“You’re comin’ with me, bud,” Kris growled, wheezing, while grabbing his new hostage’s collar and dragging him out from under his desk and along behind him.

One of his colleagues shouted something that might have been his name, but honestly, Kris couldn’t care less what the guy’s name was. The cops’ heavy booted footsteps pounded behind them while Kris and his terrified new friend sprinted across the office. Kris could almost distinguish what they were yelling, muffled English and Spanish in the stairwell he’d just vacated, but then he found the next set of stairs and took them two at a time. Damn, what floor were they on now? This had to be the tenth, at least. He could barely feel his legs, no matter how in shape he might have been. And he definitely was in shape, otherwise he would have given up a long time ago. Stairs were the worst.

At the landing, he turned around to watch his hostage slowly pull himself up the stairwell, using the handrail like a lifeline. Kris rolled his eyes.

“C’mon, ya goddamn lardass, this ain’t nothin’,” he said, muffled through the tape wrapped around his head. “I just ran up nine other flights o’ these damn stairs, you can climb this one.”

The hostage picked up the pace, but didn’t reply. When they got to the landing, Kris pushed him out of the doorway first. The door opened outward, a blessing.

“Move!” shouted a gravelly voice, and the hostage tried to comply and jump to the side, but Kris’s vice-like hold on the back of his suit jacket kept him in place.

“Nah, thanks,” Kris shouted back. He could hear the footsteps behind him getting closer, probably about to enter the stairwell. This could’ve been going better. He rolled his shoulders, keeping his cool. Or at least, trying to.

He edged out from the stairwell, keeping his front covered by his makeshift meat-shield and his back to the door, holding it shut. None of the police up here shot at him, or even moved, as if they were decoration, turned to stone out of fear of hurting an innocent. Ah, morality.

“Y’all gonna let me pass?” Kris called. His hostage was sweating bad, poor guy smelled like a goddamn locker room. “I got some business to attend to, ah, upstairs.”

“No, Hazard,” one of the cops responded. The one who’d yelled for the hostage to move. He was an old white guy, like Kris’s hostage but older and graying. His moustache was impressive, all silver and pin-straight. Probably balding under his stupid blue hat. “You’re under arrest for, well. For a lot of things.”

“Don’t y’all gotta actually catch me for that to be the case?” His pursuers were in the stairwell, shouting and stomping. Kris leaned more heavily into the door. He couldn’t lock it behind him, and wished he had a master key for the building. That would’a been a good thing to get prior. Too bad he hated planning shit out. “‘Cause, uh. I don’t really plan on that happening.”

The door shook, snapping open several inches before his weight pushed it back, and he cracked the back of his head against the metal. He winced, grinding his teeth against the stars in his vision. Fuck. He had to run.

“Where’s the stairway?” he asked his hostage, lowly, looking for it as fast as he could, but the door was still thumping against his back. The guy was shaking, and shrugged. He was probably an elevator guy. Dammit. Kris growled in frustration, about to draw his gun, then saw the door on the wall to his left, labelled “ROOFTOP ACCESS”. Bingo.

“Alright, fellas, it’s been a blast,” Kris said, loudly, adjusting his grip on the hostage. He kinda wanted to stay around and shoot these guys, ‘cause they were just so much less annoying when they were bleeding on the ground and not trying to give him a concussion, but the clip in his gun was half empty, he was fairly certain, and he wanted to save the clip in his cowboy boot in case he had to fight his way out. “But I, uh. I gotta run.”

He bolted, dragging his hostage as close to his side as he could. The cops chanced a couple shots while he ran, and he heard one skim past his ear, catching his breath in his throat. Aside from that, they were being painfully careful. Civilian, and all.

Technically, Kris was a civilian too. Though wearing black-and-yellow striped hazard tape as a mask and pulling shit like this probably made him a special case.

The cops from the stairwell didn’t care as much about hitting the civilian, or they were made a little braver by their better angle, but either way, one of them managed to get Kris in the back of his thigh. He ignored it as best he could, still barely able to feel his legs after running up the damn stairs, and when he made it to the roof access stairwell he didn’t stop to check the damage. He stopped at the top, though, putting his hands on his knees to breathe for just a second.

“Sorry, bud, just gimme a second. Watch, ah. Watch the door.”

The hostage did as he was told. So far, after the initial scuffle with the cops on the first floor, Kris hadn’t had to draw his gun even once. His reputation spoke for him, he supposed. The perks of being a repeat offender.

With the hostage holding it shut, Kris wandered the roof, looking for a better way to block off the door. No luck, of fucking course – they kept their damn roof clear, for whatever reason. Would it be so hard to leave a pipe, or a two-by-four, or any damn thing at all? This whole game had been one fuckup after another, when he didn’t kill the receptionist before she was able to call the police, all the way up ten flights of stairs. He’d envisioned something a little more theatrical, with three victims on the edge of the roof and an hour of negotiating his demands, then throwing the money (in loose bills) off the edge as a big “FUCK YOU,” to the city at large. Then he’d kill the hostages and, uh. Get away. Somehow.

That obviously wasn’t happening. He could hear shouting from the stairwell.

Alright. Breathe. Time to hurry the fuck up, then.

