The next morning I slipped out before Kaela stirred, catching the first rail-cab toward the Hives. Peachveil’s maglev system spider-webbed through every sector, but Chromeline’s lines were dedicated, sleek loops that shuttled residents to the towering Hive blocks. The cars came every couple of hours, surprisingly well-kept for this part of the city. Each cab could pack a dozen riders shoulder to shoulder. This morning, though, it was just me and my thoughts.

  I sank into the hard seat, stretching my leg as the fresh bandages tugged against the stitches. The pain was grounding. Last night’s chaos played back in fragments: Jared’s corpse swaying on rusted rebar, Gnaw’s metal jaw gleaming in the dust, Kaela’s laughter as bullets tore past us. And then her warmth pressed against me in the dark, soft where I hadn’t expected softness. That was the part I didn’t want to replay, no matter how good it felt to let go. I had to focus on the mission, and I cursed myself for getting distracted.

  I slipped out of the cab onto Hive 34’s loading dock, the pavement still slick from yesterday’s rain. The morning crowd was spilling out, wearing their recently pressed suits and polished shoes, casting wary glances at my bloodied jacket thrown over Kaela’s oversized spare clothes. Mercs had their place in Peachveil, sure, but no one liked standing too close. Violence had a habit of following us, and I couldn’t exactly argue with the superstition.

  I patted my jacket until I found my vape, took a long pull of my custom blend, and let the burn crawl down my throat. Lab-grown THC with a stimulant edge, just enough to wake me up and sand down the nerves. I held the cloud in until it ached, then exhaled as I stepped into the Hive’s main hall. By the time I climbed into an empty elevator, the haze was already softening the morning.

  The lift clunked and screeched as it rose, metal groaning like it hated the effort. I never trusted these things. Every few days one was shut down for maintenance, which usually meant stripping another broken car for parts. I slipped out the gate the second it cracked open, not giving it the chance to stall with me inside.

  The halls were the same as always, winding narrow arteries of corporate housing, a mix of bleach stench and mold underneath. A pair of junkies sprawled across the floor, still breathing, fresh violation tickets blinking on their chests courtesy of the security drones that hovered along each level. Fines for “obstructing the walkways,” as if anyone expected them to pay. I blew another cloud into the sensor eye of one drone and got a scolding chorus of beeps and lights. I gave it the finger, keyed in my code, and slipped inside my apartment.

  Once inside, I peeled off the jacket and looked over the damage. It was caked in dried blood and dirt from the Ash, but only had a few scrapes and frays. It would be fine after a clean, just with a little more character. I stripped out of the borrowed clothes, and then threw everything into the hamper.

  I dug in my drawers for fresh socks, panties, and a bralette, aggravated that I had lost my last real bra to the gore. I tugged on a pair of black canvas pants that hung loose at my legs but hugged my ass, and tight white crop top with the letters MSG in bold red. The wound in my leg was seeping again, and would probably soak through the bandages before I made it to Saint. My buzz was keeping most of the pain away, but I still felt the stitches catching against the bandage as I got dressed.

  I only kept one weapon in my apartment, a polished chrome antipersonnel hand cannon that hurt my wrist when I fired it. It was something between a large caliber pistol and a sawed-off shotgun. I made sure it was full of ammo, and tucked it into a leather holster that fit onto my belt in the small of my back. I had better options at the Nest, but this would be good enough for now if anything else went fucking sideways before I got my claws fixed. I pulled on an oversized black and grey zip up hoodie that reached my thighs to cover the weapon, flipping the hood up over my head, but leaving it unzipped as I headed back out of the apartment.

  About an hour after I’d cleaned up at my place, I was already limping across the grounds of OmniCore HQ, heading for the MechanoDoc lab. Each step shot a dull ache up from my thigh, and it got worse on the stairs, but I forced my pace. I took another drag from my vape, bracing for Kade’s inevitable lecture.

  I’d already pinged him, so at least I knew he didn’t have another patient clogging the bench. My leg was bad enough that I didn’t want to wait another second. Luckily he would have all the modern tech needed to patch me up for good quickly. Field medicine was fine for emergencies, but the good shit needed stuff you couldn’t just haul around without some kind of specialized vehicle. He was already prepping the table for me when I arrived. I hadn’t given him a list of the damages, I wanted the scans to make sure I didn’t miss anything.

