Rhett palmed the washroom door shut behind him. The space was barely big enough for the shower stall, a sink, and his thoughts. He twisted the water on hotter than necessary, letting the sudden rush of steam erase the last few hours from the glass.
His clothes hit the floor in a loose pile. He stepped under the spray and braced his forehead against the tile. The water beat at the tension in his shoulders, chased liquor from his skin, but did nothing for the knot in his chest.
The was never so much at stake before, so much to lose. He often started with very little, ended up with even less, but this? Somehow that felt heavier than having nothing.
"You good in there?" Tessa's voice came through the thin door, muffled but close.
Rhett huffed. "Define good."
The door clicked, and she slipped in sideways, bringing a slice of cooler air with her. She stayed well away from the stall, leaning against the opposite wall by the utility panel. Steam curled around her, softening the chrome and sharp lines, hazing her into something almost gentle.
"I… knocked," she said.
"That's not what I heard," he replied.
"Yeah well, you were too busy having an existential crisis with the plumbing."
He let the water run over his face one more time before pushing his hair back and turning slightly toward the frosted glass. Her outline was a blur - shoulders, braid, the familiar tilt of her head when she was studying something.
"You know," he said, "most people wait until after a few official dates before they lurk in a bathroom while the other person is naked."
"I'm not lurking!" she retorted. "I'm… supervising. There's an important, distinct difference."
"Is that what this is? A wellness check?" His voice came out thinner than he meant it to. "Or are you here to make sure I don't climb out the vent and run for the border?"
"There is no border," she said. "Just more city and even worse plumbing."
He laughed once sharp and bright, before letting the sound die. "That tracks."
For a moment, there was only the water, and the low hum of the building. Then Tessa spoke again, quieter.
"Are you scared?"
Rhett swallowed. It honestly felt easier to answer with the glass between them.
"Yeah," he said. "I'm terrified. I keep thinking someone is going to kick in the door and drag me out by the bracelet. Or maybe even moreso that this plan actually sticks but I'll ruin it in some impressively creative way."
"You haven't ruined it yet," she said.
"Yet is doing a lot of work in that sentence."
He heard a faint shift of fabric as she pushed off the wall. Her blurred shape moved closer to the stall, stopping just short of the line where the steam would begin to soak her.
"You know what I remember about you?" she asked. "Before the chrome. Before any of this."
"I'm kinda afraid to ask."
"You were the only person in that lounge who would comp a drink to a tech who couldn't afford the cheap stuff," she said. "Everyone else looked at name tags and Dyn brackets. But you looked at people."
The steam did a good job of explaining the heat in his face, and he decided to let it take the credit. "That is a very sentimental memory for someone who just threatened to hack an Untouchable in my general vicinity," he said.
A laugh escaped her chest. "I contain multitudes," she said simply.
He turned his head toward the blurred outline again. "So what, I get rewarded for not being a complete bastard?"
"This is not a reward," she said. "This is an opportunity. They don't always go to the people who deserve them. Usually, in fact. But you have one now."
"And what if I drop it?" he asked. "What if I walk into this Dream Dive thing tonight and it all goes sideways and they see right through me and that is it?"
"Then we improvise," she said. "You are good at that. Annoyingly good. Exceptionally."
"That was useful when the stakes were things like, 'avoid getting fired from serving overpriced alcohol,'" he said. "This is… different."
Her hand lifted, hovering for a moment at the edge of the glass before she let her palm rest against it. The barrier was frosted, but the warmth of her skin bled through.
"You aren't alone in this," she said. "You understand that, right? I'm not doing any of this just so I can watch you flail and explode."
He hesitated, then placed his wet palm against the other side of the glass, lining it up with hers. The contact was clumsy and indirect, but it steadied something in him.
"I don't know what I'm doing," he admitted. "Half the time I'm pretty sure you're gonna get bored and leave me in a ditch somewhere while you go rob someone more interesting."
She snorted softly. "You are plenty interesting, Rhett Korran."
"Is that your professional assessment, Tessa Day?" he asked.
"That is my… personal one," she said.
The word hung there for a second, fuller than anything flirty.
He let out a slow breath. "I don't know how to do this, Tess. The money. The pretending. The Dream Dive. Any of it. I'm just a guy who got very lucky at a very, very bad time."
"You… are a guy who survives," she said. "More than once. That matters more than you think."
He wanted to believe her. For the first time since the lounge, it didn't feel completely impossible.
The water began to cool at the edges. He reached for the tap and turned it off.
"So? You gonna stand there and supervise my towel usage too?" he asked, lighter now.