“Okay, buddy, time to get moving,” he said, moving to the front wall and looking down at the street. There were still cops down there, somehow. It’d felt like the whole damn La Sierra Police Department was in the building behind them.

“Wh-what are you going to do to me?” The first time the guy had spoken and it was that? Typical.

“Kill ya, moron,” Kris huffed. “I’m Hazard. I’m not exactly known for leaving people behind.” Kris gestured for him to approach. “Now get the fuck over here. You’re going over the edge.”

The hostage balked. “A-aren’t you going to demand a- a ransom or something? Like a hostage?”

“I was hoping to, yeah. But I can’t lock the door, and there are way more cops than I, uh. Than I foresaw. Than I’d foreseen.”

The guy still didn’t move. He was holding the door, still. “I don’t- I don’t want to die.”

“Cool. I didn’t ask.” Kris left the ledge, and finally drew his pistol. “You either go over with a hole in your head, or ya go over screaming. I think the screaming would be cooler. I mean, just my opinion, but I’d rather scream than die quiet.” He just shook his head, reminding Kris more and more of a baby. Fucking Christ, guy. “I’m not fucking playing a game here, I need you to go over the edge, like, yesterday. I need to get the fuck out of here.”

“I can’t- I can’t do it. You’re gonna have to shoot me.”

Kris groaned, loud and drawn out like a bratty teenager. “Oh my god, you’re really gonna be like this? Jesus Christ, I’m a good person, I don’t deserve this shit.” He took aim and shot out both of the guy’s knees, rolling his eyes all the while. The hostage screamed, blood soaking his cheap gray slacks. He collapsed to his- well, to his knees, and seemed to realize his mistake a little late. He slumped to his side, tears streaming down his patchy five o’clock shadow pitifully. Kris grabbed one arm roughly and with what felt like the last dregs of strength in his legs, drew the guy up. He dragged him to the edge and threw him over without watching him fall.

The door burst open and Kris sprinted through the dense crowd of police officers, the quarters too close for any of them to try shooting, jumping down the stairs and rounding the corner. All of them had followed him and his hostage up into the stairwell, like fucking idiots, and left a clear shot for him to run back to the other stairs. By the time they’d decongested and started following, he was gone. As one mind, the police herded toward the stairs he’d taken up here in the first place and sprinted to the next floor.

Kris had assumed they’d do that. Hence why he changed direction, and was in the elevator.

The tape was constricting his breathing and muffling whatever shitty muzak they had hooked up to this thing, but he couldn’t take it off yet, panting wet and hot through his mouth. If Kris Palmetto walked out of the building, that’d raise more questions than if Hazard left. He left his leather jacket on too, and the tape on his palms. He could take it off when he got home. He knew that. It was just frustrating. The plastic and the heat and his sweat were all making it very uncomfortable. It was like there was no damn AC in the whole building – it felt every bit the eighty-something it was outside. Wasn’t it supposed to get cold at night, out here in the desert? Or was La Sierra just fucked up?

He didn’t know. At least it wasn’t as humid as Charleston, and less mosquitos to boot. He could deal with the heat.

Kris got out on the ground floor, in plain view of the cops out front through the broad windows. He waved at the one guy who noticed him (and the guy balked, froze, then started shouting) and took a deep breath before running out back through the lobby to the backrooms, then the janitorial quarters, then finally to the back door. There were a couple cops back here watching the door, but before either of them could get a shot off, one’s head was blasted open and the other was on her knees, whimpering after a well-aimed kick to the gut. Kris kicked her shoulder so she fell to her back, and he stomped one time, hard, on her stomach again, over her hands. She wheezed, coughed, and he mock-saluted her before making off.

He ran for a long time, breathing harsh and shuddering. He weaved mostly through alleys and the backs of buildings, mostly abandoned. The few who were there, human garbage thrown out with the trash, were too scared to dare say a word. Hazard had that effect on people – he’d been wrapping his head and hands in black-and-yellow striped hazard tape for two years, causing chaos. He’d done everything from robbing jewelry stores to arranging hostage situations to blowing shit up. Usually he didn’t keep whatever he stole or negotiated out of police, instead destroying or getting rid of whatever it was in sight of the victims. He thought it was funnier that way, and besides, he didn’t have the connections he’d need to use the money or sell the stolen goods without getting caught or tracked down. Nonetheless, his reputation and the obvious warning that made up his disguise spoke for themselves. One homeless person in particular visibly flinched in fear when they saw him walk by, and he snickered before flitting to the next alley.

After a while he slowed down to a trot, then a leisurely stroll through the grime and the garbage. Though he could hear frantic sirens in the distance, no one had followed him from the building.

At least, none of the cops had.

Across the street from his apartment, was an alley behind a hollowed out pawn shop that Kris frequently used to unwrap his tape in privacy. He was reaching for the end of his tape when someone nearby cleared their throat.

The kid stepped out of the broken side-door of the old building, the hinges rusted and shattered years ago. She was Chinese and a couple years younger than Kris was, her short hair poorly cut in uneven, mismatched layers. Her eyes were bright (if slightly out of focus) and watching him with interest.

