Chapter 82: Cat out the bag

Rain sat on the edge of his bed in the dark with the phone in his hand and read Corwin’s messages again.

The photo. Abigail Ratchford. Red Dragon. Her mom know where she was tonight? We should talk.

He put the phone face down on the blanket and stared at the wall.

’This is so stupid.’

He meant it. He sat there and felt how stupid it was, the whole thing, top to bottom, and for the first time in weeks he made himself actually look at it.

’Okay. From the start.’

He’d shown up at Crystalpeak with nothing. No family, no guild, no money, an F-rank tag on his file and one plain disk in a plastic case. On the same day, a boy named Sen had shoved a second case into his hands, said he was going to check out of this hellhole, and run off through the gates. Rain had chased him and lost him in the crowd.

That same week, three second-years had caught him in the alley behind Block C. They’d already been knocking Peter around somewhere, he found out who peter was later, and he was just the next one. They wanted the disks. They beat him until he couldn’t stand. Then they heard footsteps and ran, and while he was lying on the ground the System woke up, pulled both disks into him, and turned them into Flash Step.

’They never even got the disks. They don’t know what happened to them. Nobody does except me.’

Then they’d come back for him in broad daylight on the promenade, demanding fifty thousand credits for disks they’d never see again. And he’d looked at them and lied. Security must have logged them, he’d said. The whole thing was contraband, he’d said. He’d watched them go pale.

And then he’d offered to work it off.

He snorted in the dark.

’I offered.’

Nobody had trapped him. That was the part he kept skipping over. He’d walked into Reeve’s basement on his own two feet, because an F-rank orphan with no backing couldn’t get near a real rift any other way, and Corwin’s pipeline was a door. It put him beside Peter, who was actually drowning. It got him into Holt’s crew and the greenhouse and the Husk Regent. It gave him his levels, his storage, twenty-eight feet of Flash Step.

He’d used them. They thought they owned him, and the whole time he’d been using them.

Then Nyra had walked into the registration office and come out with a license, and from that day on he’d had a door of his own. A legal one. With his name on it.

’And I kept going anyway.’

Partly for Peter, because Peter’s debt was real, even if his own was a joke. And partly out of habit, he had to admit. Because it was easier to keep showing up than to work out how to stop.

He laid it all out in his head end to end. A fake debt, for disks that didn’t exist anymore, owed to three bullies who’d beaten him in an alley, which he had never once intended to pay a single credit toward. And he’d spent weeks acting as though it was a chain around his neck.

’That’s not a trap,’ he thought. ’That’s a joke I forgot to stop telling.’

He turned the phone back over and looked at the photo again.

Abby, standing on the cracked ice with her hair blown loose and broken shell all around her.

That part wasn’t funny.

He’d brought her there. He’d stood on the library steps and asked her to come, and she’d come because she was tired of being careful. Now three people who should never have known her name had it, along with a photo, and they knew exactly who her mother was.

’That’s on me. Not her. Me.’

His jaw tightened in the dark.

And they’d gotten her name fast. Within hours. Which meant somebody had dug, and if they’d dug far enough to find her name, they’d found the rest too.

Her rank.

He sat up straighter.

’They know she’s B-rank.’

He thought about what that meant to someone like Corwin. A probationary crew at Iron Vane got D-rank gates, maybe a C-rank if they were lucky and somebody owed somebody a favor. That was why their quota was always short, why they needed Reeve and his crate swaps to begin with.

But a B-rank on a crew’s manifest changed the gates that crew could get into.

’They don’t want her photo,’ he thought slowly. ’They want her name on their paperwork. They want to walk her through C-rank gates, B-rank gates, and fill their quota in one night instead of a month.’

She wasn’t leverage to Corwin. She was a key.

And the photo was how he planned to make her turn.

Rain set the phone down on the desk.

He could snitch. He went through it properly anyway. Iron Vane, the quota, the swaps, Reeve’s basement. Then the photo would go to Celestina Ratchford within the hour, and Abby’s contract would be gone before anybody at Iron Vane had finished reading. He could go to the academy, and the photo would go there too. He could find Corwin and break his phone, and there’d be a copy, because there was always a copy.

He could do nothing. And in a week Abby would be standing in a C-rank rift for Corwin’s quota, with her career hanging on a picture.

’No.’

He sat with his hands on his knees for a long time.

He wasn’t going to fix this tonight. He wasn’t going to fix it with one move. He’d have to do it the way he’d walked into Reeve’s basement: one piece at a time, letting them think they were winning until it was far too late for them to notice they weren’t.

But first, Abby had to know. All of it. If he was going to ask her to play a long game with her own career on the table, she had to know exactly who she was standing next to.

He picked the phone back up and typed a message to her instead of Corwin.

**Rain:** Need to talk before class. Practice field behind the East Annex. 7am. It’s important.

He waited. The reply came eleven minutes later.

