"Tesni, I do not have that kind of money!"
"Just try," she said.
Silas pushed a hand through his hair and turned away from her, the frustration moving through him visibly. "I have only just entered this world. It would take thirty missions at minimum to raise that amount. Thirty." He turned back. "I cannot risk everything I have built for this. I do not do anything for free. I do not run charity."
"You want me to pay you?" Her voice was quiet. Carefully quiet.
"Tit for tat." He held her gaze without apology. "That is how this world works."
The room went still.
Then he heard it. A soft sound from the floor. He turned.
His breath left him.
Tesni stood with her eyes closed and her chin lifted, her chest rising and falling slowly as though she was steadying herself from the inside out. The last of her clothing had fallen to the floor around her feet. She opened her eyes and looked at him directly, and the steadiness in them cost her more than anything she had ever paid for.
"I know you want everything authentic," she said, her voice barely above a breath. "I am a maiden. You will be the first."
The tears came before she could stop them, slipping free and tracking silently down her face. She did not move to wipe them. She did not look away from him.
"Please." Her voice cracked open on the word. "Do it already."
And then she broke entirely. The tears became sobs, raw and unstoppable, tearing out of her chest in waves she had been holding back since the moment she watched her sister disappear into a black car in the rain. All of it came out at once, every carefully maintained composure she had carried through banks and police stations and lion's dens collapsing to the floor with everything else.
Silas did not move for a long moment.
He looked at her and something in his face changed entirely, shifting beneath the surface of everything he had trained himself to be in the years since she left. He crossed the room, pulled the sheet from his bed and wrapped it around her in one motion, drawing her into his arms at the same time and holding her there firmly, like he was trying to hold all the pieces of her together by force.
"You do not need to do this," he said into her hair. "Not this. Never this." He held her tighter. "I will get the money. Two days. I promise you."
She pulled back just enough to look at him. "Really?"
"Really." He stepped back and moved toward the door, pausing with his hand on the frame without turning around. "I am going to step out. Get dressed and come downstairs when you are ready."
"Sure."
Downstairs the atmosphere had shifted into something more serious. Silas stood with his arms crossed and the look of a man working through calculations that carried very real consequences.
"I am going to undertake a deadly mission," he said when she appeared. "And I am going to need your help specifically because you are good at hacking."
Tesni straightened. "Tell me."
"There is a man." He chose his words carefully. "A mafioso who goes by the name Ravi. In all the years he has operated nobody has successfully gone up against him. Only four people in the world know his face." He paused. "They are all currently on life support. He is known in certain circles as Black Mask."
The name settled over the room like a drop in temperature.
"What are you planning?" Tesni asked.
"I need you to disable twenty CCTV cameras. Two of them emit invisible laser beams and are sensor triggered. I need you to get into all of them remotely using feeds from my equipment."
Tesni did not blink. "Trust me on that."
"You hacked an entire bank five years ago," he said. "I have no doubts."
"What about the guards?"
"Leave the guards to me."
She nodded slowly. "Where is the money being kept?"
"There is an underground warehouse directly beneath St. Paul's Chapel."
A beat of silence. "That is a very good hiding place."
"That is why he is Black Mask." Silas uncrossed his arms. "I am starting tonight."
Tesni looked at him across the room, at the boy she had left in a deep hole years ago who had climbed out of it and become someone she did not entirely recognise, and felt something she did not have the words for settle in her chest.
"Thank you, Silas."
He looked back at her evenly. "I have very few real chances of surviving this."
"Then do not go." Her voice was immediate. "I am not going to force you into something that kills you."
"I have to take the risk." He said it simply, without performance. "And if I succeed I will have the upper hand over someone nobody has ever touched before. That is worth something in this world." He moved toward the hallway. "Go home, Tesni."
She picked up her bag and paused at the door. "Bye, Silas."
"Bye."
The door closed between them and neither of them moved on the other side of it for just a moment longer than necessary.
Tesni was on her feet the moment she heard the knock.
"I thought you would never come," she said, pulling the door open wide.
Bianca stepped inside, dragging a carry-on behind her, her expression carrying the particular alertness of someone who had been moving since the moment a phone rang. "You called and I flew in from China immediately." She set the bag down and looked at Tesni directly. "What is it?"
"I need your help with something."
"When do we start?"
"Tonight."
Bianca glanced at the time and nodded once. "Then I have about three hours to rest first."
She crossed to the sofa and sat down without ceremony, already closing her eyes.
This was Bianca. The most sought after IT specialist in two worlds simultaneously, known in corporate boardrooms under one name and in the underground hacking community under another, equally feared in both. When Tesni called, she came. That was simply how it had always worked.