“You gonna strip, Haz?” she asked, her voice a low soprano, smoke-roughened and casual. “I’d pay to watch that tease.”

“You’re from the Court,” Kris pointed out, instead of replying. He’d seen her face on the news. He left his tape well alone. “Part of the group that does the heists.”

She nodded. “I’m Wrecker. I’m here on behalf of the Queen.”

Kris barked a laugh. “Are ya really? Well, I’m honored.” His tone was sour, and he glared at Wrecker. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere, ‘specially not with you.”

“What’ve you got against the Court?” She half-grinned, sauntering up to him with the bravado of someone who wasn’t five-foot-four and probably less than a hundred pounds, fragile-lookin’ as a porcelain figure with half the grace and thrice the ego. Somehow her size didn’t put him at ease. When she grinned he could see a glint of metal at the top of her mouth, a ring dangling over her front teeth. It wasn’t her only facial piercing.

“I don’t like the way y’all do things,” Kris said, lowly. He mentally went over the exits (two on either side behind him, one straight ahead that led to the street), and how long it would take to lose Wrecker if he ran. He didn’t dare take his eyes off her, even to glance about and see if she had any backup. “Too much order. Not enough fuckin’ shit up. That ain’t what I’m about.”

“So you’re ‘about’ getting shot? You’re into ‘fuckin’ shit up’ with no reward?” She lowered her voice mockingly when quoting him.

Kris shrugged. He’d nearly forgotten about the bullet lodged in his leg, and it sent a wave of something unbearable up through him. He resisted the urge to shudder. “I guess so. I don’t like bein’ told what ta do.” He rolled his shoulders, ignoring the way he ached all over. Standing still had his adrenaline finally wearing off. Everything hurt. How the hell was he gonna get a bullet outta his leg? “Now, what did that goddamn Queen of yours want?”

“You.”

Kris opened his mouth to reply, but then he was hit from behind, hard, with something metal that clanged and echoed. The last thing he saw before blacking out was a bad haircut and a glint of surgical steel in the streetlight.

Kris woke up in a car, lying on his back. It was dark, but he saw flashes of streetlights through the windows whenever they passed them. He could barely open his eyes from the way his head was throbbing, and instead elected to stay passed out. He wasn’t escaping, that was for sure. His entire being seemed to be centered on the throbbing of his skull and thigh. He could almost feel exactly where the bullet sat inside, prodding at the meat of his leg, unwanted and foreign.

“Wouldn’t it be a good idea to take the tape off?” That was Wrecker – he recognized her voice, even lowered as it was.

“Perez said to leave it on if it was on.” A deeper voice, low tenor or high baritone. This one was driving, and voice closer to Kris’s ear. He spoke low, even. Reasonable. “I know you wanna see him, but orders are orders.”

“Aw, but J- Bandit, I wanna see what color his hair is, at least.”

“Why? What would you get out of it?”

“I dunno, I’m just curious. Please? C’mon, just a peek.”

Bandit paused. “His eyebrows are brown. His hair is probably brown. Maybe dark blonde, probably not.”

“Let’s check, then!”

“Perez will cut your fingers off and shove them up your ass, Wrecker. I’m not pullin’ them out for you. No.”

Wrecker went quiet. Humphed, like a six year old. “Fine. You’re no fun.”

The ride went on for several more minutes in dead quiet. No music, no more conversation. Kris drifted in and out of consciousness, maybe, or maybe that was just drifting in and out of light, he couldn’t tell. They drove pin-straight for nearly half an hour before finally turning off, slowly, like into a parking lot. Kris wanted to sit up and look out the window, at least, but the idea of moving at all made his stomach churn, motion sick and throbbing. God, he just wanted to head home and go the fuck to sleep. He had work in the morning and this ‘kidnapped’ shit was gonna fuck up his whole week, he could feel it.

They pulled into a garage, or a hangar, or some other indoor, uh, place for storing vehicles, Kris didn’t know. He was having trouble stringing together coherent thoughts. Was he losing blood? That would explain the, uh. The wooziness. Damn, what if that gunshot had hit something important, and he hadn’t realized over the adrenaline? He knew there was some sort of important vein down in the thigh; maybe that had been ruptured? Was the Court gonna patch him up at all, while they had him in custody? He heard they had good doctors on their payroll, but he wouldn’t put it past them to let him bleed out.

Wrecker and the other guy, “Bandit” or whatever (obviously codenames), slammed their doors shut in unison. The door by Kris’s head was pulled open almost gently, and two strong hands grabbed him by the underarms. He faked waking up, but the groggy deliriousness was all genuine.

“Wha- Where’m I?” he asked. He went to rub his eye and discovered his tape was still on when the back of his hand squeaked against his eyebrow. Oh, right. He’d forgotten.

“Court warehouse,” the guy said. Kris guessed this was Bandit. He was handsome, black and lean and every inch as serious as Wrecker hadn’t been, tired eyes behind black-plastic hipster glasses. Full lips pulled into a frown. “You have an audience with the Queen.” He didn’t seem happy about it, though he didn’t seem unhappy either.

“She’s here?” Kris had never heard of anyone actually meeting the Queen. Not that he knew much about the Court at all, mind, aside from where their best gun dealers were and whatever he heard on the news.

