Ambush!, Part 1

Bachelor Party

Sam threw the double doors wide and gave Andy a firm shove between the shoulder blades, launching him into the Banquet Hall before he could finish bracing for it. The world inside was noise, sunlight, and the compounded pressure of over a dozen personalities colliding with breakfast as their only buffer.

The Hall was even bigger than Andy remembered—maybe it was the vaulting of the ceiling, maybe it was the way the windows flared with nine a.m. sunlight, casting impossible brightness across the polished floors and reflecting off silver and porcelain and the white of every tablecloth in sight, or maybe Arabella had been at it again. The room was a planetarium of motion: Laura Black’s table held the high ground near the front, while clusters of strangers had spread out in every direction, forming and reforming in social constellations as the buffet tables snaked around the edges.

Andy’s brain registered the crowd in two waves. First, there was the sound: a rolling, overlapping chorus of greetings, laughter, and awkward encounters. Second, there was the sight: the blur of faces, some vaguely recognizable, some completely unknown, none of them familiar except for the four names he’d been told to expect, plus a fifth—one he’d only ever seen as a black-and-white print in a glass case.

Various Mildreds threaded between the tables with the practiced ease of natural predators, their trays loaded with tropical fruit, eggs, meats, a small mountain of pastries, and a dozen glass carafes of juice and coffee that seemed to evaporate the second they hit a table. One Mildred wasn’t in her service uniform and sat at a table with Herman, who wore his safety helmet and a shirt that read “I’d Rather Be Delivering A Message.” Mildred’s black dress shimmered each time she moved under a chandelier, her smile waxy and never quite warm enough to land. But there was an undercurrent of uncertainty in it today, as if she wasn’t quite sure why she was attending, or perhaps wasn’t completely comfortable with Herman nearby.

As soon as Andy and Sam broke the threshold, the table nearest the entrance let out a roar: “There he is!” “The man of the hour!” “That’s the lucky bastard!”

Andy was still catching his bearings from the hallway when Harper slotted herself into his path, all blue and brass and so crisply put together that the effect was military. “There you are,” she said, low enough to keep it private but loud enough to stop him mid-step. She shook his hand, hard, then leaned in. “Eat. Fast. You’ve got about thirty minutes before Sam’s obstacle course puts you on the ground.” Her eyes flicked up and down him with the brisk efficiency of a field medic. “And—congratulations. I know you have a lot of people to greet. But we should talk later.” The handshake didn’t linger, but her mouth twitched at the edge as if she had more to say and chose not to.

Before Andy could react, the force of the room’s attention bent toward him again, and Harper was already off, cutting a hard line for the buffet. She intercepted a tall, shirtless kid at the edge of the omelet station—Felix, Andy remembered, from the letters they’d exchanged—and the two of them dove into a conversation.

Two steps ahead, and Andy caught the edge of Nick Reynolds. Nick stood a half-step behind her, waiting for permission to enter the scene. He wore the same dark suit Andy remembered from the birthday, but the nervous energy was dialed back a notch: he’d traded it for a kind of measured, self-conscious calm. Nick’s face caught the light when he spotted Andy, and he offered a wave.

Andy solved the standoff by walking right up and pulling Nick into a hug. Nick returned it a beat late, awkward and clearly not expecting it, then patted him on the back, the way people do when they’re trying to land an emotion but aren’t sure which one it’s supposed to be.

Nick started to say something, then second-guessed it, then said it anyway. “I’m really glad to be here. This—” he gestured at the Hall, the crowd, the pyramid of croissants—“I mean, I wasn’t sure if I’d even get the invite, so I told myself to play it cool, and then I got here and couldn’t remember how that was supposed to work. So—” He stopped, shook his head, smiled, tried again. “It’s good to see you, Andy.”

Andy clapped him on the shoulder. “You too. How’s it going? For real.”

Nick’s face did a quick sequence of moves—smile, twitch, flatten. “It’s as good as it’s going to get.” He laughed, but there was a catch in it that Andy suspected nobody else at the table would hear. “If you ask the women, I’m the picture of well-adjusted.”