**Abby:** I was asleep. Is everything ok?

**Rain:** Not really. 7.

**Abby:** I’ll be there.

He left Corwin on read and lay down. He didn’t sleep much.

***

The practice field was empty at seven, the grass grey with dew and the old equipment sheds dark against a pale sky. Abby came across the field with her coat buttoned up to her chin and two paper cups of coffee. She held one out to him.

"You look terrible," she said.

"Thanks."

"I mean it as a concern." She studied his face. "What happened?"

He took the coffee. Then he took out his phone, opened Corwin’s messages, and handed it to her.

He watched her read. The photo first. She looked at it a long time, and something in her face went very still. Then the first message. Then the second.

Her mom know where she was tonight?

Abby’s hand closed around his phone so hard the case creaked.

"That..." she said. Her voice came out very quiet and very flat. "That son of a..."

"Abby."

"Where is he?" She looked up. Her grey eyes had gone hard and bright. "Where does he live. Which dorm."

"Abby..."

"I’m going to take his phone and his hand," she said. "In that order."

She was already half turned toward the path. Rain stepped in front of her.

"If you touch him," he said, "that photo goes to your mother an hour later. Along with a report about a first-year Red Dragon cadet who put a C-rank second-year in the infirmary."

"I don’t care."

"Yes you do."

"I don’t..." She stopped. Her chest was rising and falling fast. She stood there in the wet grass with her coffee in one hand and his phone in the other, and he watched her make herself breathe. In, out. In, out. It took a long time.

Then she sat down on the grass. Just dropped down, coat and all, into the dew.

"I’m sorry," Rain said. He sat down beside her. "This is my fault. I asked you to come."

"I said yes."

"I asked."

"I’m not a child, Rain. I knew what I was doing." She set her coffee down in the grass. "I just didn’t think they’d..." She looked at the photo again. "How did they even find out? I didn’t tell them anything."

"They have reach. Somebody dug." He took his phone back gently. "And if they dug up your name, they dug up your rank."

She turned her head.

"I don’t think he wants to hurt you with this," Rain said. "I think he wants to use it. Iron Vane gives his crew D-rank gates because they’re probationary. But with a B-rank on their manifest..."

He watched her get there. He saw it happen. Her face went pale under the cold.

"They’d get into higher gates," she said slowly. "C-rank. Maybe B. With me carrying the fights."

"And their quota’s done in a week instead of a month."

"Under my name. In rifts my guild never approved." She pressed her hands against her eyes. "Every single run would be another photo."

"Yeah."

She sat with that for a long time. A bird landed on the roof of the equipment shed, looked at them, and flew off again.

"Okay," she said finally, and dropped her hands. "Okay. So what do we do? Because if you say snitch..."

"No snitching. Not yet. If we go after them now, you lose everything before they do."

"Then what?"

"We let them think they have us," Rain said. "We play along. We figure out exactly what Corwin wants and exactly how far he’s willing to go to get it. And we take them apart slowly, in the right order, so that by the time anything reaches your mother or Iron Vane, your contract’s already locked and that photo is just a picture."

Abby looked at him for a long time.

"You’ve thought about this," she said.

"All night."

"You’ve thought about this like someone who’s done it before."

He didn’t answer that right away. He looked down at his coffee, then out across the empty field toward the sheds.

"Before we do any of it," he said, "there’s something I need to tell you. Something I’ve never told anybody. Not Peter. Not Nyra. Nobody."

She went quiet.

"You asked me how a carrier walks out of a C-rank boss room," he said. "This is how."

He told her.

He started with Sen. The case shoved into his hands at the ceremony, the boy running through the gates, never seen again. Then the alley behind Block C, Corwin’s crew, the beating, the footsteps. Lying on the ground with blood in his mouth, and a blue screen opening in front of his eyes that nobody else could see.

He told her about the System. The two disks pulled into him and fused into one. The countdown in the infirmary. The daily quests. The levels. The status panels. The store. The storage.

He told her about the Husk Regent, what it had really looked like, and who had really put it down.

Abby listened to all of it without interrupting. Her face gave away nothing until he finished.

Then she laughed.

It wasn’t a mean laugh. It was a disbelieving one, one breath out through her nose, then another, until she had to put her hand over her mouth.

"Sorry," she said. "Sorry. A screen."

"Yes."

"That only you can see."

"Yes."

"That gives you quests." She was trying very hard to keep a straight face. "And levels. Like a game."

"Abby."

"Rain." She put her hand on his arm, still smiling, and her voice went gentle, and somehow that was worse. "I know you’re stressed. I know last night was a lot. But please don’t mess with me today. Not about this. Not with that photo sitting in your phone."

He looked at her.

Then he stood up and put his coffee down on the grass.

"Stay there," he said.

"What are you..."

"Just watch."