Before the Court had rose up six years ago, La Sierra was full of little gangs, disjointed and constantly fighting. They were all small names with no connections and no power, running shitty drug rings and spending more time in cells than on the streets gettin’ shit done. Then the Queen had stepped in and somehow united everyone under her rule. She hadn’t been seen publicly in years, but those who had seen her back in the beginning said she was a young girl, somewhere between eleven and fifteen years old. That had been four years before Kris moved to La Sierra.

Now, two years later, the Court ran like a business, like a private military, like a multinational crime syndicate condensed in one city. La Sierra was big, but it wasn’t San Diego or LA, and it certainly wasn’t no New York, so mostly the Court flew under the radar, as invasive as they were. They ran drug trafficking, sold black market firearms, and employed contract killers, thieves, bodyguards, hackers, assassins, pilots – anything you could think of. Outside of La Sierra, the Court was unknown and low-tier. Nothing in the national media, or even state media. Only a handful of outsiders knew about the Court in the first place, probably arranged on purpose by the Queen. She had those kind of connections.

 Their most infamous dealings were their heists – elaborately planned and haphazardly executed massive undertakings, usually run only by a handful of skilled professionals. Stealing police helicopters and private planes, robbing anything from banks to convenience stores with the attention to detail one would usually save for stealing the Declaration of Independence or, hell, the President herself.

The Heist Squad (which is what the small crew called themselves) were the closest thing La Sierra had to rock stars, waving at news crew cameras and making general asses out of themselves. Kris had recognized Wrecker immediately, but now that he was thinking about it, he thought Bandit might be familiar, too. The getaway driver, maybe? His face was usually hidden by tinted glass, but Kris thought he might recognize the profile. They were the only two regular members, everyone else forgettable and temporary.

Bandit threw one of Kris’s arms over his shoulder, and Wrecker came around to do the same with his other arm. At first, Kris tried to cooperate and walk with them, but when he tried to put weight on his left leg he felt a pain like a hot poker stuck straight down through the marrow of his femur, so he gave that up right quick, letting Wrecker and Bandit drag him wherever they would. In the meantime, he focused as hard as he could on just breathing. At least being knocked the fuck out had given his aching lungs a rest after all that damn running.

The building was a warehouse, all one huge, open room, Kris realized. At the far end was something like a stage. As they drew closer, he could see that it was makeshift and old, all unfinished wood planks and uncovered underneath, revealing the shoddy, rusted support beams. On the thin wooden top there were two big bloodstains side by side off to Kris’s left, and at their side, right in the center of the stage, was the Queen.

She was sitting in a pretty normal steel folding chair, but the way she held herself it may as well have been made of solid gold. The Queen was maybe eighteen or nineteen, black and Latina mixed, he’d guess, and one of the most beautiful people Kris had ever seen, all flawless skin and bronze hair. She wore more real gold on one hand alone than Kris had ever seen in his life and looked at him like he was a cockroach who owed her a favor, or maybe like he was nothing at all.

“Drop him,” she said, and without a thought, Kris was plunked on his ass. His leg jolted and he hissed out a curse. Wrecker and Bandit backed up several paces but kept their eyes on him. There were armed guards on either end of the stage, and probably more of them at the exits. The throne was flanked as well, by an older Latina woman with slicked back hair, sunglasses, and a baseball bat at the Queen’s right hand and a young olive-skinned boy with dark hair on her left, pretty as the fake teenagers on TV. He stared at his feet for the most part, but would occasionally glance up at Kris for a fraction of a second. His expression was completely blank, and he seemed to be a couple years younger than the Queen herself.

“Hello, Hazard,” she began, smirking. Kris grunted. “I see you’ve had a rough night.”

“You could say that,” Kris gritted out. He was having trouble keeping his eyes open again. He kept looking at the kid – he looked so out of place among the big-time criminals, here. Something about him just seemed wrong. Vulnerable. “Sure as hell could’a been better.”

The Queen smiled, though she didn’t laugh at his weak attempt at humor. “I’m sure. Is that a bullet in your leg?” Kris nodded. “We’ll get that out before we send you home.”

“Home?” He hadn’t thought he’d be getting back to his apartment any time soon.

She nodded. “Of course, Hazard. Did you think we were going to be keeping you here?”

He shrugged. She did laugh this time, a little harder than he thought was really necessary, but whatever.

“No, no. You’re leaving here alive, and tonight. I just wanted to ask you a favor.”

A favor? “I don’t like the sound of that,” he said, distrust creeping up his spine, stiffening his shoulders. “Sounds like ya wanna tell me what to do.” He adjusted on his knees, straightening his back a little, and grimaced. “I don’t like being told what to do.”

“That’s very interesting, though I don’t recall asking.” The woman with the sunglasses shifted her weight ostentatiously, and though her eyes were hidden, Kris could tell she was glaring him down. The Queen cleared her throat before continuing. “I have a request, and if you don’t want Wrecker and Bandit to cut off your stupid tape mask and deliver you to the LSPD, you’re going to do as I say.”

Kris bit his tongue on a retort. The thought of that steel bat against his skull made him want to hurl up a lung. He was silent for a long time, until he realized she was waiting for a reply. “Fine,” he said, at last. “I’m listening.”

