Harrow said flatly.

“There’s the windows,” Gideon said, even as she realized how stupid a statement it was. The windows only opened in a narrow crack at the very top, and even with how tiny Harrow was, there was no way in hell that was working. “If we could open them-”

Harrow flipped her hand over so that she was pressing the handful of bones against Gideon’s palm. Then something was moving, and Gideon stared as a layer of bone rippled and grew over her fist, forming a thick glove around her hand. Gideon lifted it in wonder. There was a heft to it that reminded her of boxing gloves, but much sturdier.

“Open the window, then,” Harrow hissed impatiently.

“Hell yeah,” Gideon said, stood up, and punched through the bus window.

The reaction was immediate. People around them began standing and shouting, and the men at the front of the bus began rushing toward them. The first hit had caused a spiderweb of cracks to span across the glass. It took only one more strike for the glass to shatter entirely, showering both Gideon and Harrow in tiny, cutting shards. Harrow immediately swung her legs over the edge of the window and pulled herself through, heedless of the jagged glass edge. Gideon put a foot on the window’s bottom edge and did her best to jump over the worst of the glass while following after her. She landed heavily on the asphalt of the parking lot and had to hold back a yelp.

Harrow was standing in front of her, and beside her were four skeletons. This close, Gideon could see that they were slightly different from the skeleton she had created at the bar. The initial creature’s bones had seemed brittle and thin, almost impossibly delicate, while these looked reinforced. Narrow, birdlike bones were layered over each other, more bones than there should be in a wrist or an ankle, combining into a creature that was blockier, stouter. They flanked Harrowhark like bodyguards, hands up in combat-ready positions. Across from Harrow were a pair of black vans and a half-dozen more men and women in tactical gear. Four stood with guns drawn, pointing directly toward Harrow and her skeletons. Another two were crouched over an open suitcase, holding what looked to be a pair of collars and manacles. The sight made the hair on the back of Gideon’s neck stand up. She was suddenly acutely aware of the gun in her waistband.

“Hands in the air,” barked one of the women in tactical gear, her gun pointed directly at Harrow’s chest.

“Don’t shoot,” Gideon called, slowly raising her hands. She jerked her head helplessly to the bus behind her. “There are people- they’re in the line of fire.” From the corner of her eye she could see the passengers, alternating between pressing their faces to the glass or scrambling to the far side of the bus, away from the sight of guns. There was shouting, and faint sobbing.

“Don’t shoot the little one,” one of the men said, jerking his gun between Gideon and Harrow. “Just the big one- and the bones-”

Gideon glanced at Harrow helplessly. “The passengers,” she said, and Harrow sighed.

“Fine.”

Two of the skeletons shattered. Their skulls seemed to freeze in the air for a moment, then exploded into a shield of bone in front of Gideon and Harrow. There were a series of bangs and cracks, the bone barely forming in time to catch the volley of bullets fired toward them. The rest of the bones skittered across the ground, outward, past the people in tactical gear and the guns. Then they also burst, stretching and widening until they fused together in a massive wall. One of the men screamed and fired again. The shot went wide, missing Gideon and Harrow and the shield that covered them. It would have hit the bus, if the bus hadn’t also been hidden behind the wall of bones Harrow was creating, a circular ring that surrounded Gideon, Harrow, and the six figures in tactical gear. It grew to nearly seven feet tall, and then stopped in a shudder. Harrow looked at Gideon, and her nose was bleeding.

“Happy now?”

Gideon beamed at her. “Extremely.”

The skeletons leapt forward, and Gideon leapt with them. There was a moment of hesitation from the armed group- the quarters were suddenly much tighter than they had been moments ago. It was all Gideon needed to close the distance to the closest armed man.

She reached out and knocked his gun upward, instantly following up by grabbing the man’s wrists and twisting the gun from his hands. It clattered to the ground, and Gideon threw the weight of her body onto him, twisting the man’s arm behind his back and forcing him to the floor. The man cried out, and there were another pair of hands on Gideon, trying to grab her off of him. She turned to find the woman who had spoken before, tactical visor pushed up to show a pair of wide and panicked eyes.

“Don’t move,” the woman said, and Gideon kicked her in the gut.

She became a frenzy of movement. Someone would approach and Gideon would tackle them down, hold them to the ground and bend an arm or a leg until she heard a crack. There was an exhilarating rush in it that almost scared her, in allowing herself to push past where she would normally stop. The skeletons were moving alongside her, reinforced fists bashing and punching in mechanical motions, and Gideon watched as one of those fists hit the head of a man holding a collar. He fell, and did not get back up.

“Freeze,” Gideon heard, and she whipped around to see who was speaking. The woman from before was sitting on the ground, cradling her dislocated knee in one hand. With the other, she pointed a gun directly at Harrow.

“Don’t,” Gideon cried, at the exact same time as another one of the men did. He shouted, “We aren’t supposed to-”

“She’s going to kill us!” The woman shouted back, her eyes round and boggling.

Harrow was standing, stock still. Blood was running from her nose, from her ears, dripping down her face from her scalp. The skeletons froze as well, one of them holding a half-conscious man in a headlock, too far away. They were both too far away.

Gideon was perhaps six feet from the woman with the gun. She didn’t have time to calculate the time it would take her to reach the woman versus the time it would take for the woman to fire.

She just jumped.

There was pain in her right shoulder, instant and red-hot. Gideon landed on top of the woman and they both fell to the ground in a tangle. Gideon wrestled the gun from her hands and tossed it, hearing it clatter somewhere behind her.

Faintly, behind her, she could hear shouting- then screaming. The world suddenly became brighter as streetlamps flooded into the area, and Gideon realized that Harrow had dropped the bone wall. There was a sound of crunching, something wet, and then there was a hand on Gideon’s collar pulling her up.

Gideon looked up blearily to see Harrow, her face ashen underneath the blood. “Move,” Harrow ordered.

