The plan, such as it was, had three parts.
Rachel had explained it twice in Kasper's basement with a hand-drawn map and the particular tone she used when she wanted everyone to understand that deviation was not a creative choice but a failure of character. Ryan had nodded throughout with the focused expression of someone who intended to deviate. Keelan had said nothing, which with Keelan meant either complete agreement or complete indifference, and Kasper had asked one clarifying question about the timing of the east exit that was, Charlotte had to admit, the right question.
Charlotte's part was the perimeter.
She stood now on the roof of a four-storey building two blocks east of the target, hoodie up, hands in her pockets, watching. Below her the street ran quiet — it was past midnight and this part of the borough didn't have much reason to be awake at this hour. A convenience store at the far corner, lights on, one person visible through the glass. A parked truck that hadn't moved since she'd arrived. The wind off the upper levels carrying the distant sound of something that might have been music.
Her eyes adjusted without being asked. The dark giving up its details — the alley between buildings becoming legible, the rooftop across from her resolving into something she could read. She could see the side entrance from here. She could see the window on the second floor that Rachel had flagged as a potential exit point. She could see, if she looked carefully, the faint copper gleam of Rachel's bracelet catching what little light there was as the crew moved into position below.
Her earpiece crackled.
"Perimeter check." Rachel's voice. Low and even.
"Clear east," Charlotte said. "Truck on the street hasn't moved. Store's got one occupant, looks civilian."
"Copy. Kasper?"
"North is clear. I've got two on the fire escape but they're having a conversation about something, not paying attention."
"Leave them. Ryan."
"Yeah I'm here, west is fine, can we go."
"Keelan."
A pause. Then Keelan's voice, quieter than the others: "South. Ready."
"Sixty seconds," Rachel said.
Charlotte shifted her weight and looked out over the city. From up here it had a particular quality — the density of it, the layers. Street level and then the structures above it and then the transit lines cutting through the mid-tier and then the upper levels where the buildings got cleaner and the light got colder. She had read once that the ESA candidate program required candidates to demonstrate comfort with altitude and isolation. She had found that almost funny. Altitude had never bothered her. It was the only place the city stopped feeling like it was pressing in from all sides.
Her earpiece crackked. "Moving."
She tracked them by sound and glimpse — Ryan's silhouette crossing the mouth of the alley below, wide and unhurried in the way of someone whose body had decided a long time ago that it was the most solid thing in any given space. Keelan moving differently, light and close to the wall, the kind of movement that didn't announce itself. Kasper she couldn't see at all which meant he was doing it right.
Rachel would be at the terminal by now.
The job was straightforward in the way Rachel's jobs always were on paper. A mid-tier distribution node — not 18Labs, or not directly, the connection was two or three removes out — had been routing Tier 1 supply through the borough at a markup that was making things difficult for people who couldn't afford difficult. The crew had done this before. Find the node, pull the routing data, hand it to the people who knew what to do with it. No confrontation if it could be avoided.
If it could be avoided.
Charlotte watched the street.
The two on the fire escape finished their conversation. One of them went inside. The other stayed, lit something, leaned on the railing. Charlotte clocked him and kept him in her peripheral, the way her eyes naturally did — holding multiple points without strain, the dark between them clear and readable. She had never thought of it as unusual. It was just how she saw at night. Everyone had their Tier 1 quirk. This was hers.
"Terminal's up," Rachel said. "Three minutes."
"Copy," Charlotte said.
The man on the fire escape smoked and looked at nothing. The truck on the street stayed parked. The convenience store clerk moved behind the glass, restocking something on a low shelf.
Then Ryan's voice, abrupt: "We've got a problem."
"What kind," Rachel said.
"The kind that has a face and is currently coming through the west door."
Charlotte straightened.
"How many," Rachel said.
"Two. Armed, I think — hard to tell, they're in coats."
"Keelan, hold. Ryan, don't—"
"I'm not doing anything."
"Ryan."
"Rachel, I said I'm not doing anything."
Charlotte was already moving along the rooftop, repositioning east to get a sight line on the west approach. Her boots were quiet on the gravel surface. She got to the edge and looked down and found the west entrance and the two figures coming through it — unhurried, not running, which was either good or very bad depending on what they knew.
"Rachel," she said. "They're not rushing. They might not know you're in there."
"Or they know exactly where we are and they're not worried," Rachel said. "Kasper, north exit — is it clean?"
"Still clean."
"That's our out. Ryan, I need ninety more seconds."
"Understood."
The two figures moved through the west entrance and out of Charlotte's sight line. She tracked the building instead — windows, exits, the fire escape where the man was still smoking, oblivious. Her pulse was steady. It was always steady up here. That was the other thing altitude did for her.
"Done," Rachel said. "Moving."
The next four minutes were the kind that stretched. Charlotte tracked exits and reported and kept her breathing even and did not think about the fact that she could probably do more than this. She had thought about it before — the offer was always open, had been open for two years, the crew never pushed but the door was never closed either. She knew what she was capable of in a general sense. Enhanced physique, better night vision than any of them. Ryan's strength was a different category but Charlotte was not nothing.
She stayed on the roof.
The crew came out the north exit in ones and twos, unhurried, folding back into the street the way they'd practiced. No confrontation. The two figures in coats had apparently found an empty terminal room and whatever conclusion they drew from that was their problem now.
"Perimeter stand down," Rachel said. "Good work."
Charlotte let out a breath she hadn't decided to hold.
Below, the street resumed being a street. The man on the fire escape flicked his cigarette into the dark and went inside. The convenience store clerk finished restocking and straightened up and rolled his shoulders.
Charlotte stayed on the roof a little longer than she needed to.
The city spread out below her in every direction, layered and dense and lit in parts and dark in others, going on further than she could see even with her eyes doing what her eyes did. She looked up instead. The upper levels obscured most of it but there was a gap between two towers to the northeast and through it, if the light pollution cooperated, she could sometimes find something.
Tonight she could find three stars. Possibly four.
She stood there until her earpiece crackled one more time — Kasper, cheerful: "We're at the noodle place on Selby if you want in."
She climbed down from the roof and went to find them.