“Isn’t that what matters?” Andy said, grinning.

“Sure,” Nick replied. He looked like he wanted to say more, then pivoted. “So—how’s the wedding prep?”

Andy shrugged, “There’s a schedule, there’s a binder, there’s a lot of Liesa and Sam.”

Nick laughed, for real this time, and the tension unwound a half-turn. “She’s the one who schedules the—” He left it hanging, then gestured at the table, the room. “Never mind.” He looked down at his hands for a moment before meeting Andy’s eyes again. “I heard about Laura. What they did for you—bringing her back. I’m glad you got that. Really.” His voice softened, losing its practiced ease. “it’s like seeing a ghost get a second chance at breathing. Makes me wish I had that kind of luck with mine.” He shook his head slightly, a wistful smile touching his lips. “By the way, you look good, man. Taller, somehow. Is that the suit, or—?”

“No, Achievements. It’s… an escalating mechanic,” Andy said, quietly.

Nick took it in, the way you take in a funhouse mirror: not sure if it’s the mirror or if it’s you who’s changed. Andy caught him before he could drift. “Hey—can we find time later? I have something I want to run by you.”

Nick’s easy smile held, but something behind it shifted. “Yeah,” he said. “Of course.” He waited a beat, then: “Anything I should be preparing for?”

“No,” Andy said. “Nothing like that. Just—I want your read on something.”

Nick nodded, slow, and the smile came back a little more honestly this time. “Sure. Find me any time.” He gave Andy one last look, the kind that meant he’d already started turning it over, then peeled off toward the buffet.

A noise behind him signaled the next collision. Mark Garret, larger than life, moved through the room like a shark through a school of smaller, more fragile fish. He spotted Andy and locked in, his handshake massive and sincere, the kind that made you feel your metacarpals realign.

Andy went in expecting the handshake, but Mark had already turned it into a half-hug, whispering low enough that nobody else could hear: “How’s the harem holding up? Anyone ask you yet what happens to the ones you don’t marry?”

Andy blinked at the bluntness, then let out a slow exhale. “Not really. They’re all deciding what they want to be with me, and each other.”

Mark nodded, the motion slow and deliberate. “Just making sure you’re still you.” He clapped Andy once on the back—hard enough to realign his shoulder—and let him go. “Anyway, that’s a conversation for whiskey, not eggs,” Mark said, already turning back toward his table where a half-eaten plate of bacon sat waiting. “We’ll talk later. After the... festivities.” He gave a final nod, something passing behind his eyes that wasn’t quite a smile, then moved off through the crowd with the easy authority of a man who knew exactly where he belonged.

Andy watched him go, the space between them filling almost immediately with the next well-wisher. Laura Black peeled away from her table like she was excusing herself from a military briefing, her movements crisp and economical. Her hug was efficient but genuine; she got one arm around Andy, squeezed just long enough to feel like more than protocol, then stepped back.

“Glad you made it this far,” she said, flat as a file. “Glad you didn’t die, or go insane, or get eliminated. Not in that order.”

Andy laughed, “Is it that rare?”

“Depends on the set,” she said. “I’m with you on that. Still trying to figure out if we’re statistical anomalies.”

She held him in her gaze for a second longer than necessary, then nodded once, satisfied, and went back to her seat, where two men were arguing about whether a mimosa could be made with whiskey and still count.

At the far wall, a man Andy didn’t know by name but recognized by silhouette kept himself out of the crush. He had the posture of a patient observer: arms folded, one eyebrow up, and a half-smile that didn’t seem aimed at anyone but the room itself. He wore his dark hair just a little long, and when he caught Andy’s gaze, he held it for a beat, then raised his cup in a silent toast.

There was something familiar in the way he did it, a studied remove, like he was watching history happen in real time. Andy tried to place it, came up empty, then let the moment pass. As he turned back to the crowd, he caught a flash of recognition in the man’s face, a quick lift at the corner of the mouth, and wondered if the recognition was mutual.