The Queen smiled. “That’s what I like to hear.” She gestured, and one of the guards from the end of the stage climbed up gracefully, all raw strength. He slung his gun around his back to free up his hands, bowing shallowly at the waist toward the Queen. He was white, broad and sturdy and tall and overtly masculine. His curly hair was the same green as his cargo pants. Blue eyes flashed behind his rounded steel-frame glasses.

“Park will explain it for you,” the Queen said, gesturing toward the man. “It’s eir plan.” Oh. Not a man. Kris felt a twinge of something like guilt. Hypocrite.

“Thanks, Your Majesty,” said Park. Ey had an English accent and seemed to look straight through Kris. “Late this autumn, we have a heist planned. You’ve seen some of the others, I’m sure. They’re highly publicized. Exciting television, so the news does the play-by-play for weeks afterward. The police don’t like it, think it glamorizes crime, but the LSPD is so hilariously ineffectual, nobody gives a damn. We sure don’t.”

“Yeah, I know about the heists,” Kris gritted out. He didn’t live under a fucking rock. “Get on with it.”

Park glared, continuing like ey hadn’t been interrupted. “Anyway, we have a big heist planned for the first of December. And we want you to help.”

“No,” Kris said immediately. “I refuse.”

“You don’t have that option, cockhead,” Park snapped. Eir glare deepened and eir fists clenched, but ey breathed, deep. Ey smoothed out, but not gently. More like ey was pulled taught. “You’re helping whether you want to or not. You have two jobs – the second one is easy. You’re the distraction. We’re robbing a bank. The big old brick one downtown in La Plaza. You’re holding it up, keeping the police outside and the hostages in their goddamned places.”

Kris wanted to groan, throw his head back in exasperation. He hated Park already, the way ey gave orders like it was eir job (which, admittedly, it seemed to be). Ey was probably ex-military, by the stiff posture and unwavering stare. “And my first job?” he asked, resigned.

“You’re babysitting this kid.” Park reached back and grabbed the out-of-place kid by his shoulder. He looked even more vulnerable than before, though Kris couldn’t tell if that was the considerable difference in stature when he was right next to Park or if it was something else. “This is Andrea Olivieri. He’s the new kid on the Heist Squad, but he’s about as soft as any other sixteen-year-old. We need you to scare him tough.”

Kris pulled a face, but- well, the tape. “What the fuck does that even mean?”

Park looked like ey wanted to deck him for cursing at em, but ey restrained emself. “It means that you’re gonna make this little shitstain ruin his pants for three months so he won’t cock up the heist, is the fuck it means.”

Andrea didn’t look up from his feet the whole time. Kris pitied him a little, almost, but he pitied himself a lot more.

“So, what, I gotta house him? Feed him? For three months?” He still wasn’t sure how he was gonna scare a kid tough, or if that even made sense. He let that go.

“Yeah, you do. And then we pull the heist, and then you can go back to getting shot and making poor economic decisions.”

“And how do I know y’all are gonna let me go back?”

“‘Cause I just fucking said so!” Park shouted, at a tipping point. Ey seemed not to like being talked back at, which made Kris want to talk back at em even more.

“Enough, Park,” the Queen said, and Park froze, then seemed to deflate. Ey looked back at the Queen and, at a gesture, ey went back to their spot at the end of the stage. Andrea massaged the shoulder Park had been holding; ey’d squeezed him hard. He winced like it was bruising already.

“Do you understand the terms of the agreement, Hazard?” the Queen asked.

Kris’s head was swimming. He looked down and there was a small-ish pool of blood under his leg. He wondered how bad the seat of the car was, however long he was passed out there. His skull throbbed and stars were starting to spot his vision. “I mean, I guess so,” he slurred. He was done fighting, exausted and losing blood and sure as hell not winning. The Queen was blank faced, but the corner of her mouth was twitching like she was trying not to laugh. Or maybe his eyes were playing tricks on him, he didn’t fucking know.

“Good,” she said. She turned to the woman at her side. “Rosa, if you’d do the honors.”

In a blur of effortless motion, the woman in sunglasses hopped off the stage, approached him, and bashed him over the head with her bat.

“-to get up!”

Kris groaned, feeling bile in his throat and the worst headache he’d ever experienced. The back of his tape felt warm and swollen when he reached up to feel it. His head was bleeding.

He blinked his eyes open several times until the four-headed figure crouched over him converged into the kid from before- Andrea, brown eyes wide and panicked, mouth frowning and worried. Great, this was happening. And here Kris had been hoping it was a nightmare.

“Hazard, please get up, we need to get to your home, please, I keep hearing sirens and thinking-”

“Shut up, kid, holy shit,” Kris slurred, putting a hand in the air. Andrea took the cue and stood to pull Kris awkwardly to his feet. Once the world stopped swimming around him, Kris realized they were back in the alley where he had run into Wrecker. Close to his apartment, and a good place to take off his tape.

But the damn kid was there.

“Close your eyes,” he ordered, voice rough, and glared blearily at Andrea until he did. Then he reached up to finally unwrap his tape.

