This Debt Between Us

The wind clawed at Roni’s thighs, searching for skin beneath the matte-black fabric. Forty-two stories up, the tower’s glass skin reflected her silhouette—bent knees, gloved fingers splayed against the building’s seam—as if the city itself were holding its breath with her. She flexed her toes inside soft-soled shoes, feeling the micro-suction cups kiss the pane. One slip and the only witness would be a half-drunk security guard watching basketball replays three floors below.

She liked that math.

She had started climbing at 02:17, exactly four minutes after the west-elevator camera rebooted. By 02:31 she had cleared the service ledge where motion sensors were angled to catch pigeons, not people. Now, at 02:46, the final stretch waited: ten meters of featureless glass ending in a maintenance hatch that fed directly into Jasper Croft’s private elevator shaft. No balcony, no ornament, no mercy—just vertical ice lit by the bruised glow of downtown.

Cold crept through the weave of her suit, tightening her nipples until they ached against the compression top. She ignored the pulse between her legs, the way adrenaline always pooled there first. Later she would use it; now she pocketed it like a blade.

A gust slapped her cheek, rocking her body an inch from the wall. Her left knee lost suction; for three heartbeats she hung one-handed, boots skimming empty night. The city swung below—headlights smeared into gold ribbons, river black and depthless. She tasted metal, imagined the splatter, then forced her palm flat again. Breathe, count, move. The choreography was sacred, a hymn she’d rehearsed in abandoned warehouses until her shoulders screamed.

Halfway to the hatch her earpiece clicked: two short, one long—Piper confirming the lobby guard had left his desk for a smoke. Good girl. Roni allowed herself half a smile, lips cracking in the dry wind. She climbed faster, thighs burning, hips rolling in the steady piston rhythm that always made former lovers swear she fucked the same way she stole—relentless, precise, gone before they caught their breath.

At the hatch she paused. Infrared paint on the latch showed cool: no internal alarms. She slid a flex-bar between glass and steel, popped the pins, and slipped inside. The shaft was a velvet throat, silent except for the soft whir of dormant elevators. She clipped her harness to the maintenance cable, unspooled ascenders, and began the final ascent—thirty silent feet to the roof of the car that served only the penthouse. When she stepped onto its roof her watch read 02:59. She had sixty-one seconds before the next patrol cycle.

She knelt, popped the escape hatch, and dropped into the car. Mirrors on every wall threw her reflection back in fractured triplicate: black suit zipped to the sternum, hair braided tight, eyes bright as switchblades. The car smelled of cedar and something metallic—money, maybe, or blood. She pressed the PH button, felt the magnet lock disengage, and rose the last three floors alone.

Doors parted with a whisper. She stepped into a corridor so wide it felt like outside turned inside: glass walls, polished basalt floor, air scrubbed until it tasted empty. Across the city a siren dopplered away; inside, nothing moved. She tasted the hush, felt it slide under her tongue like a promise.

She walked past a single sculpture—steel wings folded mid-dive—and felt her pulse quicken. Not fear, not exactly. Recognition. Every billionaire collected something; Jasper collected stillness. She intended to break it.

At the end of the hall biometric sensors glowed soft teal. She peeled a thin patch from her wrist, slapped it over the reader, watched the lights stutter and submit. The lock sighed open. She stepped into the master suite, pupils widening to drink the dark.

Across the room the painting waited, big as a door, colors swallowed by night. Behind it: the vault. Inside the vault: the Seraph’s Tear, a pear-shaped diamond rumored to harden against skin until it felt alive. She unspooled the cable from her belt, clipped it to a hidden anchor in the ceiling, and glided forward.

Her boots made no sound. Her breath hardly stirred. She felt the old hunger rise, sharp and clean as the wind that had tried to kill her minutes ago. She reached for the painting’s frame, fingers steady, mouth already tasting the future—until the room flooded with light and a voice behind her said, calm as winter water, “I wouldn’t do that. The nitrogen purge is quite unpleasant.”

The penthouse was a mausoleum of right angles. Glass, steel, concrete, all scrubbed to a surgical sheen. Roni stepped through the corridor and felt the city drop away behind her, forty-two stories of altitude sealing her into a hush so complete she could hear the wet click of her own blink. No ticking clocks, no humming appliances—only the faint mechanical sigh of climate control adjusting by fractions of a degree. The air smelled of nothing, as though even odour had been taxed into exile.

She slid a foot forward, testing. No tremor in the floor, no tell-tale warmth of recently switched lights. The laser grid should have been active—three beams, knee-high, waist-high, chest-high, cycling every four seconds—but the patch on her wrist had rewritten their language. They slept for her now, invisible snakes coiled and harmless. She stepped over the first threshold and felt the familiar contraction behind her sternum: anticipation clamping down like a hand around the base of her throat.