Gideon staggered upright, a movement that took a great deal more effort than it had just moments ago. Harrow was pulling her past the unmarked black vans, down an alley. There were more noises behind them, and Harrow flung more bones– where was she getting so many bones– over her shoulder. More skeletons sprung to life, and Harrow staggered but continued forward. Gideon wrapped an arm around her and they half-staggered together down one alleyway and then the next. There was no rhyme or reason to it, just moving, just away. Gideon was stumbling, and each time she blinked the black at the edges of her vision grew larger.

“Harrow.” She murmured. “Harrow, they for sure shot me.”

“I know,” Harrow said. “Just hang on.”

They turned another corner and there was a chain link fence, and then beyond that the highway. Harrow said, “Go over.”

Gideon said, “are you fucking kidding me.”

Then she pulled herself over the fence one-handed, her muscles searing. When she got to the top her vision went dark for a moment, and the next thing she knew she was lying on the ground. Harrow’s hands were pulling her, along with a second set of skeletal hands. Gideon didn’t have the energy to freak out as Harrow and the skeleton dragged her across the ground, through the scrubby grass that grew along the shoulder of the highway. Harrow dropped her unceremoniously, and Gideon was vaguely aware of the skeleton crumbling back into individual bones.

“Up,” Harrow said. “Up and look normal.”

“Not an option,” said Gideon, face down in the dirt.

“Stand up. Now.”

Gideon stood up. It sucked. Her head spun and pain shot down her arm and across her chest. Harrow was standing on the edge of the highway, thumb in the air.

“What are you doing,” Gideon mumbled, and wobbled.

“This is hitchhiking,” Harrow said, “I read about it.”

“We’re going to get murdered,” Gideon said.

A car passed without even slowing, and then another. Gideon focused on listening for sounds of people following them as Harrow waggled her thumb in the air with increasing annoyance. Finally, after several long minutes, a pickup truck slowed to a halt. Gideon tried not to look like someone who’d been shot, and was grateful that her shirt was black. Harrow stepped forward to the passenger window, thumb still held up awkwardly, where a gruff looking middle aged man sat.

“Can we get a ride into town?” Harrow asked, voice surprisingly even. “My friend got a little too drunk.”

Gideon swayed on her feet helpfully.

“Can ya hop in back? No room in the cabin,” the man said.

“Of course. Thank you.” Harrow turned to Gideon and grabbed her elbow. “Come on, Griddle.”

“Griddle?” Gideon echoed, the world spinning nauseatingly. Harrow half-shoved her up onto the back of the truck, and Gideon pulled herself forward onto the metal. She felt a sudden pang of embarrassment that she was probably leaving a horrible smear of blood all over this nice man’s truck.

Harrow climbed up next to her, and then they were moving. The back of the truck rumbled and shook, but the cool air felt nice on Gideon’s flushed skin. Harrow was pressing a hand against her shoulder, and it hurt, but Gideon didn’t have the energy to shake her off.

“Don’t die,” Harrow whispered. “Don’t die because of me, you complete idiot.”

“M’kay,” said Gideon.

Then she fell asleep.

Things were blurry for a while after that. They got off the truck, and then they were in a car again, and then Gideon was being carried by one of those horrible skeletons for a while. At one point she could feel Harrow reaching into her pockets and digging around.

“Buy me dinner first,” Gideon mumbled.

“Shut up and focus on not dying,” Harrow replied, pulling the envelope of cash from Gideon’s pocket. Then Gideon was asleep again.

She woke up what felt like lifetimes later, lying in a bed that smelled like cheap detergent. Harrow was lying next to her, fast asleep. Light was seeping in behind the closed blinds of a window, and around the window was smeared a truly horrifying amount of blood. Gideon blinked and tried to force her eyes to focus.

She was in a hotel room, a tiny one, and it looked like a murder had taken place. Blood was smeared around the window, the door, in a giant circle around the bed. The bed itself was drenched in blood, which Gideon belatedly realized was mostly pooled around her own body. She barely had the energy to turn her head to look at her shoulder. It was bandaged with black cloth, and while she didn’t see it actively bleeding it still hurt like hell.

Gideon lay there for a while, slipping in and out of consciousness. Eventually the light behind the curtain began to fade, and the pain in Gideon’s arm outweighed her exhaustion too much for her to sleep. She watched Harrow instead, the slight swell of her chest as she breathed, the blood on her face chapping into a network of cracks like a dry riverbed. It was difficult to tell under the blood, but her face still looked ashy, and the bags under her eyes seemed even darker than normal.

Harrow’s eyes fluttered, and then opened to meet Gideon’s. She stared for a moment, then blinked a few times as if forcing herself to focus. “Good. I thought I might wake to you having died.”

“You say the sweetest things,” Gideon said.

“I’ll check on your arm in a moment,” Harrow said, ignoring her entirely. She still hadn’t moved at all. “I needed to recover after warding the room.”

“Is that what the smears of blood are about?”

“Yes.” Harrow closed her eyes for a long moment. They lay quietly, and Gideon focused on trying to match her breaths to Harrow’s. It didn’t work- Harrow breathed fast, like a hummingbird, and it made Gideon dizzy. Finally, Harrow seemed to steel herself and sat up. She shuffled across the bed to unwrap Gideon’s bandages, then hissed through her teeth.

“Bad?” Gideon guessed.

“Not good.” Harrow’s brows were furrowed together as she pressed a palm to the wound. Gideon gasped in pain. “It’s not clean, and the damage is too complex for me to fix. Infection is already starting in the wound.”

“Sounds like I might be dying after all,” Gideon supplied.

“Not immediately,” Harrow said, not very reassuringly.

Chapter 7

7

At some point Gideon fell asleep again. She wasn’t entirely sure if it was “falling asleep” or “passing out from a gunshot wound”, but thinking about it in terms of the latter made her heart rate spike. When she woke up, Harrow was gone.