Sam, who had spent the first five minutes working the room with surgical precision, reappeared at Andy’s elbow with a plate in one hand and a bottle of orange juice in the other. She looked like she was about to make a move on the buffet when she caught his eye.

“You doing okay?” she asked.

He nodded, “I think so.”

“You sure?” Sam’s gaze was level, the way it always was when she actually wanted an answer.

Andy shrugged. “I’m mostly just waiting for the next shoe to drop.”

Sam looked around the room, taking in the shifting patterns of people, the way alliances formed and dissolved in real time. “If it’s going to happen, it’ll be at the toast. That’s where the drama always lands.”

Andy glanced over the heads of the crowd to the bar, where two Mildreds were already filling glasses and arranging them into neat rows. “You think it’ll be that bad?”

Sam shook her head. “Not bad. But you’re going to have to talk to every person here before noon, and some of them are really, really into the whole ‘shared trauma’ thing.”

Andy tried to laugh, but it came out smaller than he meant.

Sam patted him on the shoulder, then steered him toward the buffet. “Get food,” she said, “then get to work.”

For the next half hour, Andy navigated the crowd, shaking hands, fielding variations on the same five questions, and trying not to notice how many times he had to reset his social mask between conversations. The food was good, the company better, but the whole time he kept an eye on the dark-haired man at the wall, waiting for the moment when one of them would finally have to speak.

---

The cluster around the main buffet had diffused into smaller orbits, some talking in groups, others huddling nearer the bar, as if pooling their shared sense of “what the hell do I do with this much free time.”

The black-haired man was parked at the edge of the action, chair tipped just far enough back to suggest an early exit but not so far that he could be caught retreating. He watched the room with a stillness that was almost mathematical, not the posture of a man waiting for company but of someone who was perfectly content to be alone, provided nobody mistook that for weakness.

Andy took the long way around the tables, giving a wide berth to Felix—who was, for some reason, still shirtless—and another young man he didn’t recognize, both locked in a tense, silent standoff over the last cinnamon roll. When he reached the black-haired man, the man’s gaze didn’t quite snap into focus, but Andy felt the subtle shift in his attention, a quiet recalibration.

The man did not smile. He looked up and, with a precise nudge of his foot, kicked the empty chair opposite him out a few inches. The scrape of wood on tile was soft but deliberate. The space was now his to take or leave.

Andy sat, easing into the chair as if it might test him for worthiness first. He met the man’s gaze—steady, unblinking—and waited.

“Adrien Moore,” the man said. His voice was low and even, with a weight that suggested it wasn’t used often. “Congratulations,” he added after a beat. “I understand there’s to be a wedding.”

Andy gave a half-smile. “That’s the rumor.”

Adrien nodded slowly. “I have not been to a wedding in a very long time.” He paused, as if rifling through dusty mental files. “I’m not entirely sure why I was invited.”

Andy was still working through his own answer when Adrien continued, “I’m told it’s a tradition. To bring together all the survivors, as a show of good will. Or solidarity.” He considered it. “Or, possibly, for the drama.”

Andy let himself laugh, then glanced around at the mingling guests, some laughing too loudly, others nursing drinks with grim determination. “Looks like most people got the memo.”

The man studied him, eyes not sharp but deep—like someone who'd made a hobby out of dissecting people's intentions. “We've met before,” he said, evenly, no question mark anywhere near it. “Alexandria. Though I should tell you upfront I didn't place you from memory. I read about you first.”

Andy's stomach flipped. He'd half-expected recognition from someone at this wedding eventually, but not this fast, and not delivered like an already-settled fact. “Read about me. Where?”

“I… read an account of your season a while back. Among others. Admittedly, didn’t realize they were factually true, at the time.” Adrien turned his coffee cup a quarter-turn on its saucer. “There was a passage about a scholar at the Library who helped a young couple track down a scroll. I recognized the room a full page before I recognized myself in it.”

Andy blinked. “You didn't know it was you? Reading it?”

