The Caribbean was warm. Perfect, actually.
Luca walked out of the water with Ryan beside him, the waves lapping at their ankles as they made their way back toward the beach chairs. The sun was doing its job, baking everything in sight, and Luca could feel the salt drying on his skin. A few days in Puerto Rico, and he already didn't want to leave.
"Toronto," Ryan said, like the word itself was an insult.
"Toronto," Luca agreed.
Ryan shook his head, water flying from his hair. "Why couldn't the Canadian team be based sowhere warm? The Virgin Islands. xico. Anywhere but Toronto."
He grabbed his towel and started drying off with more aggression than necessary.
Luca couldn't argue. They'd spent the last few days in El Yunque, swam off the coast of Fajardo, ate food that made him want to cry, and generally pretended responsibility didn't exist. Going back to subzero temperatures to et another prospective team felt like punishnt for cris he hadn't committed.
Emily was sprawled across a beach chair, sunglasses on, her bikini doing things to Luca's concentration that should be illegal. She'd found a spot in the perfect angle of sunlight and claid her territory. Zoe was on the chair next to her, her head resting on Danny's lap while he read sothing on his tablet. The two of them looked disgustingly comfortable.
Luca dropped onto the edge of Emily's chair, and she made a small noise of protest.
"You're wet. And blocking my sun."
"I thought you'd want close."
"I want you close when we're in Canada freezing to death." She waved a hand at him without opening her eyes. "Right now I need to absorb as much sun as humanly possible before you drag to the arctic."
She had a point. Luca shifted, trying to find a position where he wasn't casting a shadow over her. His hand found her thigh, warm from the sun, and his brain imdiately went places it shouldn't. The golden sun lit her skin, her hair fanned out behind her, and a small smile played at her lips because she knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Stop being clingy," Emily said, still not opening her eyes. "I'm soaking."
"I'm not being clingy."
"You're hovering."
"I'm sitting."
"You're hovering while sitting. It's a skill." She finally tilted her sunglasses down, green eyes finding his. "Go brood sowhere else for ten minutes. I need this."
Luca wanted to protest, but she wasn't wrong. They had maybe two hours before they needed to leave, and he'd spent most of the morning calculating flight tis and checking weather patterns and generally being the kind of person who couldn't just relax. Emily needed sun. He needed to stop being that guy.
He pressed a kiss to her shoulder and got up.
Chris was coming back from the water, looking lighter than Luca had ever seen him. Whatever happened with Sofia at the club had clearly agreed with him. The guy practically had a spring in his step.
"Good night?" Ryan asked, and there was an edge there. Subtle, but Luca caught it.
Chris just shrugged, that easy smile on his face. "Can't complain."
"Hey." Zoe lifted her head from Danny's lap. "We still haven't nad the shuttle."
"What?" Danny looked down at her.
"The shuttle. Our TL9 shuttle. It doesn't have a na."
This was apparently news to everyone. Luca thought about it. She was right. They'd been flying the thing for days and just called it "the shuttle" like it was a rental car.
"We should na it," Zoe said, sitting up properly now. "Sothing good."
"Like what?" Joey asked. He was under an umbrella, smart enough to know his pale Irish skin couldn't handle direct Puerto Rican sun, unlike Danny, who looked like a cooked lobster.
"I don't know. Sothing cool." Zoe looked around at them. "Greek stuff? Like Apollo or whatever?"
"Apollo's taken," Danny said. "And kind of basic."
"Hers?" Chris offered.
"Too obvious for a shuttle."
"What about sothing fun?" Ryan's voice was flat. "Shuttle McShuttleface."
Everyone groaned.
"I'm serious," he said, but he clearly wasn't.
"What about sothing from ho?" Zoe pulled her knees up to her chest, thinking. "Like, representing where we're from?"
"Sandworth doesn't really have a cool symbol," Joey said.
"New Hampshire then. The whole state." Zoe's eyes lit up. "Granite Hawk."
"Granite Hawk?" Emily repeated, finally showing interest.
"Yeah. Granite State, right? And hawks are cool. Granite Hawk." Zoe looked around, daring anyone to argue. "It sounds badass."
Luca turned the na over in his head. Granite Hawk. It sounded solid and dependable, a na that actually ant sothing.
"I like it," Danny said, because of course he did. Zoe could have suggested calling it the Soggy Biscuit and Danny would have found a way to support it.
"Sa," Chris added.
"Works for ," Joey said.
Ryan just shrugged, which was about as much enthusiasm as anyone was getting from him today.
Emily tilted her sunglasses down again. "Granite Hawk it is, then."
Zoe grinned, victorious.