Gideon lay there for a while, weighing her options. Lying perfectly still meant less pain, but it also meant that she could do nothing but stare at the ceiling and the horrifying blood-smeared walls. Each time she shifted even slightly, burning pain shot from her fingertips to her chest. Even when she wasn’t moving, it still hurt- her shoulder throbbed in time to her heartbeat, and her hand felt numb and tingly. Gideon was just mustering up the power to sit up when the door swung open and Harrow reappeared.

She was dressed differently, Gideon noticed immediately. The blood-splattered shirt she had been wearing was replaced with a baggy sweatshirt and a long black skirt. In her arms were two shopping bags, which she dropped onto the bed with an air of exhaustion.

Gideon blinked at her and didn’t move.

Harrow reached into the first bag and pulled out a sandwich wrapped in butcher paper and a bottle of painkillers. “Take these and eat,” Harrow ordered, passing them over to Gideon.

“I’m not hungry,” Gideon said. She wasn’t sure she could eat. Her body seemed to be ignoring some needs to make room for more signals that something was horribly wrong with her shoulder.

“Eat,” Harrow repeated. “You need to recover from the physical exertion.”

“I’ll show you physical exertion,” Gideon said, and wiggled her eyebrows, one of the few motions she could make without crippling pain. Harrow stared at her impassively.

Gideon sighed and steeled herself to sit up and take the items Harrow proffered. Her right arm was entirely useless, and she struggled with the child-proof cap on the painkillers for a long moment before Harrow took pity and opened them for her. Gideon swallowed them with some difficulty and started on the sandwich. Her mouth felt sandy.

“We can’t stay here long,” Harrow said, sitting on the edge of the bed and leaning in to examine Gideon’s wound. This close to her, Gideon could see that Harrow still had blood crusted in her ears and around her nose. She untied the bandage around Gideon’s arm and grimaced at whatever she saw. Gideon carefully did not look.

“The infection is getting worse,” Harrow muttered. “We need to get you to a flesh magician.”

“What the hell is a flesh magician?”

“A necromancer who specializes in living beings.” Harrow was pulling alcohol wipes from the second shopping bag, and Gideon grit her teeth in preparation as Harrow began to swab the wound. Gideon barely even hissed, although she did clench her teeth so hard her jaw ached.

When she could speak without screaming, Gideon said, “what now? We try to get on another bus?”

Harrow shook her head as she re-bandaged Gideon’s shoulder. “No. I’m not sure how they found us, but they’re clearly tracking us somehow. I suspect Crown discussed our movements with a third party.”

“Nah,” Gideon said immediately. “She wouldn’t. She’s so into the whole saving necromancers thing.”

“You trust too easily,” Harrow said simply. Gideon frowned at her. Harrow was worrying her lip between her teeth as she tied off the knot of Gideon’s new bandage. Her incisors left tiny indents in her chapped lips, and Gideon had a sudden urge to smooth her finger over them.

“I think I have a fever,” she said instead.

Harrow placed the back of her palm against Gideon’s forehead. It felt cooling, and Gideon’s eyes fluttered shut involuntarily. “You do. That would be the infection.” She withdrew her hand and stood back up. “Rest. I will be back soon.”

“Wait,” Gideon said, a spike of panic running through her. “Where are you going?”

Harrow was already walking toward the door. Gideon thought for a moment about going after her, but even half-rising from the bed caused a wave of dizziness and nausea to wash over her, and she flopped back onto the stiff motel pillows. “Don’t go,” she said urgently.

“I have more to do,” Harrow said, as if that explained anything.

Gideon felt a sudden flash of anger course through her, from her gut to her feverish fingertips. “I can’t fucking believe you,” she said, and Harrow just stared at her with an impassive look, which only made Gideon angrier. “I can barely fucking move. If anyone’s followed us– finds me– I’ll be dead. I could just drop dead any minute from getting shot anyway.” The more she spoke, the more her anger built. Gideon pulled herself to a sitting position so she could more directly face Harrow as she spit, “after everything I fucking did. I gave up my car. All my things. I got fucking shot for you and you won’t even tell me where you’re going, or how long I have to lie here dying for! I got fucking shot for you and you’re not even-” she faltered for a moment, realizing she was about to say you’re not even nice to me and how pathetic that sounded. Gideon bit her lip and instead snapped, “this is bullshit. It’s total bullshit.”

Harrow simply watched Gideon throughout her outburst, waiting for her to finish. Then she said, “The wards will protect you. I will be back by nightfall.”

“Don’t fucking leave me here!” Gideon shrieked, but Harrow was already out the door. Gideon used her left arm to punch the mattress, but it just made an unsatisfying poomf. She shrieked again, to nobody except the likely annoyed patrons in other rooms, and then flopped back to the bed, exhausted.

Time passed in a blurry, painful crawl. Gideon ate the rest of her sandwich, stared at the ceiling, and eventually made the slow, harrowing journey to and from the bathroom. She was beginning to feel a lot worse. The wound in her shoulder throbbed, and her entire body was covered in cold sweat. Gideon wondered, for the first time, if she was actually about to die.

When she eventually slept, it was a fitful, feverish sleep where she wasn’t sure what was waking and what was dreaming. When she felt something warm against her and a coppery scent in her nose, it took longer than it should have for her to crawl her way to wakefulness.

Gideon was still lying on her back, but curled into her side was Harrow, tiny and warm. Gideon’s arm stretched under her head as a pillow, and Harrow’s arms were curled tightly against Gideon’s ribs.

Gideon lay quietly for a moment, taking stock of her surroundings. It was dark behind the window shades, and Harrow’s lips were parted to make way for fluttery, soft breaths. Gideon tried to muster up the anger she had felt before, but mostly she was just exhausted. Harrow’s weight felt grounding on her arm while the rest of the world was still dizzy and floaty. Gideon hesitated for a moment and then buried her face in Harrow’s short-cropped hair. It was surprisingly soft. Gideon had almost expected it to be prickly, but instead it tickled her nose as she breathed in the scent of warm skin.

