Chapter 447: Little Escape

The drone resolved into shape above the garden - nearly two metres across, a four-rotor heavy-lift configuration painted dull industrial grey, a large cube of brushed metal clamped beneath its frame. On top of the drone’s central housing, sitting cross-legged with the easy balance of someone who’d clearly done this before, was a person. A woman. Raven-black hair flowing out from beneath a sleek dark helmet.

Arashi yelled something incoherent about the begonias as the drone descended.

The metal cube touched the grass with a soft thud and the clamps released. The cube had small screens, switches and metal lids and tiny trapdoors all over, like some kind of complicated mechanism. The drone lifted its empty frame upward, hovering two meters above them in idle while the rider rose to a standing position, then the drone dipped one more metre so she could step off cleanly.

Once on the ground, she crossed the lawn toward the bench and stopped three steps in front of Kori and Raizen, the cube sitting on the grass behind her, the drone idling somewhere above

Reaching up, she pulled the helmet off.

Raizen took one look at her face, lifted his hand, and pressed his palm flat against his own forehead.

His day had, in his estimation, just gone irretrievably sideways.

"What’re you doing here, Alteea? And why... all this?"

Raizen gestured weakly at the entire situation - the drone idling above the lawn, the metal cube parked in the middle of the half-weeded yard, the helmet now tucked under the woman’s arm, the goggles pushed up into her raven-black hair, the long jacket that was absolutely not designed for drone travel.

Alteea grinned at him.

"Good morning to you too, Raizen. I missed ya - we haven’t seen each other in like... A day! Oh, my-"

"It was a good morning."

"It’s about to be a better one."

"That’s exactly what I’m afraid of, coming from you..."

She laughed - the bright, slightly unhinged laugh of the woman who ran half the continent and apparently rode cargo drones for fun - and turned to look at Kori. Her expression did a small complicated thing when she took in the full picture: The bandaged hand. The bruising along the jaw that the morning light didn’t hide. The ceremonial armour, worn not for ceremony but as a brace, with a giant wooden spoon propped against the bench beside it like a royal sceptre.

Raizen decided, in that exact moment, that he was done - not done in a rude way. Just done: The last twenty-four hours had contained a city-wide manhunt, a strange woman on the roof, Kori limping home covered in field bandages, a "dead" friend coming back as half a body, the most embarrassing door-opening of his entire life, and now Alteea - the acting ruler of Neoshima - descending from the sky on a cargo drone with a mysterious cube and the energy of someone about to make his week significantly more complicated. There was a limit to how many shenanigans a person could absorb before noon, and Raizen had reached his sometime around the armour incident.

"I’m - actually not feeling great," he said, standing up. "I think I slept badly... On a roof. I’m going to go lie down for a bit. It’s good to see you, Alteea."

"Oh? You sure? I brought -"

"It’s really good to see you! Bye."

He walked into the house, trying very hard not to look like he was fleeing, which fooled exactly no one. Behind him, he heard Arashi’s voice rise in protest about why Raizen got to leave, Kori’s flat answer of "pull weeds," and Alteea’s laugh. Then the back door clicked shut and the garden noise dropped into a comfortable muffle.

The kitchen was empty and quiet, just how he wanted the kitchen to be. He stood there for a moment, and then - because he was a person, and curiosity didn’t care how tired he was - he drifted toward the window above the bench and stopped just beside it, where the angle of the wall hid him from the garden but the gap at the bottom of the frame let the voices through.

Mostly it was Alteea. Kori’s replies came in short, low tones he couldn’t make out - maybe because of how tired she actually was, and Alteea filled the rest of the air the way she filled every room she’d ever been in.

"- what in the world happened to your - I didn’t know it was THAT bad -"

A short pause - Kori said something, and the tone sounded dry even through the wall.

