They left first. Fourteen minutes of boots and gear and Hikari trying to hug everyone and Marco getting emotional in the doorway, and then the front hall was empty and the house had that ringing quiet you only get after a lot of people go somewhere dangerous.
Braxton was on the porch smoking a synth-cigarette he hadn't lit. He didn't ask where the second van was going. He didn't ask why my name wasn't on the contract roster he'd handed me himself.
He just said, "Zero six hundred."
"Zero six hundred."
"Whatever's in Sector Twelve." He tapped ash off the unlit end. "It's not going to be what the readouts say."
"I know."
"You don't." He looked at me sideways with one exhausted eye. "You think you know. That's different. That's how people end up as a smear on a wall with a really confident expression." He put the cigarette away. "Go on. And Nakano. If someone's standing on that block waiting for you, don't talk to them for as long as you want to."