Gideon didn’t remember falling asleep.

She woke up, if it could be called that, completely delirious with fever. She could barely make sense of light streaming in through the open door and Harrow standing next to the bed saying, “get up. We’re going now.”

“How?” Gideon asked. Her head was spinning, and she kept getting the vertigo sensation of falling through the bed.

“It’s time to leave. I got us a car.”

“How?” she echoed.

“I stole a car,” Harrow clarified.

“Oh my god.”

Harrow had to help her to stand, and waited impatiently as Gideon wobbled her way out of the room. It was the first time Gideon had seen the outside of the motel. It was as cheap looking as she imagined, rows of rooms along balconies that overlooked a road and half-abandoned strip mall. Harrow led her down to the parking lot, where a battered white corolla was still running. Gideon peered through the window. A tangle of wires hung beneath the steering wheel where it had clearly been hotwired.

“I swapped the plate,” Harrow said, as if this was reassuring.

“I can’t drive like this, Harrow,” Gideon said, swaying on her feet. “I’m gonna pass out any minute.”

“I’m driving.”

“Do you even know how to drive?”

“I’ve been researching.” To Gideon’s absolute horror, Harrow pulled a road test manual with a library stamp from her hoodie pocket. “Once we get on the highway it’s a straight line. I have confidence in my abilities.”

Gideon strongly considered turning around and walking back into the hotel room to die in a bed instead of a fiery car crash. “This is insane,” she said, which still seemed like an understatement. “If we don’t get caught by the cops, we’re going to flip over and explode.”

“I drove the car here without incident,” Harrow reasoned. “And we won’t. I’m going to cause a distraction when we leave.”

Gideon knew at this point that “distraction” probably meant “lots of skeletons”. She was losing the strength to argue- it was taking almost all of her ability just to stay upright. Her desire to sit down, more than anything, made the decision for her.

“This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever done,” she said, and flopped into the passenger seat.

Harrow climbed carefully behind the steering wheel and checked each mirror in turn. Gideon suspected it was in exactly the order the driving manual suggested. Harrow eased them out of the parking lot, jerkily but without incident, and then they were on the road. Gideon was acutely aware of how Harrow’s eyes barely rose over the dashboard.

“So,” Gideon said carefully, not wanting to divert too much of Harrow’s attention from the road, “where’s the distraction?”

“I left them at the library,” Harrow said simply. Gideon nodded and decided not to think too hard about it. She focused on not passing out, and tried not to clench up every time Harrow had to hit the brakes as they made their way toward the highway. Harrow was driving ten under the speed limit and her knuckles were white on the steering wheel, but the ride was surprisingly smooth.

“You’re doing good,” Gideon admitted.

“Don’t act surprised,” Harrow snapped.

Gideon decided it wasn’t a good time to push it. She settled in silently, trying to keep an eye on their surroundings. They were swiftly leaving whatever nowhere town they had been staying in. Gideon only had a vague idea of where they were or how long they had to their destination, but the farmland and fields were slowly giving way to thick deciduous forests. Traffic on the highway was thick, an endless stream of cars passing them as Harrow maintained her cautious pace.

“Do you know who we’re meeting?” Gideon asked eventually.

“Yes,” Harrow said, eyes not moving from the road. “We will be meeting others who escaped before I did.”

“Other necromancers?”

“Some of them,” Harrow answered vaguely.

Gideon dozed on and off for the next few hours. There wasn’t much else she could do in her feverish state. She was hungry and parched, but didn’t say anything- she agreed with the implicit decision Harrow had made to just get them to their destination as quickly as possible.

By the time the sun set, Gideon was watching Harrow’s hands shake visibly on the steering wheel. Harrow glanced over and caught Gideon watching her. “We’re almost there,” She said shortly. Gideon looked out the window and said nothing else, trying to focus on the occasional farmhouses poking between the wall of trees.

After several more minutes, Harrow turned them onto a side road, haltingly and with a lot of tapping the brakes. They wound through farmland and the occasional cottage advertising firewood or handicrafts. Gideon deliriously wondered if Harrow would consider stopping at a farm advertising fresh maple syrup.

Gideon was just about to say as much when Harrow slammed the brakes and guided them into the driveway of a small, unassuming house. A stack of firewood sat on a sun-peeled porch, and a sign on the front door read “No soliciting”.

Harrow put the car into park- she still didn’t turn off the engine, and Gideon suddenly realized she probably didn’t know how- and stepped out. The front door opened instantly, revealing a tan woman with a severe bob.

“Nonagesimus,” the woman said. “Were you followed?”

“Hect,” Harrow replied. “Not to my knowledge. I have a companion in the car. She’s been shot.”

It was as though Gideon’s body realized that it had finally reached help and decided to give out entirely. She could barely even muster the strength to unbuckle her seatbelt. She sat splayed in the car while Harrow spoke quietly to the woman on the porch, until they both turned in unison to look over at her. Gideon raised her hand in a feeble wave.

Hect approached and opened the passenger door, pulling Gideon’s arm and easily hoisting her into a fireman’s carry. Gideon squawked in a combination of indignation and respect. Hect paid her no mind, carrying her toward the house and up onto the porch. A man was hovering just inside the door, stepping aside to let them pass and then following after them as Hect hauled Gideon through the entry hall.

“I can’t make any promises,” the man was saying, “since it looks like there’s sepsis already– Cam, once you put her down can you grab the curette from the bathroom? Nonagesimus, it really is good to see you.”

Gideon was vaguely aware of Harrow trailing after the man, and then Gideon was being set down on a dining room table dressed with a plastic sheet. The plastic sheet unnerved her more than it had any right to. It looked like a funerary shroud.

“We’re going to put you to sleep now,” the man said to her in a reassuring tone. Gideon’s eyes boggled and she glanced over at Harrow again, who just gave a small nod. Gideon felt herself relaxing, just slightly. Then the man cupped a breathing mask over Gideon’s face, and she was gone.