  “Christ, Amara… what the hell happened out there?” he asked, already linking into my internals.

  “What didn’t happen? I was tracking Vera’s rogue asset through the Ash, pulled intel from the Flicker, and found him hanging in the back of an alley.”

  “That explains the lung filters needing a purge, maybe. What about the rest?” Saint pressed.

  “Tried to pull clues from the scene, got ambushed by some Rats.”

  “You couldn’t handle a couple methed-out cutters?” he teased.

  “I handled a couple just fine. There were more than a couple. Too many. Had to bolt. Got run down by bike raiders, snapped my claws yanking one off his ride. Took a blade in the leg. Almost bled out until Kaela—”

  I cut myself short, but too late. Saint had that effect on me. He had a soothing air to him that made me talk more than I usually would.

  “Kaela Draven?” he asked, not acknowledging my stumble. “She’s solid. She patch you up?”

  “Yeah. Hauled me out, put some stitches in.”

  “That’s all?” His tone was casual, but his eyes flicked sharp for a second.

  I froze. Couldn’t tell him she’d fucked me senseless not long after. Couldn’t tell him I ghosted her either. Just like I’d walked out on him, I reminded myself with shame.

  “Looks like it,” he said suddenly, eyes back on the scan display.

  Relief hit hard. If he caught the tension, he was choosing to let it drop. For someone that didn’t like entanglements, I had a fair amount of baggage with the people around me. I really needed to lock that down before it got any worse.

  “Alright, let’s get that leg wound patched up before anything else. Show me how it looks.” He gestured to my leg before rolling over a large medical cart.

  I shimmied on the table enough to grab my waistband, and started slipping my pants off so he could have access to the wound. I wasn’t thrilled about having hands on my inner thighs again, and cursed myself for getting the wound in the first place. Saint probed at my leg with gloved hands, his touch was deliberate and firm, a stark contrast to Kaela. He cut the bandage free and removed it quickly, careful of the snagging material but I still winced from a few of the tugs.

  “This cut is pretty gnarly. Doesn’t look like a knife blade though. What happened?” He asked, examining the wound.

  “I tumbled when I ripped that dude off the bike. When my claw broke off I think it caught my leg as I rolled. I’m not totally sure, a lot was happening at once.”

  “Ah, yeah that would make more sense with the way it tears here. Okay, these stitches are well done, but I’m going to have to remove them to apply the TD patch.” He nodded.

  He produced a few tools, quickly jabbed a cocktail of medicine into my thigh, and began snipping the stitches and gently tugging them free, but even with the blast of meds I could feel them drag in the unhealed wound. I squeezed my eyes closed, and leaned back trying to ignore the pain as he meticulously removed all the stitches. I felt a trickle of hot blood run down from the uppermost corner, and a quick hand wiped at it brushing fingertips against the edge of my panties and I jumped at the sensation.

  “Easy...” Saint chimed, his tone focused and clinical.

  I sighed and tried to think about literally anything else, but the pressure in the sensitive flesh was pretty demanding. He grabbed another injector and hit the quick release trigger, sending another wave of pain killers and whatever else into my leg. A moment later my whole leg was dead numb, and I couldn’t feel a thing below my waist. I wished he had started with that.

  Saint swapped tools, drawing out a probe that oozed orange gel and lit it with a diffused laser. The substance hissed as it sealed torn tissue, filling the air with a chemical tang. Once he ran that down the length of the wound, he turned it off and set it aside to produce a patch of translucent material from a sealed tub labeled ThermalDerm. The obvious fog of cold storange rolled away from both the tub and the patch as he held it in the air.

  He grabbed a pair of scissors from a sanitized cup and snipped a strip of the material a little larger than my wound. He peeled a film off one side, slipping the sticky clear material over the gel he just heated on my thigh. The patch and the hot gel began to fuse together, forming a skin like bond over the wound as he massaged it into place. At a glance, you could barely tell there was anything there when he was done, aside from a slight sheen from the top layer of the patch.

  “Alright, that should finish bonding in a few minutes. It will last for a bout a week and then flake away on it’s own like dead skin. Don’t pick at it, just let it do what it needs to do.”

  “Wow, that’s actually pretty cool. I’ve heard you talk about these but this is the first time I’ve seen one.” I said, looking over the patch.