"- well obviously, but you could’ve at least told me the - okay, okay, fine -"

Another stretch he couldn’t catch. Then:

"- cool armour, by the way. Very dramatic. Is that the old ceremonial set? It looks familiar - It IS. Oh, that’s wonderful, I’m telling everyone -"

Kori’s reply was short and almost certainly a threat.

"- yeah, yeah. Anyway, I brought the computer you asked for. Whole thing, full rig. Took two clearance forms and a small bribe -"

...And then Arashi’s voice cut through the conversation, loud and clear – just like his voice usually was. "Who did you even bribe!?"

Alteea shouted back something about The Council, and how their lazy bums didn’t do anything useful.

Raizen frowned at the wall. The computer you asked for. The cube on the lawn - half a metre of brushed metal on each side, heavy enough to need a cargo drone. That wasn’t anything the Academy issued. That was something Kori had specifically requested from the woman who ran the city, delivered personally, the morning after a lot of things had gone sideways.

Alteea then sighed so loud, even Raizen caught it. "- oh, he’ll have SO much fun with this -"

He stopped breathing for a second.

He.

The voices dropped lower after that, Alteea’s volume finally finding a setting below broadcast to the entire neighbouring buildings, and the words dissolved into murmur. He stood at the wall another half minute, caught nothing else, and gave up. Whatever they were planning, he’d find out the way he found out everything in this house - suddenly, all at once, and probably too late to object.

The dead slate was still lying on the table where he’d left it that morning, the water stain dried into a faint mark along the bottom edge of the screen. He picked it up in passing, turned it over once, and set it back down. He’d have to requisition a replacement through the Academy, fill out the loss report, explain the rain. The thought of the paperwork was somehow heavier than the thought of the evaluation itself.

Unless.

He stopped with one foot on the first stair.

I brought the computer you asked for. He’ll have so much fun with this.

No. He turned the thought over, examined it, and put it away. Whatever was in that cube, assuming it was even for him, would arrive in its own time, attached to whatever scheme Kori and Alteea were currently building over his head in the garden. Guessing would only ruin the dread.

The truth was, his little escape had only been half about Alteea. The other half had been climbing the stairs with him this whole time, quiet and persistent, the small tug that had been sitting under everything since breakfast: he wanted to check on the lizard. He’d left it asleep in Hikari’s care this morning and then the whole day had happened - the slate, the rain, the armour, the spoon, the drone - and through all of it, some part of him had been keeping a thread of attention pointed at the attic, the way you keep attention on a candle you’ve left burning in another room.

The attic was warm and losing its dimness. The morning light came through the small window in a soft slant, catching dust in the air, and the two mattresses still sat side by side where they’d been pushed together - neither he nor Hikari had moved them back, and neither of them had mentioned it.

On his bed, in the folds of his blanket, was a nest.

Someone - Hikari, obviously - had shaped the blanket into a careful ring, a small hollow in the centre, with a thin cover laid over the top. The cover was propped at one edge by a fold of fabric so it wouldn’t lie flat, leaving a gap for air. The whole construction had the precision of someone who had thought about temperature, airflow, and the structural needs of a creature that was half the size it used to be. There was even a note beside it, folded once, with two words visible on the outside in Hikari’s small neat handwriting: DON’T MOVE.

Under the thin cover, the lizard slept.

It lay curled with its small head tucked against its remaining front leg, and the slow rise and fall of its breathing moved the cover in tiny, regular pulses. The half-body was hidden in the folds. From this angle, in this light, it just looked like a small black lizard sleeping in a nest - whole, ordinary, fine.

Raizen crossed the attic quietly and crouched at the edge of the mattress.

He didn’t touch it. He just looked - at the breathing, at the careful nest, at the note, at the small dark shape that had walked across two cities on half a body to come back to him.

He reached out, slowly, and adjusted the edge of the cover by a centimeter, though It hadn’t needed adjusting.

"Oh, FINALLY," the lizard suddenly said, eye still closed, "you remembered I exist."