To her left, the living room opened into a rectangle of moon-coloured sofas. A single book lay on a coffee table, spine uncracked. She did not slow to read the title; curiosity was a luxury that slowed blood flow. Ahead, a staircase floated—no risers, only treads cantilevered from a wall—leading toward the master suite. She chose the ground route instead, slipping along a hallway narrower than the grand spaces, designed, she suspected, to funnel intruders into view. Jasper liked sightlines the way other men liked contracts.

Halfway down the hall she paused at a panel of glass. Beyond it, the city glittered, a circuitry of headlights and neon. Her reflection floated over it: a narrow silhouette, hips cocked, braid tucked inside the collar so no strand could snag. She looked like a paper cutout laid against the night. She tapped the pane once with a knuckle. Triple-laminated, air-gapped, wired to pressure sensors. If she punched through she would be dead before the shards hit the floor. She smiled at the thought—some locks were honest.

The corridor ended in a sliding door recessed into the wall. She pressed two fingers against the seam, felt the faint pulse of the servo. Locked, but the lock was social, not structural: it expected consent, not force. She slid a wafer of graphite between latch and plate, exhaled, and pushed. The door rolled aside on a breath of rubberised tracks.

Inside, the bedroom was a single slab of space: bed low and wide as a raft, headboard a monolith of grey linen. Two nightstands, nothing on them. No photographs, no half-drunk glass of water. Either Jasper lived like a monk or he tidied evidence the way other people tucked in children. She felt a twitch of irritation—no clutter meant no story, and no story meant no leverage. Everyone left shrapnel except Jasper, who had turned absence into a signature.

She crossed to the far wall where the abstract painting hung: rust and indigo shapes colliding, all sharp edges. Behind it waited the vault. She lifted the frame a millimetre, slid a feeler gauge behind, and confirmed the magnetic contact still seated—no local alarm, just the promise of nitrogen if she botched the code. Her pulse drummed in her ears, steady, almost bored. She had cracked tougher. She would crack this. The diamond was already warm in her imagination, a teardrop of captured starlight that would heat against her collarbone when she fled.

Roni eased the painting aside on silent hinges, revealing the matte face of the safe. Ten-digit membrane, capacitive, no tactile feedback. She thumbed the power node on her wrist; the decryption spike blinked awake. Thirty seconds of brute handshake, maybe less. She fitted the leads, watched numbers stutter across her retinal HUD. Her tongue found the cut on her lip she’d carried since scaling—salt and iron, the taste of staying alive.

Twenty-eight seconds.

Twenty-six.

A soft chime, not from the vault but from somewhere behind her. Not the door, not the lift—something closer. She froze, breath bottled in her throat. The chime came again, a polite digital trill, the sound a phone made when it finished charging. It was inside the room with her.

She turned her head a fraction. On the low dresser, a slim rectangle of matte black glass stood upright, screen lit. A message glowed:

WELCOME HOME, JASPER.

The phone had recognised a face—his face. Which meant it was now recognising hers.

Roni’s gloved fingertip had barely brushed the keypad when the overhead strips flared white. She flinched hard enough that the decryption spike slipped from the port, its leads snatching at her sleeve like tiny claws. The painting—still propped half-open—swung wider, exposing her to the room and whatever stood behind her.

She pivoted on the ball of her left foot, weight low, right hand already closing on the ceramic blade inside her cuff. The motion was reflex, drilled into muscle years ago, but it died halfway: Jasper Croft filled the doorway, one shoulder against the jamb, silk robe belted loose. The glass in his hand caught the new light and threw it back in amber spokes. He looked exactly like the photographs—high cheekbones, flat mouth, eyes the colour of wet concrete—except alive, three-dimensional, and staring at her as if she were a misplaced piece of furniture he intended to keep.

“Don’t move,” he said, voice pitched low, almost friendly. “There’s a pressure pad under your right heel. If you shift more than three millimetres the vault vents nitrogen straight into the room. You’ll be conscious long enough to regret it.”

Roni’s boot had frozen half an inch above the parquet; she felt the tremor travel up her tibia and lodge behind her kneecap. She lowered slowly until the sole kissed the floor again. The house stayed silent—no distant sirens, no barked orders over an intercom. Just the soft click of Jasper swallowing whiskey.