“Andronikos was a name I wore for a few centuries, among several others. But it was by no means unique to me.” A dry note slid into his voice. “I've had a great many mornings since then. Most of them left no forwarding address.”

Andy exhaled something that wasn't quite a laugh. The fact that the man before him spoke of centuries like they were candy did not overly surprise him, which was its own kind of alarming. “So I was right. The guy at the desk who helped us find the Democritus scroll—”

“Was me. Yes.” Adrien's mouth quirked, not quite a smile. “Kleio of Athens, and her husband Andreas. She never spoke while she was there. You did all the talking. That part I remember on my own—reading it only sharpened it.”

Andy rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah. She came up with the names. I'm just glad I could say mine with a straight face.”

“You didn't, entirely,” Adrien said. “Which is presumably why whoever wrote it thought it worth mentioning.”

Andy laughed for real that time. “Fair.”

“You asked for a scroll you had no plausible reason to want. Democritus. 'On the Mind and Perception.' Kleio was the one who actually seemed to care about it—you were performing interest, and badly. I remember thinking your story was impossible, and choosing not to say so.” A beat. “I've had a long time to get better at choosing not to say things.”

“You were right not to push it,” Andy said. “We were gone within the hour. I don't think anyone even noticed we'd left.”

“I noticed,” Adrien said. “I simply didn't do anything about it. It's a pattern, if I read enough of my own history—which, until recently, I hadn't. Not from the outside.” Something in his expression came briefly unguarded. “It's a particular kind of strange, watching yourself get handled as a supporting character in someone else's account of his own life. I've had eras. I'd never had a footnote.”

He turned his cup once on its saucer. “The scroll was gone by the end of the day, incidentally. I looked for it. Thought perhaps it had been misfiled.” A pause. “It hadn’t.”

Andy considered lying about the rest, then decided it wasn't worth the effort with a man who'd apparently already read most of the ending. “I took the scroll. Or—Claire did.”

Adrien considered the name for a moment, something in his stillness settling rather than sharpening. “Claire,” he said, testing the sound of it. “Clever, the choice of Kleio as a name. One of your brides-to-be.”

Andy nodded. Adrien grew thoughtful. “You know, I was there when the Romans burned that part of the Library. I saved some scrolls, but I couldn’t save them all. When the fire came, the whole section was destroyed.”

“That’s why Claire wanted it,” Andy said. “She thought she was saving it.”

“And did she?” Adrien asked, curious now.

Andy nodded, “We took it back. It’s somewhere safe.”

For a long second, Andy sat with the aftertaste of that last sentence in his mouth, half-expecting some final twist or qualification, but Adrien only watched him. The sunlight was pouring through the window at Adrien’s back, bleaching out his edges until the black of his hair looked like the shadow on a sundial. He had the kind of poise that made Andy suddenly self-conscious of every tell, every stray movement that might betray how hard he was working to keep up with the conversation.

“You know,” Adrien said, almost as an aside, “if you told the story to a thousand people, none of them would ever believe it.”

Andy let out a breath. “I’ve stopped keeping count. There’s not a lot of mileage in being the only two people who remember.”

This seemed to land. For a moment Adrien’s expression unlatched at the corners, something that might have been real sympathy showing behind the habitual remove. “I remember, too.” Then, as if the moment had already run its course, he said, “How long has it been for you? Since Alexandria, I mean.”

Andy took a second to do the math. “Nine days,” he said. “Give or take a few hours.”

Adrien’s face didn’t move, but something in his posture went very still, the way a fact settles differently once it’s said aloud by the person it happened to. “Nine days,” he repeated, not quite a question. “For me, it was over two thousand years.” He set his cup down without drinking from it. “The story mentioned as much, in its own terms. Time travel, courtesy of your Host. I don’t know that I ever quite believed the number until just now.” A pause. “You really did go straight through, then. No drifting, no delay.”

Andy shrugged. “That’s what it feels like, yes.”

“So I gathered,” Adrien said, and Andy was almost sure there was something underneath the flatness of it, even if he couldn’t decide whether it read as admiration or something closer to old envy.