* * *

Gideon was getting pretty tired of waking up in unfamiliar locations.

She was no longer lying on a dining room table. Instead she was in a bed, and her shoulder was bandaged with neatly applied gauze. There was much less pain, but also a fuzzy sort of film over the world that suggested she was on a lot of painkillers.

“You’re awake.”

Gideon looked up to see Harrow standing in the doorframe, arms crossed.

“Did it go okay?” Gideon asked, flexing her arm. There was a twinge of pain, but her arm responded smoothly.

“Stop moving, and yes. Palamedes did an exemplary job.” There was something begrudging in the way Harrow said it. “You are still recovering, so don’t lift anything heavy or move your arm too much.”

Gideon was still wiggling her fingers, pinching them together one at a time to confirm everything was in order. “I should thank him, probably.”

“They’re making breakfast,” Harrow said. “Would you like to join them?”

Gideon nodded, and Harrow helped her up from the bed without complaint. Gideon figured she was probably using up her I-got-shot-for-you goodwill very quickly. They made their way through the house, which looked shockingly normal, considering it was a home to necromancers who had just done backroom surgery in a dining room. Gideon had expected a lot more bones, and maybe blood. Instead there were cream-yellow walls and worn, outdated furniture. Palamedes was sitting on a stool at the kitchen island, and Hect stood across from him. A second man stood with his back to Gideon, frying eggs at the stove. Palamedes brightened as they walked in.

“You’re up already,” he said, sounding mildly surprised. “How are you feeling?”

“Pretty good,” Gideon said, giving her arm another test flex. “I can move it and everything. Thank you.”

“Take it easy,” Palamedes cautioned. He was picking at a plate of eggs and toast, although it looked less like he was eating and more like he was just moving it around on the plate. Gideon wondered if this was a necromancer thing. “Also, I don’t think we got the chance to properly introduce you. I’m Palamedes, this is Camilla,” he gestured to Hect, “and that’s Phyrra.”

The man at the stove turned around to nod at Gideon. He had short, curly hair and deep brown eyes, and looked to be in his late thirties. Gideon instantly dropped into a defensive stance, fists up and legs apart.

Camilla responded in kind, positioning herself in between Gideon and the man. Gideon noticed for the first time that she had a knife in a holster at her belt.

“I recognize you,” Gideon said accusingly, staring at the man. “You were there at the bar, the first night I found Harrow.” She had only seen him for a moment, staring through the glass of the restaurant and smoking, but there was something about his presence burned into her brain.

“I’m surprised you recognize me,” Phyrra said, voice light. “I was hoping to reach the two of you before the First House descended on you, but I was too late.”

Gideon glared. “You mean you saw them shoot her and you didn’t do anything?”

Phyrra’s gaze was cold. It took Gideon a moment to realize what was so unnerving about it: something about his eyes didn’t suit his face. “I was trying to fly under the radar,” he said. “Not that it mattered much, since our dear Nonagesimus summoned a construct in public anyway. Multiple times, at this point.”

Harrow was glaring too, but she stepped forward and put a hand on Gideon’s shoulder. “Stand down,” she commanded softly. “I know her.”

Gideon did some quick pronoun readjustment in her head, then returned to glaring. “You could have done something,” she insisted. “Harrow could have died.”

“And we’re all very glad she didn’t,” Phyrra said, scooping up fried eggs with a spatula and placing them onto a plate of buttered toast. She held the plate out to Gideon. Camilla glanced warily back and forth between them, as if nervous one of them was about to make an egg-based attack.

The eggs did smell great. Gideon glanced one last time back at Harrow, then relaxed. The tension bled quickly from the room as Camilla copied her, and Gideon reached out to take the plate. “This doesn’t mean I’m okay with what you did,” she clarified. Phyrra was already turning back to the stove, cracking another pair of eggs into the pan.

“You shouldn’t be,” she agreed.

Gideon took a seat at the island next to Palamedes and dug in. It was the first homemade food she’d eaten in days, and there was something deeply comforting about it. Camilla, no longer looking ready to murder her, returned to leaning against the opposite side of the island. Gideon appreciated her arms for a moment. Hect was wirier than she was, but there was lean muscle wrapping her shoulders and biceps. Gideon wondered idly if she could take her in a fight.

“Are you all necromancers?” She asked, since that would weigh heavily into the equation.

“Just me,” Palamedes said. “Camilla was part of the same program as Harrowhark and I, but she didn’t develop necromantic powers. She was trained in cavaliering instead– she helped protect me, physically.”

Gideon didn’t doubt Camilla’s ability, but she frowned. “Protect you from what?”

“The First House was planning to send me overseas,” Palamedes gave a wry smile, “as part of some clandestine military operation. Luckily, we escaped before they had a chance to ship us off.”

“Wait,” Gideon said through a mouthful of toast, “Harrow said you escaped a while ago. How old are you?”

“To answer your actual question,” Camilla said, “yes, we were child soldiers. Yes, it’s horrific.”

“No more horrific than the rest of the program,” Palamedes said lightly, taking a small bite of egg. “I assume Harrowhark gave you some details.”

“Some,” Gideon said. “How did you escape?”

Palamedes gestured with his fork toward Phyrra. “Phyrra was also a cavalier for the First House, one of the first in the program. She’d built up a lot of trust with the higher-ups. When she defected, it gave us a chance to fight our way out, although her necromancer–”

“That’s enough,” Phyrra cut in. “We don’t need to give her my life story.” She plated the last set of eggs and passed them to Harrow, who took them with the air of someone who absolutely did not plan on eating them. Phyrra turned to Gideon again, arms crossed. “What did you say your name was again?”

“Don’t answer that,” Harrow said. “Phyrra is devising a ridiculous conspiracy theory.”

Gideon blinked. “About me?”