He stepped inside, bare feet soundless on the stone. The robe parted as he moved, revealing a slice of chest, the sternum sharp beneath skin that had never known sun. He stopped a forearm’s length away, close enough she smelled the liquor and something mineral underneath—ozone, maybe, or chilled steel. His gaze tracked from her boots upward, pausing at the pulse hammering in her throat, then settling on her eyes with the patience of a man unbuttoning a shirt.

“I expected someone taller,” he murmured. “And male. The last two attempts were.”

Roni’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She calculated angles: knife draw, shoulder throw, sprint to corridor. All useless if the floor was mined. “Security’s not coming?” she managed.

“I am security.” He lifted the glass, indicating the walls. “This apartment is a closed system. Right now the only heartbeat logged is yours and mine. Everything else is asleep.” His free hand rose, fingers hovering a millimetre from her collar. He didn’t touch, only traced the outline of the zip in the air. “You climbed forty-two floors for a stone that isn’t even insured any more. That’s dedication.”

Her voice came out rougher than she wanted. “You going to stand here all night describing my work ethic?”

A faint smile tugged the corner of his mouth. “No. I’m going to offer you a contract.” He tilted the glass; whiskey crawled across the ice. “Prison is tedious—for both of us. Instead you’ll settle the debt in-house. Every item in that vault has a market value; you’ll repay it by acquisition. My list, your labour. You succeed, you stay alive. You fail, I make the call. Simple.”

He spoke like a man outlining a grocery list. Roni felt the numbers slide through her head: eighty million in stones, maybe more. Impossible sum. Yet the alternative—cuffs, cages, years of fluorescent boredom—felt heavier. Her heartbeat slowed, adjusting to the new weight.

“And if I refuse?” she asked, already knowing.

Jasper’s eyes flicked to the keypad still glowing behind her. “Then I close the painting, trigger the purge, and notify the coroner. Your choice.”

The room held its breath. She became aware of tiny things: the whisper of climate vents, the ache in her quads, the way his belt knot mirrored the hangman’s noose. She uncurled her fingers from the knife hilt and let her hands hang open at her sides.

“Terms,” she said.

“Live here. Eat here. Work when I say. No outside contact until the balance is zero.” He studied her face, waiting for flinch or protest. When none came he nodded once, satisfied, and stepped back. “First lesson: trust the floor.”

He offered his glass. Ice clinked, a sound like shackles clicking shut. Roni took it, swallowed what remained—heat sliding into cold hollows—and handed it back empty. The deal tasted of oak and copper and her own accelerated blood.

Jasper turned toward the corridor. “Come,” he said, not looking. “I’ll show you your room.”

She followed, boots silent now on stone that no longer threatened to kill her—only to own her, piece by piece, breath by breath. Behind them the vault lights dimmed, painting settling into place, nitrogen coiled and patient, waiting for a mistake she hadn’t yet decided to make.

Roni’s lungs refused to expand. She felt the missed breath as a pressure behind her sternum, as if the nitrogen he’d mentioned had already seeped into the room. Jasper let the silence stretch while he studied her, the glass resting easy in his hand, whiskey rocking against the ice in slow, deliberate pulses. She counted them—one, two—until her diaphragm finally released and air slid in, sharp as broken glass.

He didn’t move to block the door. He didn’t need to; his stillness was a more efficient barrier. Roni eased her weight forward a fraction, testing the pressure pad beneath her heel. No hiss, no click. Three millimetres, he’d said. She memorised the give of the parquet, the way the plank flexed like a living thing calibrated to his voice.

“Turn around,” he said. Not an order, not quite. A suggestion weighted with the knowledge that she would obey.

She pivoted slowly, shoulders squared to him, hands visible. The ceramic blade still hugged her forearm but it might as well have been plastic; she could feel the room’s circuitry breathing at her back, ready to flood the space with inert gas if her pulse spiked too high. Jasper’s gaze tracked the movement, pupils dilated as if he were watching data render.

“You’re smaller than the specs indicated,” he observed. “Five-seven, a hundred and twenty-two pounds. The file photo must have been shot from below.”

Roni’s tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth. “Files shrink in the wash.”

A corner of his mouth lifted, gone before it fully formed. He stepped closer, robe brushing the tops of his bare feet, and stopped just outside the radius where she could swing without shifting her heel. Close enough that she smelled the bourbon, the faint metallic note of his skin, something like rain on hot steel. His eyes weren’t grey the way surveillance rendered them; they were the colour of wet concrete darkening under storm, and they moved over her with the detachment of a man pricing lot lines on a map.

“Name,” he said.

She considered silence, discarded it. “Roni.”

“Short for Veronica?”

“Just Roni.”