He turned his coffee cup in a slow half-circle, then said, “I’ve had a few trips of my own, you know. Brief ones. When the Host was collecting contestants for my season, she pulled me through a handful of eras to find them.” He paused. “But that was her doing. Her anchor, her direction. I was cargo.” He looked at the cup. “To move through time for one’s own reasons—to simply decide, and go—” He set the cup down. “That is a different thing entirely.”

They sat for a few seconds with the sounds of breakfast filling in the gaps. At the next table over, Harper was getting into a heated but affectionate debate about the best sword for ship-to-ship boarding actions, Felix was carefully picking apart a banana with his bare hands, and across the hall, a Mildred in the classic black dress was trying to pour coffee into three cups at once without looking at any of them directly.

Adrien, after a moment, said, “Most people I know would trade anything for a day like that. The ones who live long enough, I mean. They want to sleep through the years they can’t control.”

“You sound like you’ve done it a few times,” Andy said, watching for the wince.

Instead, Adrien smiled, a flicker of white teeth. “I wish I could say I have. But most of the time, it’s more like treading water. You know how sometimes you think you’re resting, but really you’re burning out everything you have just to keep your head above?”

Andy nodded. “I think I spent most of my twenties like that.”

This time, the smile reached Adrien’s eyes, faint but unmistakable. “You’d be surprised how long a person can keep it up. I don’t remember the first hundred years after Sebennytos. Not in much detail, at leeast. But the years after that—they get sharper the longer you go.”

Andy realized, with a start, that he was not talking to a metaphor, or a survivor, or even a tragic case. He was talking to a man who had lived for over two thousand years, and had come through it intact.

Adrien seemed to notice the shift, and let it play for a moment, watching Andy watching him. Then, as if calling attention to something neither of them had quite said yet, he asked: “So why do you think they invited me? What’s the angle?”

Andy blinked. “Your Host,” he said, instead of answering. “What was her name?”

Adrien’s stillness deepened by a degree. “Amabilis,” he said. “Why?”

Andy looked down at his coffee. “Just a hunch.” He turned the cup once, set it flat. “I think I know why Arabella told me that story about Amaterasu at the end,” Andy said quietly. “She was talking about you when she spoke about the test.”

Adrien’s mouth tightened almost imperceptibly. “It doesn’t feel particularly flattering to be described like that.”

“But accurate?”

A dry smile touched Adrien’s lips. “Probably.”

He let his eyes trace the arc of the Hall again, then landed back on Andy. “You'll have to tell me about what she said... or maybe not, I don't know that I want to know. You’re different,” he pivoted, almost gently. “The ones who run this place—usually they find men who can’t say no, or who want something badly enough to make it through the whole trial. You—” He broke off, searching for the word. “There’s something about you,” he offered in the end.

Andy laughed—he couldn’t help it. The word “different” coming from a man who looked like he’d shaken hands with every century since the Ptolemies was like being called “unusual” by a talking radioactive isotope.

He said, “Thanks, I think.” They sat with the memory of Alexandria for a little while. Adrien didn’t look away, and Andy realized with a jolt that the man was seeing him through every layer of time between now and then, as if they had only spoken yesterday.

Finally Andy said, “Why did you remember? If you’ve seen that many years, why hold onto a single hour?”

Adrien looked at his coffee for a moment, then up. “I’m not sure, to be honest. There was something about Kleio—Claire?—that struck me as odd. And of course, you. I could use one hand to count the number of men as tall as you, that I have met in the first millennium of existence.”

Andy was quiet, letting it soak in. It was possible he was being manipulated, but if so, it was a flavor he’d never tasted before.

Adrien said, “You left a mark. That’s all anyone can hope for.” He lifted his mug, then set it down, still untouched.

Andy tried to steer the conversation. “You lived every year, one after another, for two thousand years.”

Adrien looked away for the first time, out at the tables where the others were gathered. “Not always as myself,” he said. “But yes, I lived them. All the years between you and me.”