He walked out onto the open field until he was about ten meters away from her. Then he turned around and faced her.

He’d never done this in front of anyone who knew what they were looking at. He felt the Mana at the base of his spine, the way he always did, like the moment before a sneeze.

[Flash Step: Zero Drag]

The field jumped.

One instant he was standing in the wet grass ten meters from Abby. The next he was standing ten meters on the other side of her, and behind him a long line of dew had blown off the grass in a straight streak, as though a car had driven through it at a hundred kilometers an hour.

Abby’s cup was halfway to her mouth. It stayed there.

Rain turned around.

She was staring at the spot where he’d been. Then she turned her head very slowly and looked at him.

"Again," she said.

He went again. This time he aimed straight at her. Halfway there, two meters from her shoulder, he bent it. The world swung sideways around him, and he came out of the step standing directly behind her, close enough that the wind of it lifted her hair.

Abby screamed.

It was a short, sharp sound. She was up off the grass and spinning around before it had finished leaving her mouth, her coffee flying out across the field, her fist already drawn back.

Rain held up both hands.

They stood there, a meter apart. Her fist was still up. Her eyes were huge.

"You," she said. "You just..."

"Yeah."

"You were in front of me. You were coming at me, and then you weren’t, and you were behind me..."

"It bends now," he said. "It used to only go straight."

"It used to..." She lowered her fist. Then she raised it again, as if she didn’t trust him. Then she lowered it. "It bends. You said that like it’s normal."

"It’s new."

"That’s a spatial skill." She was looking at him now the way she’d looked at the cut lines under the ice. "That’s not F-rank. That’s not anywhere near F-rank. What rank is it?"

He told her.

She didn’t say anything.

She sat back down in the grass. Not on purpose, it looked like. Her knees just stopped holding her.

"SSS," she said to nobody.

"SSS."

"You’re F-rank."

"I am F-rank," Rain said. "My skill isn’t."

She put both her hands flat on the wet grass, as though she needed to feel it to believe it was still there.

"The boss room," she said slowly. "You didn’t get carried out of the boss room."

"No."

"The ice. Last night. I saw your feet move before Odell called the Shellbacks. I thought you were just quick." She looked up at him. "And the video. The C-rank. Everyone said it was impossible. People in my class laughed about it. Fake, they said. Or lucky."

"It was a little lucky."

"Rain." She laughed again, but this time it cracked in the middle. "Rain, I’ve been teaching you how to stand."

"You’ve been teaching me how to channel," he said. "I didn’t know how to do that. I still don’t, really."

"You have an SSS-rank skill and you can’t channel."

"I’ve only had it a couple of weeks. And no one taught me anything."

She sat there in the dew, staring up at him. He watched her go back through every conversation they’d had. The train. The library steps. Tenski’s yard. Every time she’d looked at him and seen an F-rank with good instincts and nothing else.

"Why are you telling me this?" she asked finally. Her voice had gone very quiet. "You said nobody knows. Not Peter. Not Nyra. Why me?"

Rain crouched down in front of her so they were eye level.

"Because I dragged you into this," he said. "Because Corwin has a photo of you, and that’s my fault, and I’m going to fix it. And because if I’m going to ask you to trust me while I do, you should know exactly who you’re trusting."

Abby looked at him for a long moment.

"And tomorrow," she said suddenly. "The testing. Rain, the testing reads skills. They’re going to put your hand on that panel and it’s going to say..."

"I’ve handled it."

"How?"

"I’ve handled it," he said again.

She stared at him. Then she let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

"Of course you have," she said. "Of course you’ve handled it. You’ve probably handled six other things I don’t know about."

"Maybe two."

"Two." She shook her head. She picked up her empty coffee cup from where it had landed in the grass, looked into it, and set it down again. "You owe me a coffee."

"You threw it."

"You appeared behind me."

"Fair."

She was quiet for a while. When she spoke again, the shake had gone out of her voice. The hard brightness he’d seen when she read Corwin’s messages had come back.

"Okay," she said. "So we let them think they have us."

"Yes."

"And we take them apart. Slowly."

"In the right order."

"And when it’s done," Abby said, "I want to be there. When he finds out. I want to see his face."

Rain held out his hand. She looked at it for a second, then took it, and he pulled her up off the grass.

"Deal," he said.

He took his phone out and opened Corwin’s messages one more time. He looked at the photo of her on the ice, then at the girl standing next to him in the dew with grass on her coat, and he typed.

**Rain:** Fine. Tomorrow evening. You pick the place.

The reply came almost immediately, as though Corwin had been sitting there waiting with the phone in his hand.

**Corwin:** Smart boy. 6pm. Reeve’s basement. Come alone.

Rain showed it to Abby.

She read it, and her mouth went thin.

"Smart boy," she said.

"He has no idea," Rain said, and put the phone away.