He nodded, filing the syllable away. “You have two options, Roni. The first involves police, evidence lockers, and a sentence lengthy enough that your skills will rust before you see daylight.” He sipped, ice clicking. “The second involves staying alive, staying here, and working off the market value of what you tried to steal. Eighty-six million, give or take a stone.”

The number landed like a brand. She kept her face blank, heartbeat steady by an act of will. “Interest?”

“Compounded nightly.” His tone was mild, almost amused. “Board included.”

She glanced toward the corridor—empty, lit like a museum after hours. No footsteps, no distant chatter of guards. Either he really was the only security or he’d sent them away, confident the architecture itself could hold her. She believed it; the room felt skinned alive, every surface watching.

“Clock’s running,” he said. “The pad samples weight every five seconds. You’re due a refresh.”

Roni felt the plank beneath her boot hum, a subsonic tickle travelling up her tibia. She locked her knee, refusing the instinctive shift. “And when the balance hits zero?”

“Then you walk out richer in skills and poorer in excuses.” He lifted the glass in a small salute. “Or you leave in a bag. Your choice.”

She looked at the vault, at the half-open painting, at the man who owned both. The math was simple: die here, or die slower upstairs while she learned the shape of his leash. Roni had never been sentimental about freedom; it was just another commodity with a fluctuating price. Tonight the market had spoken.

“I’ll need my gear,” she said.

“You’ll use mine.” He turned, robe flaring enough to reveal the sharp cut of hipbone before he moved out of range. “Follow exactly in my footprints. Deviate and the floor vents.”

He started toward the corridor, each step deliberate, heel-to-toe along an invisible seam. Roni watched the placement, mapped the tolerance, then matched it. The plank beneath her boot released its surveillance with a sigh. She stepped onto his track, pulse steady for the first time since the lights came on, and felt the room exhale around her—predator accepting prey into its bloodstream.

Behind them the vault lights dimmed to idle, nitrogen coiled and patient, and the painting settled back against the wall with a whisper, sealing the diamond she would now steal for him instead of from him.

Jasper halted at the threshold of the corridor, moonlight slicing across his shoulders like a blade. He didn’t look back. “Keep two paces. The oak inlays are pressure-mapped; anything narrower than my stride reads as a child or a cat, and the system vents anything it classifies as vermin.”

Roni measured the distance—thirty-six inches, the span of his hips—and copied it. Her boots whispered over the seam. She felt the faint give of micro-switches relaxing, the house deciding she was still property.

They passed a wall of glass overlooking the city. Forty-two floors below, traffic crawled like phosphorescent plankton. Up here the air was thinner, cleaned by filters she couldn’t see; it tasted of money and ionised nothing. Her reflection floated beside his: matte-black polymer against charcoal silk, the robe slipping with every step to reveal the taper of spine, the dimple at the small of his back. She looked away first.

At the end of the hall he paused beside a door indistinguishable from the paneling. He pressed two fingers to a faint grain swirl; a magnetic lock exhaled. The door swung inward on counterweights, revealing a room the size of a prison cell dressed as a hotel suite. A low platform bed, sheets the colour of wet sand. No windows. A single recessed light that came on at thirty percent, just enough to keep circadian rhythm docile.

“Bathroom’s behind the mirror,” he said. “Closet’s empty; you’ll wear what I issue. There’s a reader on the nightstand—no net access, cached books only. If you try to pull signal the room floods with white noise and the door seals for six hours.” He spoke without threat, the way a pilot recites landing speed.

Roni stepped inside. The air was cooler, engineered to keep metabolism slow. She turned, expecting him to leave. Instead he leaned against the jamb, robe belt loose, glass dangling from two fingers. Ice had melted to crescents that slid when he tilted it.

“Take the suit off,” he said.

Her shoulders tightened. “You want a show, or you want compliance?”

“I want the suit.” He set the glass on the floor, straightened. “Every gram of hardware you’re wearing is logged against the debt. Fibres, alloys, firmware updates—retail, not street. I’ll credit the trade-in.”

She hesitated, then reached for the collar seal. The zipper hissed; the torso split down the sternum like a chrysalis. She peeled sleeves, hips, calves, stepping out of the black skin until she stood in sports bra and briefs, the ceramic blade still Velcroed to her forearm. Cool air raised gooseflesh across her thighs.

“All of it,” he said.

She unhooked the bra, slid underwear down, kicked them aside. Naked, she kept her eyes on his collarbone. He studied her the way a jeweller studies refractive index: not lust, not appraisal—measurement. Minutes passed. Her nipples hardened; she didn’t cover them.

Finally he pushed off the jamb, crossed the threshold. The proximity felt surgical. He stopped just short of contact, bent enough that his breath stirred the hair at her temple, and spoke softly. “You’re going to learn the difference between naked and exposed. Tonight you’re only the first.”

