“So no Milwaukee.”

“No.”

“But we also said no to Kansas City, Rancho Cucamonga, Silver Spring…”

Eli sighed and set his head against the table. Dawn slouched back in her chair.

“We should just go live in the woods,” she said, tossing her pencil onto her notepad.

Eli tilted his head. “We already live in the woods.”

“I’m thinking something more feral.” Dawn nodded slowly. “You know, the whole adapt, survive, overcome thing.”

“And go without toilets?”

“Damn. Yeah, never mind.”

Eli forced himself to stand and wander over to the kitchen. Sherry was, unfortunately, excellent about stocking the pantry with fruit, and not with chips. He opened and closed the cabinet doors just for something to do.

“What do you want in the city, anyway?” he asked.

“Hm?”

“What do you want to do?”

Aha—a can of hot cocoa mix. He grabbed it and started rummaging for mugs.

“Was thinking of going back to school, actually,” Dawn said, sliding out of her chair to lean on the counter and watch the hot cocoa process. Eli paused halfway to the fridge.

“Then what are we doing looking at cities?” He gestured to the laptops. “We should look for colleges, what programs you want!”

Dawn smiled. “Do you really want to be in the same city as me?”

“Of course.” Eli grabbed the milk and sniffed it. “This good?” He held it out to Dawn, who sniffed it and nodded. He grinned. “See? What would I do without you?”

“That’s a good question, though,” Dawn said as he dug up a saucepan. “What are you going to do?”

“Um…” He let the cocoa process buy him more time. Milk on the stove, then checking the fridge for whipped cream… “I don’t know yet.”

“Okay.” Dawn shifted. “What’d you study in school?”

He bit his lip. Somehow, it felt silly saying it here.

“Not sure my major was the right path for me, to be honest.” He pointed to the cabinets. “You wanna help me find some sprinkles?”

Dawn rolled her eyes and reached for the doors. “Some scary detective you are, Valenz.”

“Who’s the one looking for the sprinkles, Kerighin?”

#

After two cups of hot cocoa and a few internet searches on engineering programs for Dawn, Eli found himself adrift again. Banneker was upstairs, checking the security feeds. Grim had gone off to make phone calls. The only other voices in the house were the ones coming from the basement.

He hesitated at the door, then descended down the worn wooden steps. It would only take a second to say hello. Surely at least Sherry wouldn’t mind.

The lab was just as Eli had seen it over a week ago. Clean, shiny, orderly. The only difference was that two figures moved through it now, their motions betraying the years behind their partnership. Sherry only had to finish half a sentence before Ambrose handed her the proper tool. In turn, Ambrose didn’t even need to look her way as he navigated the lab, spouting notes and observations as she jotted them down on specific tablets placed throughout the space. The procedure was almost a dance, one that neither partner could possibly manage with anyone else.

Unwilling to break their rhythm, Eli was about to head back upstairs when Sherry spotted him.

“We’ve got a visitor.” She nudged Ambrose with her elbow, then gestured to Eli. “Want to come in?”

Ambrose glanced up through his goggles. “Sherry, I’m sure he won’t find any of this interesting—“

“Sure,” Eli said. Before he knew it, he was reaching for the spare gloves and goggles placed by the lab door. “It is all, uh…stable in there, right?”

“Completely radioactive,” Ambrose muttered. Sherry nudged him harder, and he let slip a ghost of a smile. “Perfectly stable. Come in.”

If Eli thought the herbal whiffs of icefall outside the glass structure were pungent, he should have guessed at its strength within. He stepped back and wrinkled his nose immediately.

“You’ll get used to the smell pretty quickly,” Sherry said, tapping at a tablet in the corner. “Go on, have a look around.”

Two weeks ago, this place would have been a treasure trove for Eli. The cases of icefall under the tables, the screens filled with information, the scientists themselves just letting him in. Today, his excitement had a different shade to it. Not only was he still looking for answers, but he felt lighter at simply being in the space. Feeling the familiarity of a lab.

“What are you working on today?” he asked, glancing over the tablet Sherry had been working on. It displayed a complex chart, with a dozen other tabs open. He held back from scrolling through the chart, lest Sherry lose her spot in the work.