It was a literal breath of fresh air, except it was all smog and smoke and it smelled like the dumpster not far off. Still, anything was better than his own bile and blood and sweat at this point. He heaved up against the wall, mostly acid, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, then rubbed that on his blood-soaked jeans. He took his time breathing as deep as he could. He reached back to inspect his head wound, but the bleeding seemed to have already stopped. The blood was thick and sticky in his short, bleached hair, but there wasn’t much he could do to hide that. Best just to get home and clean it out there.

He wadded up the filthy caution tape and shoved it in his jeans pocket, then grabbed Andrea’s shoulder. The kid jumped about a foot in the air.

“Can I open my eyes?” he asked.

“No. C’mon.”

Kris led Andrea down the streets of La Sierra slowly, but only slow enough so as to not seem suspicious. His limp was pronounced, and the back of his pants was soaked in blood, but he could feel the bandages wrapped around his mid-thigh, evidence that the Queen had been true to her word and had him patched up. There was still more blood in his hair, but there wasn’t anyone on the street anyway. When they finally made it to his apartment building, it was a blessing and a curse. Blessing, because he was so close to being able to rest. A curse because, well.

God, he fucking hated stairs.

In his tiny studio apartment, he shoved Andrea toward the couch and put the TV remote in his hand.

“So I can open my eyes?” Andrea asked, and his voice had changed – suddenly, he had an Italian accent.

“Uh, yeah,” Kris replied, wobbling on his feet. He grabbed the back of the couch for balance. “But uh. Don’t look at, um. At me. Just look forward.” He blinked hard, took a deep breath. “What’s, uh, what’s the accent?”

“Mine,” Andrea said. He turned on the TV. “I’m Italian.”

“But outside-”

“I draw too much attention like this." He shrugged like it wasn't a big deal. "I’m an actor. I use my skills when it’s convenient.”

Kris nodded, and it made his head throb again. He stumbled to the bathroom and stuck his head under the spigot, running cold water over the wound and trying to rinse as much of the blood out of his hair as he could. He hissed in a breath through his teeth when the icy water hit the open wound, working at the tender and broken flesh with his fingers.

The sound of TV from the other room reminded him of his guest. Thinking about it made him want to bash his forehead on the spout, furious and destructive, but he didn’t. Instead, he toweled his head dry, then went to the table beside his bed to pick up his gray beanie, which he pulled on to hide the injury. He peeled off the stained jeans and inspected the bandages on his leg, but they were pristine and well-tied, so he left them alone, pulling on a pair of sweats. He tossed his leather jacket on the back of the couch.

“Close your eyes, kid,” he ordered once more, steering himself up behind Andrea and grabbing his shoulders. Andrea complied, only trembling a little bit under his hands, and Kris directed him up and around the couch. Only two rooms branched off from the main studio – the bathroom, and a linen closet. Seeing as Kris had no “linens” aside from one set of spare blankets and sheets, the closet was mostly clear, and Andrea fit nicely inside if he stood pin straight. Kris closed the door and locked it with his house key.

“I- Hazard! What are you doing?” The kid went from docile to hysterical at the drop of a hat, it seemed. Or, well. The locking of the closet door. There was a short sound of struggle as he turned around in the small space to bang on the back of the door with both hands.

“I’m going out,” Kris called through the door. He shoved his feet back into his boots and grabbed his keys. “Stop hitting the door. I don’t trust you with my shit. I’ll be back.” He crossed the living room to turn the TV back off.

“Let me out! You can’t just-” Andrea's voice cracked and he kicked the door, and Kris wanted to reopen it to slap the kid across the face, but he didn’t. He sighed. All this self-restraint was exhausting.

“Fucking watch me, kid,” Kris mumbled, more to himself than anything, and with that he left the apartment.

He went straight to the local every-damn-thing store, which wasn’t a Wal-Mart, but it obviously wished it was. It may as well have been. He wandered to the back of the store, close to the athletics department and by the ski equipment (though why anyone would need skiing stuff this close to the Mexican border was anyone’s guess), wondering idly why he hadn’t purchased a black ski-mask before.

He’d never had anyone in his apartment that only knew him as Hazard before, he supposed. Or anyone in his apartment, full stop. Well, save Paloma. Still, it seemed like an obvious thing for someone with a masked secret identity.

While he was there, he stocked up on frozen pizza (the kid was a teenager, and Italian – surely he’d eat pizza?), and bought some extra locks for the doors. At the last second, he grabbed a small, steel combination safe. He ignored the cashier’s weird look until she spoke up.

“Weird night?” she asked, looking at his bizarre assortment of items. Kris checked his watch – it was nearly four AM. He cracked a grin, nodding, and she blushed a little, tucking a deep indigo lock of hair behind her ear. She had an impressive collection of buttons on her bright red lanyard, and if he didn’t still kind of feel like he was dying, he would maybe stay and talk to her.

“You wouldn’t believe,” he said instead, wryly, and she giggled a little as she rang him up.

Walking back to his apartment in the dark of the early morning was refreshing. His head was mostly cleared, and though he ached all over, nothing really ‘hurt’ anymore. He felt almost blissful, almost numb. Painkillers?

