Jude repeated the name quietly, more to himself than to her, and rapped two knuckles on Satsuki's hood.
The vehicle was already moving. Military database, personnel records, service history — the search ran in the background without ceremony.
"Former soldier," Bette added. "Active military, until recently."
"Good." Jude nodded. "Now we're having an actual conversation."
Bette didn't continue. She scanned both ends of the alley with the methodical sweep of someone who'd been trained to do it, then looked back at him. "Can we not do this here? I don't like alleys."
"Get back in the cart. I'll take you to a safe house."
She blinked. "You have a safe house."
"I had a disagreement with some local gangs a while back. Precautionary measure."
Bette filed that away without comment. The food truck owner who'd just run a diversion on a two-squad military cordon had safe houses. She was choosing not to examine that too closely, because she didn't have the luxury of being selective right now. She folded herself back into the storage shelf and pulled the panel shut behind her.
Jude got on Satsuki and headed for the rental.
He hadn't been lying about the place. It was a cheap room in an unremarkable building on an unremarkable street — no nearby commercial strips, no foot traffic, nothing to draw attention. He rarely used it himself. With Satsuki's remote monitoring covering the perimeter, it was more secure than it looked, which was the point.
"How'd sales go?" Satsuki asked as they moved.
"Fine. We'll make up the spicy strips tomorrow. Losing a day doesn't kill anyone."
Which was true, though they still managed to cover several blocks of customers on the way — Snart materializing from somewhere to collect a bag without breaking stride, Cisco jogging up with his usual enthusiasm, Joe flagging them down at a corner, Danton passing with a wave, Felicity catching them near the riverside promenade and immediately having opinions.
Over the past nine months, buying something from Jude's cart whenever they crossed paths had quietly become a habit for most of them. Nobody had ever encountered bad food. That track record held even now, with spicy strips — a snack that had no business appealing to any of these people's palates — somehow going down smoothly anyway.
Felicity had thoughts about this.
"Every time you put something completely unreasonable on the menu, my taste buds get recalibrated." She held up a strip and examined it with the expression of someone conducting a forensic analysis. "At this rate I'll be able to eat anything. Have you considered doing British food next? As a challenge?"
"Such a beautiful woman," Jude said, shaking his head mournfully. "Why does she have a mouth like that?"
"Barry and Oliver have both said something similar, for what it's worth."
"They're right. You don't sound like a world-class expert in anything."
"Unfortunately, I am." Felicity grinned. "There are maybe five hackers on the planet who could give me a real problem. Possibly four." She ate the rest of the strip. "Anyway — I have to get back to Star City. Train's tonight."
"Did you finish what you came for?"
"More or less. I mostly came to see Barry — I heard things have been eventful for him since the accident." She paused. "I can't tell you the specifics yet. We'll have to wait until your memory comes back."
"Fair enough. Safe travels."
"Come visit Star City sometime. I mean it."
"Next time," Jude said, and meant it approximately forty percent.
The journey was considerably less comfortable for the person wedged into the lower storage shelf.
Bette had been running on empty since the base — no food, no real rest, nothing that qualified as a moment to breathe. Now she was lying in a compartment that smelled of cooking oil and Japanese spices, listening to Jude chat and laugh with an apparently endless series of customers, the smell of something warm and spiced drifting down every time the serving window opened.
Her stomach had strong opinions about this that she was working to suppress.
When is he getting to the safe house.
Eventually — after what felt much longer than the actual distance warranted — the cart swayed to a stop. Jude climbed off, went to the door, did something with the handle that Bette couldn't see from her angle, and came back.
The side panel creaked open.
"We're here. Get inside quickly."
Bette unfolded herself out of the shelf, straightened up, and took her first full breath in what felt like hours. She followed Jude toward the door — then stopped.
"What?"
"I can't—" She looked down at her hands. "I can't close the door for you. I'm trying not to touch anything that isn't myself, right now."
Jude looked at her hands. Then at her face. He didn't ask.
He turned around, closed the door himself, and went inside.
Behind them, the nanobots got to work — invisible, methodical, peeling the false-wallpaper overlay off the door and returning the exterior to the ordinary rental unit it appeared to be. Doorknob back in place. If someone tried the handle now, they'd walk into an empty room.
Inside, Bette stood in the middle of the small space and took a slow inventory.
Clean floors, wiped furniture — not obsessively neat, but tended. The walls had seen better decades. Curtains drawn, windows sealed. Street outside was quiet. No visible security hardware, no emergency cache, no reinforced anything.
This is what a food truck owner's safe house looks like, she thought, without malice. I was expecting too much.
"Alright." Jude sat down across from her. "Tell me what's going on."
"You probably won't believe me."
"Try."
Bette was quiet for a moment. Then she began.
"About ten months ago, I'd just come back from a deployment in Afghanistan. There was a report of a roadside bomb in the city center — I was part of the unit sent to disarm it." She looked at her hands as she spoke. "The bomb went off while I was on it. Shrapnel, serious injuries. I survived, barely. They brought me back to the base for treatment."
"I spent months recovering. When I finally came through, they told me the bomb's detonation had nothing to do with the disarmament attempt — it hadn't even been armed yet." Her voice was level, but there was something underneath it that had been living there a long time. "What nearly killed me wasn't the bomb."
She looked up.
"It was the mutation happening inside my own body."
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