  He rubbed at it a few places, evening out a few bubbles in the gel, resting his hand on my leg as he leaned in to watch closely for any more.

  “I hope I’m not interrupting anything unsavory on company time.”

  A woman’s voice cut into the air like a knife. I sighed and glanced over at her approach as her heels clicked across the tiled floor. Vera Korrin. I had to stop myself from rolling my eyes. She was laser focused as usual, datapad tucked in one hand while she tapped furiously with the other.

  “This is a sterile area, stay back ten feet please.” Saint sat up with an annoyed grimace forming.

  Vera’s eyes shot up at him, feigning surprise. She glanced at a yellow line on the floor indicating the sterile zone. She took a single step past it to make her point and stopped, standing firm and composed as if nothing had happened. She flicked away a stream of data and locked eyes with me as Saint moved to examine my broken claw implant.

  “Asset Nyx, status report.”

  “Good Morning to you too, Vera.” I groaned.

  I purposefully made her wait as I adjusted position on the table for Kade to get better look at the shattered claws after he removed the forearm panel. He made a face, likely picturing the strain involved to snap the mechanics. He shook his head as he began poking around with a small light. He tilted and turned my arm trying to fully assess the damage to confirm what the scan readout had told him before he started. I could feel Vera’s expectant gaze starting to bore a hole in me.

  “I tracked the rogue asset into the Ash, gathered some intel on his whereabouts, and got a lead about the location of the exchange.” I started as Kade began removing components. “The deal soured, he killed a few gang cutters and I found his corpse on display in a back alley.”

  “The package?” she added, no reaction to the man’s death. Corporate write-off I thought.

  “Still missing. We got ambushed by the Cinder Rats on the way out, and one of their leaders had the gun strapped to his hip. Gnaw, I think his name was. He had a trap waiting for us, but the drones you sent gave us a window.”

  She cut her eyes at Saint quickly, checking if he was watching her, and then nodded at me before speaking. “The drones were a standard patrol, I would not waste resources sending them in after you.”

  “Right… of course.” I said, not hiding my eye roll this time.

  “This Gnaw individual has the prototype. What about the documentation? It is vital that it is recovered so as not to accelerate reproduction of the weapon.”

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  “Well he wasn’t waving it around as far as I could tell through all the bullets. If he had it with him, I didn’t have eyes on it. All I have so far is a recording from Jared’s system with evidence of the heist and bits of the deal going to shit. The data’s pretty beat up though, probably from his brutal death.”

  “Very well. Submit that to me when you are finished here. Ensure you retain no copies and purge it from your system after.” Her tone was flat, her eyes already shifting back to her datapad. Jared was dust, just another line item on her report.

  She finally looked up again, eyes flicking over the patch on my thigh, then to the mangled pieces Saint was pulling from my arm. Her gaze lingered long enough to make me uncomfortable.

  “Asset Draven. What is her current status?” she asked suddenly.

  My throat went dry. I hadn’t been ready for her to ask about Kaela. I’d been sloppy, using us and we in my debrief without thinking. How much more did she already know?

  “How should I know?” I deflected, trying to sound bored.

  “You left her safe house before dawn,” Vera said flatly. No emphasis, no accusation, just the facts laid out like scalpels.

  Kade’s hands hesitated for a heartbeat, the quiet pause louder than any gasp. He tilted his head at Vera’s words, then bent back to his work. My heart sank anyway. The broken claw implant clicked against the tray as he set it down and began teasing the circuitry free, his face carefully blank.

  “Asset Draven is fine. She patched me up after the scuffle. I don’t know her current status. Like you said: I left early this morning.” I growled, turning her words back on her.

  A flicker of acknowledgment lit in her eyes above her otherwise stone cold features. She fluttered her her fingers across her data pad, taking notes about the report I assumed. She held for a moment, letting the tension sit in the air before speaking again.

  “Priority is retrieving the documentation. One you are finished here, submit your debrief and resume the mission. Time is of the essence.”

  “Why are you so attached to this gig?” I blurted, letting my anger win. “What’s got you out of your little box in the tower? I usually don’t hear from you until I finish a job.”

  “It is my job to ensure anything regarding a rogue asset is handled quickly and efficiently. R&D are already buzzing about their prototype being out for so long, and there is pressure from above to speed this along.” She said flatly.