"Tempting," she said. "But I should give you the illusion of privacy."
She pushed away from the glass, her palm peeling from it with a faint squeak. At the door, she paused and glanced back, her face now visible through a thinning patch of steam.
She never looked at him like a problem to solve. She looked at him like something fragile she was trying very hard not to mishandle.
"You are not the wrong person for this," she said. "Only the first one to admit you might be."
"Is that supposed to be comforting?" he asked.
"It's supposed to be honest," she said. "Get dressed, Thorne. We have a date with your bad decisions."
Her mouth curved, soft at the edges, and then she slipped out, the door clicking shut behind her.
Rhett stared at the empty space where she had stood, hand still resting on the cooling glass.
"Yeah," he murmured. "That tracks too."
Steam billowed unevenly from the shower nook, fogging the narrow mirror until Rhett's reflection became a vague, shifting silhouette. He braced his hands on either side of the sink, water still dripping from his hair, and watched himself slowly reappear as he dragged a towel across the glass.
The man looking back at him did not look like Thorne.
Thorne's face from the executive lounge screens had always been crisp - angles precise, hair sculpted, pores probably edited by an onboard filter. The man in the mirror had a healing bruise along his jaw from a night he barely remembered, faint stubble that grew in uneven, and a small scar on his left eyebrow from picking a fight with a vending unit once.
"Congratulations," he said quietly to his reflection. "You won capitalism. Try not to trip over the prize."
He pulled on the least-offensive shirt from Niko's emergency stash. It was a dark, high-collared thing that actually fit across his shoulders, paired with slacks that didn't scream "shift worker" quite as loudly. His boots stayed; he trusted his own soles more than anything polished.
When he stepped back out into the main room, Niko hadn't moved far. He sat hunched on the couch, elbows on his knees, fingers worrying the edge of a cushion like it might confess something. Tessa stood by the window slit, looking out at the stacked geometry of Sector Five as if she could already see the underbelly through concrete.
She turned when she heard him. Her gaze skimmed over his changed clothes, the damp hair pushed back off his forehead.
"Better," she said. "You look less like you got thrown out of a service entrance."
"I aspire to 'marginally presentable felon,'" Rhett said. "How did I do?"
"Seven out of ten," Niko muttered. "You'd be an eight if you stayed here."
Rhett wasn't about to entertain that line of thought. "So how far is this Crescent Well?" Rhett asked.
Tessa checked her comm, a series of minimal icons flickering across the projection on her chrome forearm. "Depends on how much you want to be seen getting there. Straight-line magrail from here to Lower Five and then down two levels on foot. Or we route through a couple of maintenance spines and avoid most cameras."
"I vote for 'least cameras,'" Niko said immediately.
Rhett nodded. "Seconded. I just got declared dead. Feels kinda rude to resurrect myself on every security feed in the sector. Think of all the work the coroner would have to do."
Tessa smirked. "Maintenance spines it is."
Niko stared at them like they were already ghosts. "What am I supposed to do while you are busy… immersing reality?"
"Guard duty," Tessa said. "The hosts will have a topside lounge. You can stay with the bodies."
"Please do not call them that," Niko said.
"Its's true, regardless. It'll be our bodies," she replied with a shrug. "Sleeping and plugged into a neural lattice. Your job, my friend, is to make sure no one unplugs us prematurely."
Rhett clapped a hand on Niko's shoulder. "See? You get to be the adult. Highest honor in the group. If I start screaming stock tickers, you have permission to yank the plug."
"That is not comforting," Niko said. "Besides, that's not even how that works!"
"It wasn't meant to be," Rhett smiled.
Tessa stepped away from the window. "Bring something to do," she said to Niko. "Some dives run long. And bring your own stim tabs. You do not want whatever they sell over the counter down there."
"Fantastic," Niko said weakly. "I always wondered what my line would be. Turns out it's, 'while my friends are gambling with their subconscious, I'm allowed to have caffeine.'"
Rhett lifted both hands, fingers spread. "Look, we can still call this off. I can stay here, spend the night memorizing Thorne's preferred talking points and stock positions like a good stolen executive."
Neither of them believed him. He didn't even believe himself. "Thought I'd just throw that out there, for the record."
Tessa grabbed her jacket from the hook by the door. She rolled the sleeves once, tightening them around her elbows, per her usual style. "Dives typically open their mid-tier cycles at shift-change," she said. "We time it right, we can slip in during the rush. Fewer eyes on any one face."
Rhett checked the tiny chrono in the corner of his vision. The bracelet had already synced to his optic overlay, sliding Thorne's time preferences into his interface as if they had always been there.