Andy took a deep breath. “I’m supposed to be doing this forever,” he said. “Or as close to forever as you can get. Arabella made it clear I’ll be here for the long haul.”

Adrien didn’t ask how. Something crossed his face, brief and controlled, closer to recognition than surprise. “The Achievements,” he said. “Strength. Height. Stamina. Long life, shared with your harem.”

Andy went quiet for a second. “You already knew that.”

“I kept reading. It’s a riveting story.” Adrien’s tone didn’t shift, but something behind it did. “But it’s one thing to read a number on a page. It’s another to hear the man it happened to say it out loud, over coffee, like a piece of scheduling.” A pause. “How far has it gone, since whatever page I stopped on?”

Andy shrugged. “It may already have reached that stage. The last time I discussed this with Arabella, she mentioned we would all live for over two thousand years, and it was a few Achievements ago.”

Adrien’s expression didn’t change, but the stillness intensified. “Have you told them? The women, I mean?”

Andy said, “Yeah. I told them what I know. Most don’t believe it, not entirely, but I think they’re getting there.”

Adrien was silent for a few beats, then asked: “Have you given any thought to what a hundred years will do to a marriage? Or a thousand?”

Andy considered, then said, “I think about it all the time. Maybe a harem is the right approach, in that context. But the point is, it’s a chance none of us would have had otherwise.”

Adrien nodded. “True enough. For what it’s worth, I hope you make it work. For all of you.”

The words had weight to them, a kind of closing of the circle.

Adrien looked down at his hands. When he spoke again, it was almost to himself: “It is strange, after this long, to not be the only one anymore.”

Andy understood. He reached out, and for a second, considered putting a hand over Adrien’s, but left it on the table instead.

Adrien looked up, the moment passing as if nothing had happened. “There was one thing about that day I didn't understand until I read the word for it,” he said. “Claire. She had ears. Like a cat. And a tail. I saw them the entire time, clear as anything, while everyone else in that reading room looked straight through them. I spent a very long while assuming I'd simply misplaced a piece of my own mind that afternoon, or that I had eaten something odd.” His mouth curved, dry. “Turns out it has a name. Reality Adjustment. It never fully worked on me.”

Andy grinned, unable to help himself. “She’s always herself, whether the world likes it or not.”

Adrien extended a hand, not for a shake, but for a kind of truce. “I’d like to speak with her again, someday,” he said.

Andy shook it, firm. “Anytime. She’d like that.”

Adrien nodded, stood, and turned toward the buffet, leaving Andy in the patch of sunlight, processing the conversation as if it had just rearranged the furniture of his mind.

He barely noticed the rest of the Hall until he heard Laura Black’s voice, crisp and dry, cutting through the noise. She was at the window, waving him over to a table where Mark Garret already sat, chairs angled into the sun. Andy squared his shoulders, steadied his hands, and crossed the room to join them.

---

Laura Black was already in mid-sentence by the time Andy joined them, waving a hand to claim her space in the patch of direct sun like a wolf protecting the best spot on the rock. She was wearing her usual power suit—something that was probably meant to read “business casual” but which, on a woman with wings, looked more like the secret boss of a dragon syndicate. Her eyes tracked Andy as he sat, the grin on her face sharp as a bottle opener.

“About time,” she said. “I was starting to think I’d lost you to the other side.”

Andy grinned and dropped into the middle seat. “You’d have sent a search party,” he shot back.

Laura gave a small, dismissive wave. “Not unless I thought there’d be a body left to find.” She tipped her chin toward the sunlight, her wings unfolding a little to catch it. “You remember my set doesn’t get a real sunrise? I’m not wasting this.”

“Does the Haunted Castle even have windows?” Andy asked, mock-incredulous.

She snorted. “For all the good they do.”

Mark Garret, all seven-foot-something of him, was leaning back in his chair, arms folded and expression neutral, like a man trying to see if a chess game was already lost before the first pawn moved. He wore a t-shirt stretched over muscles that looked engineered to power a small hydroelectric plant, and he sported a pair of black dragon horns that were both impressive and oddly plausible on his head. Next to Laura’s wine-red wings, it actually looked coordinated.