Phyrra turned to Harrow, her jaw set. “I won’t apologize for wanting to make sure we haven’t let a traitor into–”

“She has no necromantic aptitude,” Palamedes cut in. “I checked while fixing up her arm. If she was related to him, she would definitely–”

“Not necessarily,” Phyrra retorted. “You’ve seen how it can go. It’s still a risk.”

Gideon swallowed the last of her toast and frowned. “Okay, can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“Nothing,” three voices said in unison. Gideon blinked and glanced over at Camilla, the only silent one. Camilla just stared back at her assessingly, like Gideon was a weird bug under a magnifying glass.

“You should rest,” Harrow said suddenly, reaching out to take Gideon’s hand. “You need to regain your strength.”

“I’m not tired,” Gideon retorted, but Harrow was already leading her back to the bedroom. Gideon considered resisting, but she couldn’t help noting how soft Harrow’s palm was in her own. It made her not want to let go.

Harrow closed the door behind them, and turned to Gideon. “They don’t trust you,” she explained, moving to sit down on the bed. “It’s difficult for them to trust that anyone outside of the program has our best interests in mind– especially Phyrra.”

“What about Crown?” Gideon lowered her voice, unsure if she should be whispering. “And the Angel?”

“They have a working relationship. It’s very different from having an outsider in their midst.” Harrow sighed. “I’ll talk to them. But first-” she paused, frowning. “How are you feeling?”

“Honestly, pretty good.” Gideon allowed herself to flop onto the bed, arms splayed. There was a twinge when her back hit the mattress and jostled her shoulder, but it was surprisingly minor. “I thought I’d be way more laid up, if I even survived.”

Harrow wrinkled her nose as if the phrase offended her. “I wouldn’t let you die,” she said.

There was a heavy pause, and then Harrow turned and crawled forward onto the bed until she was leaning over Gideon. Her face was framed by the ceiling light, giving the appearance of a fuzzy halo. Gideon’s mouth was suddenly dry.

“I wanted to thank you,” Harrow said. “Your actions saved my life twice over, now. It is a debt I cannot repay.”

“Stop making it so weird,” Gideon said.

“I’m not making it weird.”

There was intent in the way Harrow hovered over her, but there was also hesitation. Harrow’s elbows were locked straight, keeping her torso hovering above Gideon’s. Gideon stared up at her, looking for intent in Harrow’s wide, dark eyes.

Harrow’s gaze flicked down to Gideon’s lips, just for a moment.

It was the confirmation Gideon needed. She lifted herself up on her good elbow to meet Harrow’s lips.

Chapter 8

Notes:

Updating the chapter count as this got a little longer than anticipated! Appreciate all the sweet comments and kudos.

8

Gideon pressed her lips gently into Harrow’s, and for a long, terrifying moment Harrow didn’t move. Then her lips parted in a surprised breath and she was pressing back. Gideon led Harrow down until she was lying on her back with Harrow on top of her, Harrow’s body caging hers in a way that made Gideon want to arch and writhe. Harrow remained rigid, carefully holding herself away from the wound that Gideon had already almost forgotten. Gideon shifted to pull Harrow closer, wanting to be flush with her, to feel the heat of her skin. It put just a bit too much pressure on Gideon’s chest, and she hissed. Harrow drew back immediately as if stung, mouth already opening to form words, but Gideon reached out with her good arm and caught her by the back of the neck. “Don’t go,” she said, “we’ll be careful.”

Harrow let herself be pulled back in, and their lips met again, bolder this time. Until moments ago, Gideon had no idea if Harrow had ever even kissed anyone, but despite her hesitation there was a confidence to the way Harrow pressed herself into Gideon. Gideon let her fingers scrape over Harrow’s scalp, and Harrow licked tentatively at Gideon’s lower lip. Gideon was just considering if she was brave enough to grab Harrow’s ass when there was a knock at the door.

Harrow leapt back again, practically crossing the entire room in a single, panicked motion. She ran a self-conscious hand through her hair, as if it were long enough to be noticeably mussed, and then opened the door.

Phyrra stood there, wearing a smirk that suggested she knew exactly what they had been doing moments ago. She gave a languid look between the two of them before saying, “that car you parked in our driveway is stolen, right?”

“Oh,” Harrow said, and her cheeks were noticeably pink. “Yes. We should deal with that immediately.”

“Don’t worry about it, you can rest up,” Phyrra was already turning away, giving a casual shrug. “Or do… whatever. I’ll go sink it in a lake.”

Harrow stood in the doorway for a moment, watching her go. Finally, she closed the door and turned back to Gideon. The blush hadn’t faded from her cheeks, although she was simultaneously glaring. Gideon blinked back at her.

“I didn’t-” Harrow took a deep breath, composing herself. “I didn’t expect that.”

“The interruption, or the makeout?” Gideon asked. She was still splayed on the bed and didn’t feel any inclination to get up. It was comfortable, her arm still hurt, and she was hoping Harrow would return to make out some more.

“Both were unexpected,” Harrow admitted, “but I was referring to the kiss.”

Gideon reluctantly sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed to look Harrow in the eye. “I didn’t plan on it either.” She paused for a moment. She wanted very badly to kiss Harrow again, but there was something niggling in the back of her mind. She finally said, haltingly, “I don’t want you to be doing this as some kind of thank you for saving your life.”

Harrow scoffed. “That’s not what this is.”

Gideon brightened immediately. “Okay, good. Then come here so I can kiss you again.”