They had another hour of beach ti. Luca tried to relax, he really did, but the clock in his head kept ticking. They had an appointnt and a schedule, with people waiting for them in a frozen wasteland pretending to be a city.
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Another piña colada materialized in his hand courtesy of Chris, who'd apparently decided his new role was bar runner. Luca drank it. Then he drank half of another one. By the ti he finally called it, announcing they needed to pack up, he was pleasantly buzzed and deeply resentful of ti zones.
They grabbed their bags from the hotel and piled into the van. The driver was the sa guy from before, still more interested in his reggaeton than his passengers. The drive to Isla Grande took twenty minutes, and by the ti they pulled up to the airfield, Luca was already running through the pre-flight checklist in his head.
The Granite Hawk sat where they'd left it, tucked into a corner of the small airport near a maintenance hangar, its sleek TL9 alloys gleaming in the afternoon sun. Beautiful ship.
Ryan stopped short.
"Hold up."
Sothing in his voice made Luca's hand go to his blaster.
The shuttle looked fine from a distance. But Ryan was circling it now, eyes narrowed, and Chris had gone alert too.
"Soone's been here," Chris said.
Luca felt the pleasant rum buzz evaporate. "What?"
"Look at those marks on the hatch. See?" Ryan pointed. "Soone tried to get in."
Luca moved closer and saw faint marks around the door seal, like soone had been working at it with tools.
"Did they get in?" Emily asked.
Zoe snickered. "Doubt it."
Dark scorching surrounded the door seal where soone had tried a plasma torch. The tal was discolored but intact. Whoever did this had put real effort into it.
"Could be opportunistic," Joey said, coming up beside him. "So local crew spots a fancy shuttle, figures they'll see what's inside."
"With a plasma torch?" Ryan shook his head. "That's not petty theft. That's soone who ca prepared."
Ryan and Chris spent the next ten minutes doing a full sweep. Luca watched them work, his mind racing. They'd been careful. Changed hotels and stayed off the main tourist routes. How the hell had soone found them?
"Check the wheel wells," Luca said. "Transponders, trackers, anything they might have slapped on."
Chris dropped to his knees and started inspecting underneath. Ryan crouched by the landing gear, running his hands along the struts.
"At least the tires look fine," Joey said.
"That's not rubber," Ryan replied without looking up. "Whatever composite that is, it's not getting punctured so easily."
"Clean under here," Chris called out. "No trackers."
"Sa," Ryan confird, standing and brushing off his knees. "Nobody got inside. TL9 security held."
"Of course it held," Chris added. "You'd need similar tech to get through that alloy. Whatever they had wasn't enough."
That should have been reassuring. It wasn't.
Could have been so opportunistic bastard trying to steal their ride. Could have been sothing more serious. The plasma torch marks suggested the latter, but Luca couldn't be sure.
"Let's get going," Luca said.
The pre-flight went fast. Luca took the pilot seat, while Ryan slid into the copilot beside him.
The shuttle's rear compartnt was starting to look like a clothing explosion. Beach bags were piled on top of winter coats, and shopping bags from Plaza Las Aricas had been stuffed into corners. Sowhere in there was the formal wear Karen had bought them, probably getting wrinkled under a pile of swimsuits and sandals. They needed to organize at so point. Add it to the list.
Luca caught movent in the rear cara and saw Zoe climbing into Danny's lap, her mouth finding his with the kind of enthusiasm that suggested she'd forgotten they had company.
"Seriously?" Ryan muttered.
The kissing sounds continued. Soone giggled. Probably Zoe.
"Save so air for the rest of us," Luca called back.
"Shut the fuck up." More giggling. Danny said sothing too quiet to hear, and then Zoe laughed, and then the kissing sounds resud.
Ryan's expression was murderous.
Luca focused on getting them airborne.
The Granite Hawk lifted smoothly, the tropical paradise beneath them fading away as they climbed, with its green mountains and blue waters. Luca felt a genuine pang of loss watching it go. They'd found sothing good down there, the Soñadores and the telescope.
And soone had tried to break into their shuttle while they swam.
He pushed the throttle forward, watching the altiter climb. The atmosphere thinned around them. The blue sky darkened to black, stars erging like old friends, and Chris, who was humming to himself, updated their transponder codes before plotting the descent trajectory for Toronto.
The flight took less than an hour. One of the perks of having a TL9 shuttle was that you could hop between continents like you were taking the bus. Luca watched the navigation display, running scenarios in his head. Who could be tracking them? How? The IFC had enemies, sure, but this felt different, personal.
He didn't have answers. Just questions and a bad feeling in his gut.
