(Ethan)
The library three stops north has a back entrance by the loading dock, and that's where the Digimon stay. Gatomon picks a spot on top of a recycling dumpster with a clear line down the alley, BlackGatomon curls up underneath it, and Renamon folds herself into the shadow of the stairwell so completely that I lose track of her the second I look away. Impmon complains about being left out, then falls asleep on a stack of flattened cardboard before we've even reached the door.
Inside, we walk in two at a time, five minutes apart, which is Gwen's idea and probably the only reason the woman at the front desk doesn't look up twice at four teenagers who all slept in their clothes.
The public terminals sit in a row along the back wall, forty-five minutes per guest pass. We take the one in the corner. Peter gets the chair because he's the one who knows the throwaway account's password, Jessica leans on the desk beside him, Gwen stands behind them with her arms folded, and I end up crouched at Peter's elbow like I'm reading over his homework.
"You're breathing on my neck, man."
"Then type faster."
The EDEN launcher loads in flat mode, no headset, just a browser window and a login box. Peter types the username he made up this morning while we were finishing the coffee, rice_sack_42, and I'd laugh if the last two days had left me any room for it.
The loading screen shows the same sunrise over the Digital World skyline that I sketched on a napkin two years ago, the one Tony made me promise never to change because it tested well. Peter clicks through it without a second look. It's just a loading screen to him. I keep staring at it anyway, until it fades into the sandbox district, all gray placeholder blocks and half-built terrain nobody's gotten around to texturing yet.
Peter pulls up the message window and slides the keyboard over to me.
I type it three times before sending, deleting the first two versions for saying too much.
It's E. Need to talk. Somewhere quiet.
I hit send before I can change it a fourth time.
Jessica starts picking at the edge of the desk's laminate where it's already peeling. Gwen's arms stay folded, but her thumb keeps tapping against her elbow, a steady little rhythm I don't think she knows she's making. Peter watches the corner of the screen where the notification would show up.
It shows up in under a minute.
"Sandbox, grid nine. Two minutes. Don't touch anything, half that district still crashes if you look at it wrong."
Jessica stops picking at the laminate.
"That was fast."
"That's Tony."
Peter steers the throwaway avatar across the gray blocks, a default model with a default face, until a second figure spawns in at the edge of grid nine. It's red and gold, overdesigned, a cape that clips through its own shoulder every few steps, Tony's avatar. He's had me fix the cape clipping four separate times. I've never actually fixed it.
His first message comes through before we even stop moving.
"Kid. Do you have any idea how many people have asked me where you've been the last two days?"
I take the keyboard back from Peter.
"How much do you know?"
"Enough to be annoyed. Not enough to be useful. Which, for the record, is my least favorite combination."
I tell him the short version, typed in pieces, the rooftop and Sitwell and the fence, Peter and the warehouse, the storage room. I leave out anything I can't prove, which is most of it. Tony doesn't interrupt once, which is somehow the most unsettling part of the whole conversation.
When I'm done, his avatar just stands there in the gray a second, cape clipping.
"Okay. Here's what happens. I've got a place in Red Hook, under a company name nobody's going to connect to me, and I mean nobody. Loft, four bedrooms, a fridge I'll have stocked by tonight. You stay there. Your weird little animals stay there. And I go have a conversation with SHIELD about why they're chasing a bunch of kids around the city instead of doing their jobs."
The typing indicator blinks, then keeps going.
"I'm not even going to ask for the Digivice. Mark the date."
Jessica snorts into her sleeve, and a guy two terminals down glances over, then goes back to his screen.
I type, delete it, type again. My fingers stall on the keys.
"You don't have to do this. If they're watching us, they'll start watching you."
"Kid, I'm on every watch list that exists. I think I've got a laminated copy of the list of lists somewhere. One more doesn't even make the top ten."
"That's not a joke, Tony."
The typing indicator stops, starts, stops again.
"I know it's not. Which is why I'm not letting you handle it from a storage room with eleven dollars. You built half of EDEN in my building. You don't get to decide you're too much trouble for me now."
Peter leans in before I can type anything back.
"Take it, Ethan. He's offering you a fridge."
Jessica leans in over Peter's shoulder.
"He's offering us a fridge."
Gwen unfolds her arms for the first time since we sat down.
"He's already in it. He was in it the second he stood next to you for the cameras on launch day. You're not protecting him from anything by saying no."
She looks at me, then at the screen.
"You're just making him do it without us."
I don't have an answer for that. She knew I wouldn't.
Jessica's already got her hand on the back of Peter's chair.
"I vote fridge."
Four of us are looking at one screen, and three of them have already decided. I type the only answer that fits.
"Okay. Thank you."
"Don't thank me yet, you haven't seen the decor."
An address comes through, then a six-digit door code, then one more line.
"After dark. And E, stay off the regular servers. I'll handle the logs on my end."
His avatar waves once, cape clipping straight through its own arm, and logs out.
Peter clears the session, wipes the browser history, and logs the terminal out twice to be sure. Gwen writes the address and the code on the inside of her wrist in ballpoint, because nobody's putting anything on paper that could fall out of a pocket again.
Outside, Gatomon's still on the dumpster. She hops down the second the door opens, reading our faces for a moment before her tail finally uncurls. BlackGatomon crawls out from underneath, and Renamon peels off the stairwell wall like she was never part of it.
Jessica spends two of our eleven dollars at the vending machine by the loading dock on a pack of gum and splits it five ways, one stick for each of us and one for Impmon, who wakes up just long enough to demand it and falls right back asleep with it still in his mouth.
***
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