The streets of La Sierra were mostly vacant aside from litter. He saw a couple Court members around, disguised as street trash, loitering on corners and watching everything. He waved at one that looked too hard at him. He felt up the back of his beanie to check that the blood hadn’t sept through, and it hadn’t. It was probably nothing. They watched everyone like hawks.

Without his tape he felt naked, about as vulnerable as Andrea had looked up on stage by the Queen. What did she expect of him? And why him, why Hazard, of every person she could pick? There had to be something more to this, another side that he wasn’t seeing. To distract himself he looked up to maybe admire the stars, but he was painfully reminded that he was in southern California, not South Carolina. All smog and light pollution, the sky was as matte a black as he had ever seen it. He adjusted his grip on the cardboard box his safe came in, tucked under one arm, and the plastic bags in his other hand. The extra weight didn’t help his leg wound; the bullet was out, but the path it had ravaged was still there.

When he finally got back to his apartment, it was dead silent. He could almost forget that Andrea was even there, if not for the quiet whimper he barely heard when he walked past the closet door. He set down his bags and pulled the mask on, a little miffed he had to hide his face in his own damn house, but it was only a couple months. He'd cope.

Andrea was sat on the floor when Kris finally opened the closet door, after putting away the groceries and putting the safe on his bed. The kid’s face was flushed and damp, like he’d been crying, and his knees were pulled up to his chest. Kris hadn’t been gone more than an hour, honestly. Pathetic.

“Get up, crybaby. We’re gonna have a chat.” He stepped back to give Andrea some space. “And you can open your eyes.”

And he did, brown eyes staring unabashedly up at him before wiping away the last of the wetness from his cheeks, pulling himself up on the door frame. Gesturing for him to follow, Kris moved over to and took a seat at his dining room table, small and round with four seats and more scratches than a cat owner. The rough, unworn cotton of the mask was uncomfortable, but it was better than hiding from a kid with his eyes shut.

“That's a new mask,” Andrea pointed out. “Is that why you left?”

“I don’t want you to see my face,” Kris said. “You work for the Court. I don’t trust ‘em, so by extension I don’t trust you. I don’t care how green ya are, I don’t care how loyal ya are to ‘em. You’re Court, you’re an enemy. Understand?” Andrea nodded. “Great. Now, what d’ya think these three months is gonna be like?”

The kid shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose I'll follow you around while you, um. While you are Hazard.”

Kris nodded, absently. Andrea had his hands in his lap, and seemed to be trying hard not to stare, bouts of intense eye contact interrupted by bouts of intensely staring at the whirls and scuffs of Kris’s table. Kris just kept his eyes on the kid. “That could work. Honestly, I don’t wanna help your goddamn Queen at all. If I had my way, I’d slit your throat right now and throw you out the window.” He sighed, almost wistful, and ignored the way Andrea’s shoulders stiffened and he stopped meeting Kris’s eyes. “But I can’t do that. Next time I wrap up, she’d grab me and turn me in." He sneered. "I wish she’d just threatened to kill me. Ain’t no bigger insult than just lettin’ someone go to jail, kid. Killin’ is kinder.” He slammed a palm on the tabletop, gently, but Andrea jumped like he’d been hit. Shaky as a mouse, this one. He resisted the urge to do just that, to hit him, to see how high he’d jump then. “Now, you’ve got the couch. Go to bed.”

“Are you- Are you leaving tomorrow?” Andrea asked. He glanced over at the closet.

“Yeah, I’ve got work at eleven.” Kris had already left the table, pulling out the spare blankets to toss them on the couch. Eleven was only, like, six hours away. He wanted to spend as much of that time with his eyes shut as he could.

“Are you going to lock me in the closet again?” Andrea’s voice was shaking, hard. Claustrophobic?

Kris thought about it for a second. “No.” He’d lock his personal shit up in the safe and lock the front door from outside. It’d be fine. Thinking about it, he locked up his wallet, keys, and the roll of hazard tape he fished out of his bedside table. Before he could forget.

“Alright.” Andrea nodded, swallowing thickly. He stood from his seat slowly. He offered a tiny smile, tight and a little afraid. “Buonanotte, Hazard.”

“‘Night, kid.”

--

The sun was streaming too-bright through the windows when Kris’s alarm went off. He threw the blankets off, reaching out to slam the OFF button, but instead just knocked the whole damn digital clock to the ground, green numbers flashing 9:00 AM mockingly. He cursed, shoved the ibuprofen from his bedside table down his throat before opening his eyes to look for the noisy bitch. Once he’d found it and shut it the fuck up, he stretched, moaning like a zombie at the pain in his head. He went to run his hand through his hair, but he was met by scratchy black fabric. The ski-mask. The events of the night before rushed back to him, and a sense of dread and indignant anger broiled in his stomach. His left leg protested from the moment his feet touched the floor, and he knew it would be a bitch all damn day. A great day overall, then.

“Kid, you up?” he called, louder than necessary, wobbling only a little when he stood up. Andrea whined, and Kris leaned over the back of the couch just as he pulled the blanket up over his head. “Kid, get the fuck up!”

As fast as he’d been to complain, he was faster to get up when he thought he was in trouble. He tossed the blanket down around his waist and sat up, eyes wide but out of focus, staring up at Kris with confusion, then recognition, then something like disappointment as he, too, remembered what was going on. Kris couldn’t blame him.