  “Just feels personal.” I dug at her. “Like you’ve got more riding on this than the rest of us.”

  “I don’t recall ‘interrogate your superiors’ being in the mission dossier. Perhaps you should review while you wait for your repairs.” She retorted, eyes narrowing.

  I let the silence stretch, my grin lingering. I’d struck a nerve. She’d never admit it, but I knew. She tapped a little harder on her screen, before sharply turning and making her exit.

  “I expect another report within forty-eight hours, Nyx. You better bring me something more than medical bills.” She called over her shoulder.

  Vera’s voice cut cold as she walked out. I gave her the finger and flopped back on the table just as Saint walked away to rummage through his inventory. My grin faded as I thought about what she’d said. R&D pressure was her official line — the cover she could log for Omni’s records. But to me, it sounded like she was sniffing after something else. Perhaps Jared hadn’t just grabbed weapon specs.

  Saint rolled back with a cart stacked high with cases and gleaming tools. My eyes widened. I didn’t even recognize half the logos stamped on the implants.

  “With that out of the way…” he said, tone almost cheerful, “let’s look at your options. Repairing the old claws is a lost cause… but, we just got clearance to replace them outright.”

  My gaze flicked to the door Vera had vanished through. Her pulling strings for my upgrade didn’t sit right, but I might as well take advantage of the offer. I turned back to see Saint pull a massive chunk of black polished steel the size of small dog that was supposedly meant to be worn on the forearm.

  “Like I said when we slotted your claws, you’d be better off with something armored and stable. OmniCore’s got a defense-line gauntlet with retractable spikes. Big. Ugly. But they’ll punch through body armor like butter.”

  “Saint, you can’t be serious. You really mean to have me walking around looking like a damn cyborg gorilla?” I gawked at the thing.

  He slid the beast over his forearm to demonstrate. Plates clicked into place, locking his fist inside a block of carbon fiber with a piston-driven spike jutting from the knuckles. It looked ridiculous, like it belonged on a riot cop or a war bot, certainly not me. I shook my head in disbelief and he just chuckled, dropping it carefully back in the case.

  “We’ve got a few other things here, each with their own strengths and drawbacks.” He pointed to an array of smaller boxes as he put away the beastly gauntlet case.

  Saint spread the cases out like a shopkeeper arranging new stock. Metal clicked against foam, tiny labels reflected the lamp light. The clinic smelled of antiseptic and warm tooling oil. He liked this part, the moment someone stood at the counter rolling their mind through possibilities.

  “Blackthorn knuckles.” he flicked open a dark green case with a set of knuckle mods resting inside. “Street king stuff. Short range shock and toxin mix. Works for messy jobs. Cheap to keep serviced.”

  Saint paused, then opened the last set with something like reverence. Thin talons lay nested in foam. Their metal drank the light instead of reflecting it. The edges were finished in a deep black that looked almost like shadow.

  “Umbra talons,” he said, voice lowering. “This is Umbra spec stuff. Spooky as hell, but equally ferocious. It carries a vibe though. Clean, surgical, and not something you slap on for a pissing contest.”

  He folded away his excitement into a careful note. “I have wanted to install a set since I read the white papers. They phase at a micro frequency to slice like a whisper when you time them right. There is a feel to them that makes other gear seem clumsy. But take care. The phase timing can hiccup if you run them for too long. They work best in short bursts.”

  Saint set the matched Umbra housing beside a compact forearm rig that suggested a different approach. When he unlatched that unit, a neat fan of micro needles folded into a curved sheath. Tiny tubing and etched glass vials hinted at programmable payloads.

  “For a single arm, consider adding a micro array,” he said. “Widow’s Bite. Programmable needles. Paralytic, tracking, anti-armor corrosive. Small, discreet, adaptable. Plus, they give you a ranged option, so you don’t always have to be in someone’s lap.”

  I took a moment to consider my options. Saint had presented matched pairs, the corporate default. It was pretty normal to run arm mods in parallel, keeps the signals from mixing, but I wondered about keeping my options open for the situation. I had snapped my claw blades because I didn’t have a ranged option

  “What if I take the Umbra talon on the right and then slot needle array on the left?” I asked.

  Kade lit up, already sliding the two cases closer. He grinned, unable to hide his enthusiasm.

  “Now that’s thinking. Umbra on the right for precision, Widow’s Bite on the left for reach. One hand to cut clean, the other to control the room.”

