I've been staring at the monitors for three hours. Somewhere in this tangle of data is the thread I'm looking for — I can feel it, the way you feel a word sitting just behind your tongue.
If Lexin were here, she would have found it already. She would have walked in, glanced at the screens for thirty seconds, and said *there* with that infuriating calm of hers. But Lexin is in New York until Thursday, so it falls to me. I am, after all, the second-best hacker in the world.
I've made peace with that. Second to Lexin is not a small thing.
The third is Luo Qingxue — Lexin's oldest friend, a woman who can dismantle a firewall and write a bestselling novel in the same week. They've known each other since childhood. Sometimes I think they share a frequency the rest of us can't hear.
I push the thought aside and scan the room again. That's when I notice a monitor in the far corner — one I've somehow overlooked. I walk to it slowly, not wanting to jinx myself. Lean in. Read the strings of data crawling across the screen.
"Caught you," I whisper.
"Found something, Jer?"
Lucy's voice. I turn, and she reads my expression before I say a word. Her smile breaks wide.
"You found him."
"I found him."
She's already moving, calling across the room in that sharp, carrying voice of hers. Within seconds the team is in motion — keyboards clicking, chairs rolling, the particular electricity of a hunt closing in. I watch them work and feel the familiar quiet pride of having kept this together.
Everyone here is a beta. That's X's preference — she finds omegas unpredictable and alphas insufferable. It makes for a stable team. Focused. Professional.
Everyone, that is, except me.
I've been hiding it for eight years. I presented as omega at sixteen, took my first suppressant two weeks later, and haven't stopped since. The doses I use now are far beyond what's recommended — three pills where one would do, nearly every day — and I can feel the cost of it in the irregular ache that comes and goes in my bones. But the alternative is worse. Omega pheromones have a smell that Lexin finds unbearable. She's never been cruel about it, just honest in that blunt way she has. I can't focus when it's strong. It's like static in my head.
So I take the pills. I take more than I should. I keep the bottle labeled Vitamin Supplement and I don't think about what I'm doing to myself too carefully.
As long as she doesn't know, it's manageable.
A hand lands on my shoulder. "We've got him. Small apartment near the police station — clever location, actually. I've sent the coordinates to your phone."
I exhale. "Thank you." I raise my voice to carry across the room. "All of you — dinner's on me tonight."
A small cheer goes up. Someone whistles. I'm smiling when a pair of arms wraps around my shoulders from behind, and I go still.
The arms are familiar. The warmth is familiar. My body recognizes her before my mind catches up, and for one terrible second I forget to be careful.
I turn my head.
Lexin looks back at me, her purple eyes bright with something between amusement and reproach.
"You're inviting everyone except me?" she says. "That's a little cruel, don't you think?"
"You're — " I pull back slightly. "You're supposed to be in New York."
"I was." She tilts her head. "Until today."
"It's Thursday?"
"It's Thursday." The amusement fades. She studies my face the way she studies code — searching for anomalies. "Zhirui. How long have you been here?"
"Don't."
"How long?"
I look away. "Two days."
"Did you sleep?"
"You know I don't sleep well."
"Did you eat?"
"I had a banana milkshake."
The silence that follows is specific. I know that silence.
"You're telling me," she says carefully, "that you spent two days in this room, without sleeping, without eating, running a manhunt on a banana milkshake."
"It was a large one."
"Zhirui."
"It had protein powder in it."
"Wrong answer."
I turn to face her fully, which is a mistake, because she looks genuinely upset. "It's fine, Lexin. I've done worse."
"That's not the reassurance you think it is." She steps closer. "Everything about you matters. You know that, right? You know I care about what happens to you."
I look at her for a moment — really look — and then I turn away.
*As a friend.* The words sit in my chest like a stone I've learned to carry. *You care as a friend.*
"I need to take my pills," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel.
"Zhirui—"
"Don't." I start walking. "I'll be right back. Don't follow me."
I hear her anyway — the soft sound of her footsteps — and I stop without turning around.
"Lexin."
"Yeah?"
"I said don't follow me."
A pause. Then the footsteps stop.
---
I lock the restroom door and stand there for a moment with my back against it.
I love her. I have loved her for a long time, with the particular patience of someone who has accepted that the feeling will not be returned. It doesn't make it easier. It makes it a different kind of hard — quieter, more livable, like a low hum you stop noticing until the room goes silent.
I take the bottle from my pocket. Vitamin Supplement. I tap three pills into my palm and don't let myself count them. Swallow them dry, then fill a glass from the tap and drink it slowly.
The recommended dose is one. Two if you're in heat. I have not been in heat in two years, which sounds like a blessing until you understand why — the suppressants have disrupted my cycle so thoroughly that my body no longer knows what to do with itself. I've accepted this. I've accepted most things.
I put the bottle back and unlock the door.
Lexin is standing directly outside it.
I look at her. She looks at me. The purple of her eyes is darker in the dim hallway light.
"The team left for dinner," she says. "They sent me to get you."
I almost laugh — picturing it, the team collectively deciding that Lexin was the right person to drag me out of a building. "Tell them I'm going home."
"I'll tell them you're coming."
"Lexin."
"You need to eat."
"I need to sleep." I step past her. "If you want me functional tomorrow, let me go."
She sighs — that specific sigh, the one that means she's choosing her battles. "Fine. But this isn't over."
"Good night."
"Good night, Zhirui." A beat. "Take care of yourself."
I don't answer. I push through the exit and into the cool night air, and I stand there for a moment before I flag down a cab.
---
My apartment is fifteen minutes away. I watch the city move past the window and don't think about anything in particular.
At home, I shower until the water goes cold, pull on my pajamas, and sit on the edge of my bed. The bedside table holds its usual arrangement: lamp, water glass, sleep pills, and a photograph in a plain frame.
Three faces. Me, Lexin, Qingxue — some evening years ago, all of us laughing at something I can't remember now.
I pick up the sleep pill. Set it on my tongue. Wash it down.
I have never told Lexin I'm an omega. I have never told her I'm in love with her. The first secret protects my place on the team; the second protects something harder to name — the particular shape of what we are to each other, which I would rather keep imperfect and intact than risk losing entirely.
She told me once, early on, that she'd had trouble trusting people. That meeting me had felt like relief. I'm glad you're here, she'd said, simple and sincere, and I had understood in that moment that this was the most she knew how to offer — and that it was, somehow, enough.
It has to be enough.
I lie back. Close my eyes. Feel the pill beginning its slow, merciful work.
I can't let her know. The thought drifts, quieter with each breath. Never.
Sleep comes, and I let it.