“To keep it simple,” Ambrose said as he placed vials into a fridge, “we’re looking at icefall’s effects on white blood cell counts. But it’s been slow going today.”

Eli wandered closer to his workspace. He had mentioned medical research at the bar…

“Do you…only do medical work?”

Sherry scoffed. “If only.”

Ambrose straightened and shook his head. “It’s the goal, but unfortunately, our methods of securing the icefall require us to develop the…less ideal potions in our arsenal.”

Eli bent to look at the test tubes of icefall next to Ambrose. The clear vines, suspended in an oily solution, refracted light like crystal. As he moved his head, different colors splayed over the glass.

“You mean like your shields and freezing potions?” he said.

“Shields, freezing, invisibility, illusion, energy release…” Ambrose grimaced. “Feels like two steps forward, one step back, when you think about how much icefall goes into our attempts to retrieve more icefall.”

The fluorescent lights suddenly made Ambrose look more drawn than usual. Sherry reached out and squeezed his arm.

“How long have you been doing this?” Eli pointed between them. “The research, I mean. Not the icefall theft.”

“Almost twenty years, for me,” Sherry said, eyes warm as she looked at Ambrose. “Can you believe I met this boy when he was an intern?”

Ambrose turned a sheepish smile to the floor. Eli felt a laugh bubble in his throat—Icefall, a little white-coated intern? Logging notes and getting coffee?

His laugh died before it could surface. So that’s what Ambrose had been before all this. He had just been a scientist.

How had he gone from a lab coat to leather gloves and a gun harness so quickly?

Eli opened his mouth to formulate another question when a disembodied voice crackled from a speaker in the wall.

“Drone!” Banneker shouted from the intercom. “Shut down!”

Ambrose’s hand whipped to a button on the glass structure. All lights immediately shut off in the basement, save for a white glow emanating from the icefall cases. Before Eli could react, Ambrose grabbed his arm and tugged him down under a table.

“Don’t move,” he whispered. Sherry knelt under the table with them, and he threw his arm over her shoulders.

“Agency?” Eli breathed. Ambrose just shook his head and held a finger to his lips.

They hunched in place for several minutes, listening to nothing but their own short-cycled breaths. Eli tensed in a half-crouch, gauging how quickly he could move from table to table. He saw no other exit out of this basement, but if the agency came down shooting, the cracked glass could obscure them, just for a second, just long enough for him to grab something sharp and get close to the door…

On Ambrose’s other side, Sherry’s lips moved in a soundless prayer. Ambrose himself kept his eyes locked on the staircase. Slowly, he moved his hand out of his pocket and placed a small metal lockbox on the floor.

The basement door creaked, and he flipped open the latch.

“False alarm,” Grim’s voice called down the stairs. “Consumer drone. Some idiot flying it over the lake.”

Banneker’s voice crackled again over the intercom. “I’m gonna go shoot it out of the sky with my drone—“

“No, you’re not!” Grim closed the door, and footsteps echoed up to the second floor.

Sherry clutched Ambrose’s arm in relief. Ambrose quickly slid the lockbox back into his pocket.

“Apologies,” he mumbled, ducking out from under the table and offering a hand to both Sherry and Eli. “This happens every now and then.”

“Now and then?” Eli repeated. As he stood, the fluorescents flickered back on.

“About once a month.” Ambrose held on to Sherry after he helped her up. “I can finish this procedure myself. Why don’t you go upstairs with Eli—“

“I’m fine,” she said too sharply, her hand trembling on Ambrose’s arm. Eli gently took Sherry’s other arm.

“Come on,” he said. “It’s all right to take a second after that. Dawn and I can make you the last of the hot cocoa while Ames wraps up.”

Ambrose was, in fact, already leaning over a microscope—but Eli thought he saw his wrist shake as he dropped his hand into the pocket with the lockbox. “Sherry, I’ll be right up when I’m done, I promise.”

“You better.” She brushed his arm one more time before turning for the door. Ambrose caught Eli’s gaze and gave a small nod. Eli returned the gesture, then ushered Sherry out of the lab.