  He cracked his knuckles, excitement buzzing in his tone. “Nobody specs a split loadout like this unless they know what they’re doing. Symmetry makes the connections easy, and puts less of a strain on the overall system. You’re running fewer mods than a soldier though, so you’ve likely got the bandwidth to support it. I like it.”

  His fingers hovered over the Umbra rig, and for a second his grin softened. “Still gives me chills, this one. But I’ll admit, I’ve always wanted to see it in action.”

  “Sweet. Let’s do it then!” I chimed, ready to get started.

  Saint pushed the cart aside, grabbing the desired tech and placing them on the work table before slipping on a fresh pair of gloves.

  “Alright, Amara. Arms on the rests.”

  I laid my forearms into the padded cradles. The clamps clicked shut, gentle but firm, holding me still. It wasn’t necessary, but Saint always steadied his work this way. The pressure of the restraints sent a quiet shiver through me, and I swallowed it down. I flicked my lip ring.

  He leaned over my right arm, peering into the exposed port where my claws had been. The light caught in his lenses as he adjusted them closer.

  “Connections are intact,” he murmured, half to himself. “Signal hubs are stable. I’ll have to reroute a few nodes, Umbra doesn’t play by the same specs. No nap this time, but you shouldn’t feel much.”

  He reached for the talon module and even he hesitated a second before touching it. The thing gleamed black in the sterile light, unnaturally drinking in the shine instead of reflecting it. Saint’s grin crept up, unabashed, as he set it gently against my open housing.

  “Beautiful,” he whispered, and then chuckled. “Creepy as hell, but just stunning.”

  The first latch clicked into place. My HUD dimmed, automatically severing the link while he worked. A cold hum slipped into my nerves, not pain exactly, more like the buzz of a limb waking from pins and needles. The dark material contrasted against my natural caramel colored skin, but I knew the tone would adjust once it synced with my system and be hidden by my dermal implant over top.

  “There we go,” Saint said, his tone slipping into excited precision. “Ports are taking it. Umbra really put some work in here, but you should be fusing now. I’ve set it to run through the software install while we get the other side slotted in.”

  Saint’s tools clicked back into their slots as he shifted his focus. He brushed his knuckles lightly against my wrist testing the resistance of the Umbra casing, making sure it was aligned before moving on. The restraint held me steady, forcing me to watch him work instead of fidget.

  “Good. Right side’s stable. Let’s give your offhand some reach,” he said, pulling the Widow’s Bite case closer.

  The array gleamed beneath the overhead light, slim tubes and folded needles resting in perfect symmetry. He lifted it out with both hands, like he was handling glass, then positioned it over the open housing in my left forearm.

  “This one’s all about finesse. Pressure regulators here,” he pointed with a probe, brushing close to the bare skin at the edge of the port. “Reservoirs for the payloads here. Mix and match, fast or slow release depending on what you load.”

  He set the unit into place, locking it with a metallic snap. My HUD flickered again, signals stuttering as the array’s system meshed with my own. A ripple of cold prickled up my arm, nerves singing, the restraint helping me fight the urge to jump.

  Saint glanced up at me, reading the micro-twitch in my expression. His voice softened.

  “You’re steady, Amara. That’s why I like working on you. Most people flinch, but you hold still. Makes the fit that much cleaner.”

  The hum of tools built as he tested the connection, fingertips tracing the ridges of the port before tightening the final screw. New system alerts flickered in my HUD, cascading one after another as the array synced smoothly with my internals. Faster than the Umbra, no surprise since the Bite was built on familiar architecture.

  I flexed my fingers, and the overlay pulsed green. Targeting subroutines, payload slots, dosage regulators. All neat little menus waiting for me to fill them with something lethal. The hum steadied, the sync hitting ninety, ninety-five, one hundred percent.

  He finally turned back, satisfied. “Left side’s online. Clean sync, no jitter.” He brushed his thumb across the new housing, then tapped the surface to cycle the needles once — they unfolded like a fan and snapped back into place with surgical precision.

  “Elegant little bastard, isn’t it?” he said, almost proud.

  “Feels subtle, smooth mechanics in this one. I like it!” I exclaimed.