"Beginning descent," he announced.
The Granite Hawk dropped through the atmosphere, and Luca watched the temperature readings plumt along with them. By the ti they broke through the cloud cover, the external sensors were showing minus twelve Celsius and falling.
Toronto sprawled beneath them, gray and glass and endless concrete. After a week of Caribbean color, it looked like soone had drained the saturation from the world. The city was a ss of skyscrapers and highways buried under snow. So much snow.
Stouffville Airport was exactly what Sabine's notes had promised: small and inconspicuous. Luca set them down on the private strip, the landing smooth despite the crosswind.
The hatch opened.
The cold wind hit him hard enough to make him gasp. Luca's breath fogged in the air, and he could already feel his fingers going numb.
"Oh, fuck this," Emily said behind him.
"Seconded," Zoe added.
They scrambled back inside, slamming the hatch shut behind them.
What followed was ten minutes of chaos. Seven people tried to dig through piles of luggage, pulling out jeans and sweaters and anything that wasn't shorts and sandals. Elbows flew everywhere, and soone's knee ended up in soone else's back. Danny caught Joey in the face while wrestling a sweater over his head.
Once everyone looked vaguely presentable, Luca left the others shivering by the shuttle and walked with Ryan toward the small terminal building. The airfield office was warm and slled like coffee. An older guy behind the counter looked up from his tablet, eyebrows rising at the sight of two young n in jackets that clearly weren't built for Canadian winter.
"Any chance you have a private hangar available?" Luca asked. "Locked. Secure. Just for a couple days."
The guy shook his head. "Sorry, son. All rented out." He must have seen sothing in Luca's expression, because he added, "But this is a private flying club. mbers only. Your bird will be fine out there. We've got security caras, and nobody gets through the gate without a code."
It wasn't ideal, but it was better than nothing. Luca nodded. "We also need a hotel recomndation. Sothing decent, not too far from downtown."
"The Northern Inn's solid. Twenty minutes from here." The guy glanced at his watch. "You need a ride? I can take you myself. Got a van out back."
Luca blinked. "You're the car service?"
"Son, I'm the whole operation." The guy grabbed a set of keys from a hook behind the counter. "Security, managent, transportation. Welco to the sticks."
Fifteen minutes later, the sa guy was pulling a battered van around to the front. He gestured at the crew still huddled by the shuttle.
"Y'all can pile in."
They did. It was cramped, and the heater took forever to kick in, but at least they were moving.
The drive into the city was just gray on gray. Endless concrete and dirty snow piled on the curbs, with glass towers that seed designed to freeze you just by existing. Everyone on the sidewalk had their heads down, burying their faces in scarves like they were marching to a funeral.
Their hotel was warm, at least. That was about all it had going for it.
The Northern Inn turned out to be one of those places that had probably been nice twenty years ago. The lobby carpet was worn thin in patches, the wallpaper was peeling near the ceiling, and the whole building had a vaguely damp sll that made Luca's nose wrinkle.
Their rooms weren't much better. Luca dropped his bag on a bed that sagged in the middle and tried not to look too closely at the stains on the ceiling.
"I'm almost positive there's mold in this carpet," Emily said, standing in his doorway with her arms crossed. "It slls like sothing died in the walls."
"We're not here for the hotel," Luca muttered. He didn't like it either, but this was what happened when you booked your own accommodations to stay off the radar. Just a random recomndation from an airfield guy and whatever was available on short notice.
After the resort in Puerto Rico, it felt like a punishnt.
The others scattered to their rooms to dump bags and thaw out. They had an hour before the eting.
Emily had the itinerary. She confird the restaurant location while Luca tried not to think about the scorch marks on their shuttle hatch. The alternative was traveling with an escort and a whole parade of IFC vehicles. They needed this.
The restaurant was close enough to walk, which, in better weather, could have been nice. But the place itself was worth the freeze, with a fireplace crackling in the corner and low lighting that cast everything in amber tones. Wooden tables filled the space, rustic decor on the walls, and sothing about it made you want to stay.
Luca felt the crew decompress as they settled in. Jackets ca off, shoulders dropped, and soone ordered drinks. The warmth was working its way through them, pushing back against the cold that had seeped in during the walk.
Their Canadian contacts arrived fifteen minutes later.
They were dressed nicely in high-end winter gear and ordered drinks before they even sat down, laughing about sothing one of them had said.
Comfortable. That was the word. They looked settled, like people who had good jobs and warm hos and absolutely zero desire to die on an alien planet.
Luca sighed. This was going to be a short eting.
Maybe he was wrong. He hoped he was wrong.
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