"How much to buy in?" he asked.
"That depends on what you want to play," Tessa said. "Basic shared lucid -cheap. Mnemonic runs cost more. SceneShift battles cost time, reputation, and a very particular kind of ego. High-stakes Lucid Royale?" She tilted her head. "You could drop half a million in one session if you tried."
Niko nearly choked. "He is not trying that. Tell him he is not trying that."
Rhett's pulse spiked at the idea. Power, held for the length of a dream. Unreality with real consequences.
"I don't mind starting small, but…" Rhett said. "I just want to see it. See where he went when he didn't want to be Thorne anymore."
"That is probably the most dangerous kind of curiosity," Tessa said.
"You're still enabling it," he pointed out.
She met his gaze steadily. "If anything, I'm enabling survival. If the hosts recognize him and you don't know how to stand where he stood, that will be a different kind of problem later."
Niko sagged back against the couch, resigned. "Ughhhh I hate it when you make sense."
Tessa released the partition to the descent pod, inviting the muted sounds of the building's central systems, the distant murmur of people living lives that were about to feel very small compared to what Rhett was walking into.
"Last chance to back out," Niko said.
Rhett stepped through the doorway.
"Backing out was an option before I put on the bracelet," he said. "To do it now would just be bad form."
Sector Five met them with its usual fractured enthusiasm. The upper walkways glowed with sanctioned ads and Sovereign-approved storefronts, while the lower thoroughfares vibrated with unsanctioned life. Food stalls hissed, someone hawked black-market augments from a case that probably had more diseases than licenses, and a cluster of kids in mismatched limb mods raced drones through a broken fountain.
Tessa cut sideways, away from the main crowd. She led them past a shuttered clinic, down a set of metal stairs that groaned under their weight, and into one of the maintenance arteries that threaded the district. The air grew cooler and denser, full of machine heat and the smell of insulation.
Rhett walked beside her, close enough to feel the shift of her shoulders when she moved. His mind should have been on Thorne and the Host and the Crescent Well and everything that could go wrong in a shared dream arena. Instead, it kept circling back to the fact that this would not be a one-night caper in some lounge. This was days and nights, plans and mistakes, shared rooms and shared risks.
He wondered how long it would take before she saw the seams he spent so much time distracting himself from.
The maintenance corridor spat them out near a lower-level walkway that wrapped around one of the old transit spines. The crowd here had teeth. Augment junkies with flickering eyes lounged in doorways. Muscle in cheap chrome watched everything with the kind of flat attention that meant violence was currency, not spectacle. They stepped into the flow and turned toward the spine access.
A bulky figure in a sleeveless jacket shouldered out of a side alley right as Rhett passed. The man's shoulder hit him square in the chest. Rhett staggered half a step, instinct already spinning a retort into place.
"Watch it," the man grunted, turning on him with pupils like drilled holes. "If you're gonna walk like you own the place, you better have a damn good reason."
Rhett's smile snapped into place. "I do have a reason. It's called 'being upright.' Try it sometime. Besides, if I owned the place, I'd redecorate. You'd be the first thing to go."
The man's upper lip curled. He stepped in, breath smelling like synth-liquor and metal tang. "You talk too much. It would be a shame if someone rearranged your teeth."
Rhett's weight shifted forward automatically. This was familiar ground. Bars, alleys, nights where you had to talk faster than someone could swing. His fingers twitched, ready to grab, deflect, move - but Tessa was already there.
She pivoted in from Rhett's right side, chrome fist driving into the man's midsection with a dull, horrifyingly efficient thud. The sound was not cinematic. It was thick, like hitting a heavy sack full of wet sand and steel.
The man's mouth opened around a word that never came. His feet left the ground for a fraction of a second before gravity figured out how to pull him back down. He crumpled to his knees, then to his side, gagging silently.
The crowd around them rippled back. Nobody stepped in. Nobody yelled. A few people looked away out of respect for their own survival.
Tessa shook out her hand once, more habit than necessity, and looked down at the gasping man.
"That is your free collision," she said. "On the next one, I stop pulling the punches."
She did not wait for a response. She turned and walked on.
Niko stared at the heap on the ground, then at Rhett. "I am suddenly less worried about criminal syndicates and more worried about her sense of proportion."
Rhett's heart hammered. He caught up to Tessa with a few long strides.
"You know I had that under control," he said.
"You were about to make it worse with your mouth," she replied. "I saved us time."
He tried not to grin, but failed. "Kind of hot, though."
"Do not imprint on my violence," she said. "We have enough problems."