Harrow glanced back to the door as if expecting someone else to burst through it, but then walked back to the bed. She stood in between Gideon’s knees, making Gideon tip her head back to look her in the eye. They were so dark, almost entirely black, doubly so from Harrow’s blown open pupils. Moving slowly, Harrow raised one thin hand to cup Gideon’s cheek. She traced the ridge of Gideon’s cheekbone to the edge of her jaw, and then down until her fingers rested against Gideon’s jugular. Gideon swallowed, and she could feel the pressure of Harrow’s fingers there- not light but not pressing, just a firm presence. Gideon finally lost patience and reached up to pull Harrow down into another kiss. Harrow moved with her easily, allowing herself to be hoisted onto Gideon’s lap until she was straddling Gideon’s hips. They kissed like that for a long moment, Harrow’s hand firm against Gideon’s throat. Their kissing grew in intensity, deepening until Gideon was lightheaded. Harrow nipped at her lower lip, and Gideon felt her heart stutter. Harrow did it again, and Gideon finally realized that Harrow’s fingers were at her throat to monitor her heart rate.

“Unfair,” Gideon murmured against Harrow’s lips. As revenge, she cocked her head to the side and licked up Harrow’s throat.

Harrow gasped, and her fingers finally left Gideon’s neck to clutch at her back. She arched her neck back to give Gideon full access and Gideon made good use of it, biting and sucking bruising kisses from Harrow’s jawline to her collarbone. Harrow marked without Gideon even having to try, each kiss leaving a flushed red spot behind it. Gideon felt dizzy with the ease of it.

Harrow’s hips moved, just slightly, canting forward on Gideon’s lap in a desperate, involuntary twitch. Gideon moaned against Harrow’s neck, and then Harrow placed a firm hand on Gideon’s chest.

“Wait,” she said, and she sounded breathless, dazed. Gideon smirked but allowed herself to be pushed back until they could look at each other properly again. Harrow looked completely debauched, her lips swollen and cheeks blotchy. She was staring at Gideon’s lips even as she said, “we should– I need to determine what to do next, and you need to recover.”

Gideon nodded, releasing her hold on Harrow’s hips so that she could awkwardly stand, legs coltlike. “I’m going to discuss plans with the others,” Harrow said, “and you should rest.”

Gideon recognized the tone of someone making their escape. It had been overwhelming, and as much as she wanted to continue, she could reluctantly admit that it would be a bad idea to go farther right now. Something Ianthe had droned on about regarding trauma bonding, or unhealthy coping mechanisms, or whatever. Gideon nodded and flopped back onto the bed again.

“I’ll hang out here,” she said lightly. Harrow gave her one tiny, grateful smile, and then she was out the door.

Gideon lay there for a moment, feeling a dazed kind of satisfaction. There was a tension that had released that she didn’t even realize she had been holding, and after a few minutes Gideon realized it was the knowledge that Harrow actually liked her and wasn’t just tolerating her presence due to extenuating circumstances. Eventually Gideon sat up and did some stretches, experimented with one-armed pushups (bad idea, still hurt), and then alternated between squats and lunges until her quads felt a familiar, satisfying burn. She decided that Harrow had probably had enough time to deal with whatever she was compartmentalizing and walked back out of the room.

Gideon found all four of them in the dining room, clustered around a battered old laptop that Camilla was sitting in front of. When Gideon walked in, all sets of eyes whipped around to look at her.

“Hi?” Gideon said, feeling a strange hostility that hadn’t been there this morning. She had a momentary terror that Harrow had shared how horrible she’d been at making out, and everyone was judging her, before discarding the thought as stupid.

“Sit down,” Phyrra said, crossing her arms. Gideon hesitated, looking at Harrow, but Harrow was just staring at her with wide eyes. Gideon could still see the marks on her neck. She pulled out a chair on the opposite side of the table and sat slowly.

Palamedes spoke up from where he was hovering behind Camilla’s shoulder. He was holding a notepad covered in narrow, cramped writing. “What’s your last name, Gideon?”

“Gaius,” she answered, and there was a palpable cringe through the room. Gideon frowned. “Okay, what’s going on?”

“Your father is John Gaius of Gaius Biotechnology,” Palamedes said, more of a statement than a question.

“Yeah. He works there when he’s not lecturing at the university. He founded the company when I was a kid.” Gideon gave an awkward, crooked grin. “I’m going to be staying with him for a bit until I find my own place.”

Camilla’s dark complexion had paled, and Phyrra looked like she was seriously considering crushing Gideon’s head between her hands. Gideon tried to subtly shift to allow herself to stand up quickly if needed. Instead, Phyrra whirled to Harrow.

“You knew about this,” she accused.

Harrow shook her head violently. “I never knew her identity. She didn’t share her last name–”

“And you never thought to ask? You never got even a little curious during all of your driving and makeout sessions? You never wondered why she showed up outside the compound?”

“Hang on,” Gideon said, “I wasn’t there on purpose. The highway was closed and I was just trying to find a way around.”

Phyrra barked out a disbelieving laugh, and Camilla and Palamedes both frowned. Palamedes said, softly, “Gideon, do you know what your father’s business does?”

“They do a bunch of genetic research, or something. Ianthe- my ex- she would try to explain stuff, but,” Gideon shrugged lamely. She felt as if she’d been called to the front of the class and gotten the answer wrong. Palamedes was staring at her intently.

“You really didn’t know,” he said softly, sounding both accusatory and awed. “You really had no idea what your father was part of.”

“Total bullshit,” Phyrra countered. “She has to know something. And even if, somehow, she doesn’t-” that bitter smile was back, not reaching her eyes. “His blood flows through her veins. She was part of it even if she didn’t know about it.”

Palamedes frowned, then looked at her and asked, “Who is your mother, Gideon?”

Gideon was getting whiplash from the sudden changes in topic, and it was beginning to feel like an interrogation. “I don’t know,” she said, “She died before I was born.” Palamedes and Phyrra exchanged a significant glance, and Gideon had enough. She pushed the chair back and stood. “Okay,” she said, “time to let me know what the hell is going on if you’re going to keep acting like I’ve done something wrong.”

Palamedes sighed, and he looked to Harrow. Harrow frowned and turned to Gideon, folding her hands on the table. She began hesitatingly, quietly. “You know that we were the results of genetic experiments. The government worked hand in hand with a private company to conduct those experiments- Gaius Biotechnology. Their combined forces made up the First House.”