“Sorry, Hazard,” he said, automatically. Kris rolled his eyes. “I, uh. Good morning.”

“There’s cereal in the cabinet, help yourself. I’m gonna take a shower.” Only four-ish hours of sleep after last night had Kris feeling a little more than dead inside, but he had work. Being a productive citizen of these United States was the pits.

While the water ran, warming up, Kris pulled his mask off and looked at himself in the mirror, rubbing a hand through his short hair and over his long, narrow jaw. He’d need to shave tomorrow, but right now he was mostly fine. His bleached hair, pale yellow as it was, was only a handful of shades darker than his natural hair anyway, so his beard grew in light. His cheeks seemed more hollow than usual, and there were bags under his eyes he hadn’t seen since high school, though not as heavy as they had been under the dull, empty eyes of a solid D student. They were usually a brighter blue, but damn, they were gray as a ghost after the night he’d had. He was glaring when he’d pulled the mask off, which caught him a little off-guard. The aching-all-over thing seemed to have accentuated his resting bitch face. Add that to the old scar on his jaw (which he couldn’t remember getting) and the notch in his left ear (from a bar fight six years ago in Tulsa) and he looked pretty scary, he had to admit. He scowled at his reflection, thin lips twisted into something ugly.

He took his time in the shower, relishing in the hot water for as long as it lasted. Andrea could wait the hour for it to come back, Kris deserved this. He’d already forgotten about the guy he’d thrown off the roof the night before. Most of his victims were forgotten that fast.

Instead, he went back over what had happened with the Court, putting names to faces. “Wrecker,” the over-excited gunwoman. On the news she always had her shotgun on her, but last night she hadn’t. “Bandit,” the getaway driver. Probably the one that knocked him out the first time. Andrea, the Italian teenager sitting at his dining room table, and apparently a little wimp. Park, green-haired and mean and nonbinary. “Rosa,” the woman with the baseball bat and sunglasses. The Queen herself, “young and beautiful” personified but infused with poison and more power than any teenager should have control of.

Why had she wanted Kris of all people to help out with Andrea, and the heist? And what was that about, including him in what was more than likely going to be an unbelievably delicate operation? He’d just fucked up a simple would-be hostage situation right before she’d spoken to him, surely she realized he was less than competent? Not that he wanted to be – he was in this for the adrenaline, the thrill, the bloodshed, the infamy. Call him theatrical, or even childish, but he felt like putting on the tape was like a supervillain suiting up, and the rush of power he had when he was out on the streets made him shiver with excitement. Being the Queen’s definition of “useful” definitely wasn’t on his wishlist.

Maybe she just wanted enthusiasm. Or maybe there was more to this than he’d thought, like he’d concluded the night before. Either way, it didn’t matter. If he didn’t help, he’d go to jail, and Christ if that threat didn’t make his blood boil.

It was kinda weird to walk out of the bathroom wearing nothing but a ski-mask and a towel around his waist, but he ignored the way Andrea stared at him.

“What are the big scars from?” he asked, referrring to the burn scars all over Kris’s chest and back, and Kris scowled. So much for ignoring him.

“Fire,” he replied shortly, digging through his chest of drawers for his work clothes. It didn’t take long, but the silence was long enough that he thought Andrea had dropped the subject.

Not so lucky, it seemed.

“What happened?” Andrea’s voice was childish and curious, and it made Kris want to hit him.

Kris huffed out an irritated breath through his nose. “I was set on fire. Not so hard a conclusion to come to.”

“Why were you set on fire?”

“‘Cause I wouldn’t shut my goddamn mouth,” he snapped, and Andrea took the hint and went back to eating his cereal. Kris went back into the bathroom to get dressed, pointedly not thinking about those fucking ugly scars, skin perpetually red and shiny and warped as hell where it had melted and reformed, or how he got them. They only peeked a little bit up out of the neck of his white polo, on the thin strip of skin visible between the mask and shirt. He sat down at the table, sideways in his seat to get his shoes on.

“Are- Are we going to be starting today?” Andrea asked, quietly, like he knew he wasn’t supposed to be talking but was too curious to stay silent.

Kris shrugged. “Probably. When I get back from work around four.” He glanced up at the clock on the oven. Nearly ten. He must have taken a long-ass shower. “I’m gonna leave in a sec. While I’m gone, don’t touch my bed or any of my stuff over by it. If you get hungry there’s pizza in the freezer, and you can get on the Xbox if you make your own account and don’t break anything. Understood?”

“Yes, sir,” Andrea said, obedient as the Court had probably trained him to be.

Dressed and ready to go, he called for Andrea to close his eyes. When he complied, Kris darted through the apartment maskless. He grabbed his wallet from the safe and shoved it in the back pocket of his khakis.

“When I shut the door, you can open your eyes,” he said, hand on the doorknob.

“Okay.”

“I’ll be back this afternoon. I’ll knock twice, and you’ll close your eyes so I can get the mask on, and we’ll get started on that toughening shit.”

“Alright.”

“Seeya, kid.” He was gone before Andrea could reply.