The transit spine loomed above them like a column from some ancient, brutalist temple. The old access doors at its base were welded shut, scabbed over with decades of graffiti. Layers of tags and symbols competed for space, bright slashes of color on matte metal.
Tessa walked up to what looked like a particularly chaotic panel of spray and ink. Her chrome fingers traced a curve through a seemingly random cluster of shapes. Parts of the paint did not smear. They shimmered, lines rearranging under her touch before the chaos resolved.
A crescent appeared, split horizontally down the center - the same broken moon from Thorne's schedule. The metal beneath it sighed. Hidden seams unlocked with soft clacks, and a section of the wall folded inward without a sound, revealing a narrow entryway lit by warm, amber light.
Niko swallowed. "You know, for something illegal, this is surprisingly inviting."
"That is how they get you," Tessa said. Rhett followed her inside. The Crescent Well was not a dive bar, nor was it was not a clinic or a casino. It was something nomadic and hybridized that sat at the intersection of all three and wore each costume with just enough sincerity to unsettle.
The ceiling arched low, lined with fiber-optic strands that pulsed like slow-moving constellations. The air smelled faintly of ozone, skin, and something floral that might have been synthetic or might have been someone's idea of memory. Along the walls, pods reclined in gentle arcs - sleek Dreamspawn shells with soft-lit seams and embedded conduits. Between them, lounge spaces glowed in muted gold and deep indigo, giving divers a place to sit, drink, and pretend they were not about to hand their minds to a machine.
Transparent displays floated above the central floor, listing modes and odds in fluid text.
LUCID ROYALE – TEAMS OF TWO – SIXTEEN ENTRANTS – CURRENT POOL: 3.8M GD SCENESHIFT CIRCUITS – SOLO – 1V1V1 LADDER MNEMONIC SYNC – PRIVATE ROOMS ONLY – BY INVITE
Rhett's pulse matched the rhythm of the scrolling data. Voices flowed around him, low and bright and eager. Someone laughed too loud at the bar. Someone else stumbled out of a pod with tears streaming down their face, holding their head in both hands while a staffer draped a cloth over their shoulders and murmured something into their ear. This place was built for control and disaster in equal measure.
Rhett felt at home.
"You're doing that thing," Niko whispered.
"What thing?" Rhett asked.
"That thing where your eyes light up like you are about to flirt with a dozen terrible ideas," Niko said.
Rhett didn't bother denying it - however the Host found them before he had time to fully settle into the room. He moved through the crowd like he belonged to each person he passed and yet to none of them. His coat swept around his legs, a tailored thing with circuitry stitched into the seams that lit in time with his gestures. Rings circled every other finger, each one a tiny, humming piece of tech that flickered with status readouts, bets, or perhaps something more esoteric.
His hair was dark, streaked at the temples with silver he did not bother to hide, and his smile had the sharp warmth of someone who loved his work and his power in equal measure.
"New faces!" he said, stopping in front of them as if the room had delivered them on a tray. A faint shimmer crossed his irises as his gaze flicked to Rhett, lingered, and brightened. Thrilled, he began to speak, entirely absent an introduction. "And an old rumor!" He breathed. ""At last! Thorne graces the Well in person."
Niko's breath caught. Tessa went very still, though her face did not change. Rhett felt every molecule of his blood stop and then sprint.
"We are delighted to host you here, although I'm shocked at your arrival! You have no idea how many nights I have heard your wake timers blip on the relay and wondered if you would ever come in person," he said. "Usually it's proxies, ghost routes, buy-ins from other nodes. The Well has waited a long time for you, my friend."
Rhett forced his tongue not to stick to the roof of his mouth as his heart punched against his ribs. He held the Host's gaze. "I've heard I have that effect," Rhett said. "You must be the man who keeps everyone here asleep enough to spend their money."
The Host laughed, genuinely delighted. "O000h, I like him. Oh do forgive me," he said with a small bow of his head, more showmanship than humility. "Formalities matter, even underground. I am Morrow - keeper of the Well, Shepherd of Sleepers, and Curator of the Chaos you are about to enjoy."
The logic clicked into place with dizzying speed. Thorne. Untouchable. Whale. Known to feed remote nodes with money and interest, never showing his face. A mysterious new guest tonight, flagged by some back-end when Thorne's credential pinged the system for a live session. Mysterious whale plus mysterious new arrival. Morrow had connected the dots perfectly, even without his clearly technology-assisted ID tech. He had simply picked the wrong set of bones inside the right kind of man.