He nodded to Andy, then said, “You two always like this?”

Laura didn’t bother to answer. “So. Wedding day. You going to tell us why you’re walking around like you just ate a carton of glass?”

Andy blinked. “Is it that obvious?”

Laura nodded, and Mark chimed in: “You’re carrying the tension in your shoulders. Never saw you do that before.”

Andy flexed his fingers, surprised to find them stiff. “It’s not the wedding,” he said. “Or not just the wedding. It’s… I had a weird morning.” He hesitated, then told them the story: freeing Sumiku, three centuries in a mug, and how she’d chosen to join the harem afterward.

Laura listened without interrupting, eyes fixed on Andy’s face, until he finished. “You just—unlocked an elimination?” she said.

Andy nodded. “Ah, technically, two of them. Maybe. I think I jammed Katherine’s, too, this morning.”

Mark didn’t look surprised, just impressed. “That’s a hell of a change from the guy I met at your birthday. You barely had used your Gifts, and now you’re breaking people out of their elimination transformations?”

Laura reached for her coffee, sipped, then said, “You know, he’s not wrong. What happened?”

Andy almost said: You both happened. He settled for, “A lot. I think I had to break about six things inside me before any of this started to make sense.”

Laura’s smile was sharper now, pleased. “So. Are you actually using your Gifts, or just winging it?”

Andy laughed. “The Gifts? Yeah. I started doing more around the fifth round. Still haven’t found all the extra Console codes, though.”

Mark rolled his eyes. “Told you.”

Laura raised her cup. “He never listens the first time. Or the second.” She drank, then said, “You’re taller, aren’t you? Since the last time.”

Andy gave her a look. “Picked up more Achievements since then.”

Mark said, “That’s great. But—” he leaned forward, “—I was serious about the codes. You’re leaving points on the table if you don’t chase them down.”

Andy looked down. “I know. I’ve just… It’s a lot.”

Laura cut in, recognizing the right moment to pivot. “So. You tried sex as Andi yet?” There was a wicked delight in her voice.

Andy blinked, which only made her lean in further. “That’s a yes,” The dragon woman said, delighted. “You’re not even going to pretend?”

Andy shook his head slowly. “I was ready for it to be strange. I wasn’t ready for it to be—” he searched for the word, “—good. Like, actually good.”

Mark set his cup down. “Yeah,” he said, without any fanfare. “It is.”

Andy looked at him. “You said something like that at my birthday. I thought you were just—I don’t know. Being Mark.”

“I was being accurate,” Mark said. He tilted his head, considering. “You figure out pretty fast that it’s not a lesser version of anything. It’s just a different set of inputs.”

Laura was watching them both with the expression of someone who had walked into a documentary and decided to stay. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll allow it.”

Andy laughed, surprised. “You’ll allow it?”

She gestured broadly with her cup. “The sincerity. Just this once.”

Laura Black grinned, not letting it be serious for a second. “You get three months, tops, before it’s your main mode. Trust me.” She sipped, then pivoted, “So. Mark. Your turn. What’s up with your season? And why are you in dragon mode?”

Mark smiled, the kind of smile that didn’t reach the eyes. “My set finished running the LARP. Two teams, split down the middle. Half my harem was with me, half was with my female side—Mary. We were running a scenario. It went on for most of the round.”

Andy laughed. “Which side won?”

Mark snarkily replied, “My side.” He flicked his tail behind him.

Laura grinned, “Here’s one for you, Andy. Mark’s Sam is also blue-haired.”

Mark nodded, and Andy set his cup down. “Wait. That’s two blue-haired Sams under the same roof.”

Laura clapped her hands together. “We have to make them meet.”

Mark looked at Andy, solemn. “I’m in. A Sam Summit.”

Andy laughed, the tension from earlier gone now. “Let’s make it happen.”

Laura Black grinned, “It’s going to be hilarious, and I want front-row seats.”