  I flexed again, watching the fan of needles flick in and out with a whisper. I had a map of potential loadouts in my HUD, listing off the preloaded concoctions like a menu. Like my fangs, they could also be loaded manually with any variety of liquids. Something I could play around with and experiment based on the situation. A strange flutter crossed my HUD as the sync from the Talon completed, my system almost struggling to keep up with pace of the signals.

  “Hmm, let me tune that a little before it fries something.” Saint said, flicking out a tool and slipping back into the panel of my right arm.

  The static in my HUD deepened as the Talon came online. For a second the display blurred, then a black arc flickered to life from the back of my hand. It wasn’t solid, not really—like a blade drawn from smoke and lightning, curved forward in a sickle’s crescent. The glow wasn’t light at all but an absence, a dark shimmer that made the air quiver.

  “Fuck,” I breathed. I couldn’t help it.

  Saint grinned despite himself, but his eyes flicked cautious. “Umbra doesn’t fuck around, this is some serious shit!”

  I turned my wrist, watching the edge twitch and ripple as if it was eager to cut. The air hissed faintly where the projection grazed it. My body felt every shift half a beat before it happened, like the blade was thinking ahead of me. My nerves danced as the blade retracted, and I had to take a breath. This was the most advanced augment I’d ever slotted and it was intense. My HUD steadied and finally came to full sync with the new hardware and I could feel my whole body adjusting to the new load.

  Implants and mods came with risk: the more you installed, the less control you had. It was possible to load too much and fry out your synapses rendering you unable to use them anymore. Some people were able to dive past the limitations, but they were rare and seemed detached from their humanity. I had quite a few implants, but they all ran pretty light on resources, and were mostly cosmetic. This was a new level for me, tipping me into the realm that was usually reserved for soldiers and legends.

  I watched as saint slipped my dermal layer over the top of the Talon housing, and the skin shifted color to compensate, bringing my arm back to my natural light brown skin tone. I tilted my head as a new tattoo formed on the edge of the panel — a small series of interlaced hexagons, like the Umbra logo. The lines were impossibly thin and were mostly purple, but every few seconds a small flash of dark aberration would pulse through them.

  “That’s interesting, I didn’t see anything about that in the...” Saint trailed off flipping through the manual on his screen.

  “I kind of like it actually, but let me know if you find any weird network connections from it. I don’t want to be patched into Umbra, we can rip the whole tech if that’s the case.”

  He scanned a few times, running different layers of port and network codes to see if it was transmitting or receiving. He shook his head, eyes still fluttering through walls of text on the documentation.

  “Weird. Not in the spec sheet. Some Umbra engineer got fancy… but I’m not seeing anything broadcasting. Looks cosmetic. Still—keep me posted if it tingles wrong.”

  “I’m buzzing from the new software load, but everything seems fine so far.” I replied.

  The restraints on my arms clicked and released allowing me to sit up and slide to my feet. I stretched and felt the difference in my whole body as the meds started wear off and my system adjusted to the new implants. I felt stronger, more dangerous, more like the weapon I was forced to be. I would be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the strength, but also if I said I didn’t feel a little remorse as another shred of humanity stripped away.

  “Alright, final checks.” Saint chimed in, interrupting my thoughts.

  He ran a hand scanner over my body, and then severed his connection from my internals. He was pleased with the work, but now that he was coming out of it, I could tell he was thinking about asking questions. I swallowed, knowing I wouldn’t get out of this without telling him a little of what happened after the fight at least.

  “System looks good. About what Vera said…” he started.

  “I had a moment of weakness after she patched me up, alright? I felt guilty, and I bolted. I feel guilty about that too. Do we have to linger on this?” I grumbled.

  “We don’t. I… I just wanted to make sure you’re alright.”

  “I’ll be fine.” I said, ready for him to drop it.

  “You’re allowed to want more than that, Amara.”

  “Not on a gig, I’m not. I need to stay focused and finish this so I can get Vera off my ass.”

  “It’s not a weakness to crave comfort.” He uttered, pushing my limits.

  “Are we done?” I snapped, words cutting in the air. “I have shit to do.”

  “Yeah. Seems we are.” He sighed, putting his tools away.

  I stared at him while he turned to his work. I knew he meant well but I wasn’t ready to dive into this, especially with him. I stormed out, hitting my vape once more as I reached the stairs. I decided to walk a few blocks before catching the rails back to my apartment. I needed the air to help clear my head.