Rhett let his shoulders relax by an intentional fraction. He let a small, controlled smile form.
"Every man is allowed a first appearance," he said. "You can only send envoys for so long before people start thinking you are imaginary."
The host's eyes crinkled. "Some men are more useful as myths than as flesh, but I confess I prefer ones that can bleed. It makes the betting much more interesting."
He glanced briefly at Tessa and Niko, assessing.
"And you brought a team. Sensible. The Well rewards cooperation and punishes vanity."
"Just the one team," Rhett said. "We're not here to start a franchise."
Morrow inclined his head to him, acknowledging familiarity. His shimmering glance slid past Rhett and landed on Tessa. His eyes flickered again, softer this time, as if pulling up a familiar profile.
"Chromeheart," he said warmly. "Back in rotation at last. And you brought a whale! The room will lose its mind."
Tessa met the greeting with a slight lift of her chin. "Hey now, I never said I retired."
A ripple of nearby murmurs confirmed it - her handle carried weight here.
Morrow clapped his hands together once, rubbing his rings like talons. "Then let us make sure this run at the Well is memorable, shall we?"
Then Morrow's gaze slid to Niko, irises pulsing with a small acknowledgement.
"And you brought a tether," he said with amused approval. "Essential, really. They never enjoy the job, but… they keep the bodies breathing."
Niko muttered, "I'm thrilled to be included," which Morrow ignored with professional grace, as he returned to Rhett, as if gravitationally pulled. He clapped his hands, delighted. "Come. Let us make your debut worthy of the myth."
He gestured toward one of the floating displays, and it slid closer in response.
"Lucid options tonight are good," Morrow said. "We have Hunts, shifting circuits, and a rather messy Mnemonic cluster I do not recommend unless you enjoy sharing childhood traumas with strangers. Or -" His grin widened. "We have Royale."
The word hung there.
LUCID ROYALE – TEAMS OF TWO – SIXTEEN ENTRANTS – ENTRY: 250K GD – DEATHMATCH PARAMETERS CUSTOMIZABLE
"Two-person teams," Morrow went on. "Last pair standing. Dream physics are adjustable by vote before entry. Weapons and environments are symbolic, but the pain is persuasive. The pot is respectable tonight. The regulars are bloodthirsty. It would be a terrible place for a debut."
Rhett did not even look at Tessa before he spoke.
"We'll take the Royale," he said.
Niko made a strangled sound. "He will not take Royale. That was a joke. He jokes."
Tessa's eyes flicked to Rhett's. Something sharp and appreciative sparked there.
"Royale suits him," she said. "He likes long odds."
Morrow laughed again, delighted. "Excellent! Thorne finally arrives and immediately offends probability. The stories practically write themselves."
He tapped one of his rings against the display. The system chirped in acknowledgment, and two empty slots on the roster filled with soft white light, tagged with a simple sigil - a fractured crescent nested inside a ring.
"That will mark your team," Morrow said. "You have ten minutes before the dive spins up. Plenty of time to second-guess and not nearly enough time to back out."
He stepped closer to Rhett, dropping his voice just enough that it threaded under the ambient noise without disturbing it.
"A small piece of advice," he said. "Names carry weight here. People have been betting on you for months without ever seeing your face. They will expect something spectacular."
Rhett swallowed once, not because he felt small, but because he felt the opposite. The room seemed to lean toward him.
"Then I would hate to disappoint," he said.
Morrow's smile turned almost gentle. "That is the tragedy of this place, Thorne. Nobody leaves without disappointing someone. The trick is choosing who."
He clapped Rhett lightly on the shoulder, stepped back, and raised his voice again.
"Staff will assign you a pod," he said. "Chromeheart knows the drill. This one -" he glanced at the satchel wrapped around Niko, " you look like a man destined to pace the lounge. Do enjoy our drinks. They are subsidized by terrible decisions."
He slipped away toward the bar, already greeting another guest with the same bright intensity, leaving the three of them in the wake of his gravity.
Niko stared at the Royale listing. "Two hundred and fifty thousand. For an entry fee. Do you hear that ringing? That is my nervous system burning out."
Rhett couldn't feel his own panic anymore. The Well had swallowed it and replaced it with something cleaner. Focus. Anticipation. That old, dangerous thrill.
He looked at Tessa.
"You sure about this?" he asked.
She held his gaze, a slow smile curving her mouth. "I was starting to worry I would never see what you actually look like when the world gives you room to move."
He tried not to let that land, but it landed anyway.
"Lets hope you like the view," he said.
"We'll adjust if I don't," she replied. "Come on. It's time to get wired in."