Gideon couldn’t say anything. It didn't make sense. Her dad did genetic experiments, but the only test subjects she had ever seen were a pair of mice her dad had brought home with bright blue eyes. Gideon had loved them as a child, and taught them to run through hoops for treats.

“Your father was never directly involved with the compound,” Palamedes cut in, “I’ve never met the man. But the technologies that created us, the processes that raised us and trained us–”

“Tortured us,” Phyrra supplied, and Palamedes nodded.

“They were developed by John directly.”

Gideon was shaking her head even before they finished speaking. “He’s not like that,” she whispered. “He wouldn’t do that.”

“But he did,” Phyrra said.

Palamedes put a hand on Camilla’s shoulder. “The plan we’ve been developing, the entire purpose we’ve been working towards for years has been to shut his research down and–”

“Do not give her any more details,” Phyrra spat. “The last thing we need is her running back to daddy and giving him the down-low on exactly where we are and what we’re doing.”

“This is an opportunity,” Palamedes countered. “So much of the problem has been finding anyone who could get close to him, and we finally have the perfect solution right in front of us.”

Harrow was watching Gideon intently as the two bickered, and Gideon looked back at her. The world felt like it was spinning, but Gideon couldn’t rip her eyes from Harrow’s when she asked, “what were you going to do to him?”

Harrow stared back at her for a long moment. Her eyes were so dark, two empty wells in her thin face that Gideon felt like she might fall into. Harrow was very quiet when she spoke.

“I desire nothing more than to kill him.”

Gideon left. She simply turned around and walked out of the room. There was an immediate clamour behind her, Camilla and Phyrra rushing after her, but Gideon picked up the pace, slamming through the house until she escaped onto the front porch. There Camilla finally caught up to her, grabbing her arm and instantly putting her into a standing arm bar that forced Gideon to double over.

“Let go of me,” Gideon said, feeling deadly calm. “I’m leaving.”

“We can’t let you,” Camilla said, and she actually sounded regretful. “Not now. Not when you could tell him everything about us.”

Gideon writhed in Camilla’s hold, but with only one good arm it was useless. Camilla pressed her down until Gideon was kneeling on the weathered wood of the porch, her one good arm trapped above her. “I won’t tell him,” Gideon said, and she didn’t realize there were tears in her eyes until she had to blink them away. “I won’t tell him anything. I swear to you. Just let me go.”

There was the noise of the front door banging open again and then there were three pairs of feet surrounding her. Harrow dropped to her knees to match Gideon’s height, folding her hands in her lap. She reached out and touched Gideon’s chin, drawing it up with one thin finger until Gideon met her eyes. Harrow’s face was impassive.

“Do you actually want to leave?” She asked.

“I have to go,” Gideon said, “I can’t be part of this.”

“We can tie her tongue,” Harrow said, and she glanced up at Palamedes as she spoke.

“No,” he said immediately. “What you’re thinking of is incredibly dangerous. If she does speak about it, it could kill her.”

“What is the alternative?” Harrow demanded, rising back to her feet. She was a full two heads shorter than Palamedes, yet she drew herself up as if preparing to tower over him. “To keep her against her will? To hold her here, in the same manner we were held? Perhaps we should just kill her, if her existence is such a danger to us.”

“I’m not necessarily against that,” Phyrra cut in, and Gideon felt her heart rate ratchet up to new heights.

“We have to let her go,” Harrow concluded, “and this is the safest way.”

Palamedes abruptly turned away and walked the length of the deck, turning on his heel at the end and walking back. He gave a deep exhale. “Fine. We’ll need to prepare this properly. It’ll take time.”

“Stay for the night,” Harrow said, to Gideon this time. “In the morning you can leave.”

“Just one night to develop a theorem to bind her tongue on this entire topic?” Palamedes demanded, but Harrow just glared at him.

“Yes.”

He took of his glasses, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and then replaced them. “Fine. I’ll gather the necessary materials.” With that he turned and walked back inside. Camilla released Gideon and she nearly fell ungracefully to the deck, barely catching herself in time. She stood, shooting Camilla a glare. Camilla just gave her a sympathetic glance and then followed Palamedes inside. Phyrra was still standing and glaring at her, arms crossed.

“For the record,” she said, “I think this is an enormous, completely unnecessary risk that could compromise everything we’ve worked for.”

“Noted,” Harrow said coolly. “I’ll join Palamedes.” Then she was walking through the front door as well, leaving Gideon kneeling next to Phyrra. Phyrra sighed and then stuck a hand out. Gideon hesitated for a moment before taking it, allowing herself to be pulled to her feet.

“I hope you know I don’t actually want you dead,” Phyrra said. “You have to understand how hard we’ve worked for this. What it means to all of us.”

Gideon glared. “I have to understand how much killing my dad means to you?”

“Not just that.” Phyrra’s voice rose again. “Try to actually consider what we went through. Shutting down the program and preventing others from going through the hell that we experienced has been my mission for the past six years.”

The problem was that Gideon could understand. She could see exactly why they were all so angry, and she couldn’t even blame them, as much as she wanted to. The problem was simply–

“He’s still my dad,” Gideon said, quiet.

Phyrra nodded. Then she turned and followed the others inside, leaving Gideon standing alone on the porch. For a moment Gideon considered turning and running, back to the road and the highway, waving her arms until someone stopped and picked her up. She thought about going to the cops, or the hospital, or getting on the phone and calling her dad and telling him everything. Everyone would be shocked at how terrible the program was, and everyone would realize that the situation was horrible, and they would fix this.

But Gideon remembered the armed men at the bar and the bus station. The briefcase with manacles and collars. The cops on the road and the helicopters. She remembered that sometimes her dad would look at her and it was as if he was looking straight through her, at something far away that only he could see. Sometimes he would come home late, lock himself in his office, and sob.

Gideon walked back inside.

Notes:

Thank you to AC, Crates and Onion <3
You can find me on tumblr.