He crouched, gathered the suit into a loose bundle, and left. The door shut with the same polite exhale. Light dimmed to ten percent, a moonlit dusk that never changed.

Roni stood until the hum of ventilation was the only sound, then sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress gave two millimetres—memory foam over concrete base, impossible to tunnel through. She pressed palms to her knees, felt the faint tremor that always arrived after a job, delayed by adrenaline and now unpacked in private.

Eighty-six million dollars. She did the division: fifty jobs at conservative two-million hauls, more if the targets were soft, less if he saddled her with expenses. Overheads, gear rental, interest compounded nightly. She would be thirty-five before the ledger zeroed—older if he kept adding penalties for questions, for hesitation, for the weight of her own pulse.

She lay back, skin against linen that smelled of nothing, and stared at the ceiling. Somewhere beyond the walls Jasper would be pouring another finger of whiskey, logging her biometrics, erasing her from city databases byte by byte. The thought should have terrified her. Instead it settled like ballast, a cold precise weight that stopped her floating away.

For the first time in years she didn’t know where the exit was. The ignorance felt almost like relief.

The room had no morning. At 07:00 the recessed diode ring brightened to a surgical white, but the windows stayed black; the glass was electro-chromic, opaqued from the outside so the skyline could not look back. Roni opened her eyes into that false noon and for three full seconds forgot where her body ended and the mattress began. Then the prior night folded over her like poured concrete: the vault, the nitrogen, the way Jasper’s pupils had contracted while he priced her in grams.

She rolled to her feet, bladder aching, and the floor accepted her weight without complaint. Every surface felt tuned; even the air tasted filtered of intention. In the bathroom mirror she caught her own reflection—hair flattened on one side, four bruises blooming where the tactical suit had pinched—and realized she was still naked. He had taken the sheets too while she slept; the bed sat stripped to the waterproof membrane, a reminder that nothing here was hers to use, only to borrow and return in the same condition.

The mirror slid aside to reveal a shower stall tiled in black basalt. When she stepped in, the water came on at exactly thirty-eight degrees, pressure calibrated to the building’s pumped head. No faucet, no visible controls. She braced her palms against the wall and let it drum against her scalp until the count of two hundred, then watched her hairs swirl toward a drain she could not pry open. When she walked out, a folded stack waited on the floor: underwear, a charcoal dress of matte jersey, no tags. She put them on. They fit as though cut while she slept.

A tray had appeared in the main room—white porcelain, silver cover, no sound of delivery. Oatmeal, black coffee, a single poached egg that oozed gold when pierced. She ate because the body was a machine that required diesel, tasting nothing, then set the utensils back exactly parallel. The plate was whisked away by a slot she hadn’t noticed; the wall sealed flush behind it. She imagined Jasper on the far side of the building’s arteries, watching her chew at twelve frames per second, logging transit time through her digestive tract.

Time dilated. Without her phone she had no reference, only the ventilation’s steady exhale. She tried push-ups, sit-ups, a yoga sequence she half-remembered from a juvenile detention coach. The room absorbed the impacts without echo. At some point the light dimmed to afternoon amber, then to theatrical gold, then to the lunar dusk again. She understood the cycle was for her benefit, a kindness to keep circadian rhythm from collapsing entirely. She resented the courtesy.

Sleep refused. She stood at the window and pressed fingertips to the glass. From the inside it was transparent, the city glittering like circuitry still warm from soldering. Helicopters slid between towers; barges crawled the river’s dark spine. She placed her palm over the place where the glass met her reflection and felt no temperature differential. The pane was triple-laminated, probably rated against thirty-ought-six. Even if she could shatter it, the drop was forty-two stories, and the ledge outside was a hand-width of polished stone. She pictured the fall, the way the wind would tear the dress upward over her face, the brief, bright moment of choosing trajectory. Then she stepped back and drew the sheer curtain, another kindness he had provided.

On the second dawn—if it was dawn—she woke to find a pair of soft leather slippers beside the bed and a paperback novel: a dog-eared copy of The Remains of the Day. No dedication, no receipt. She read twenty pages, then snapped the book shut, angry that the prose could still reach her. When the slot opened for breakfast she slid the novel back onto the tray. It was returned that evening with a different title, this time a history of Venetian glass. She left it untouched on the floor like a dead bird.

Sometime during the third cycle she discovered the microphone. It wasn’t hidden; it was simply small, a pinhole in the ceiling light ring. She stared up at it until her eyes watered, then said, “I’m going to shit in the oatmeal tomorrow.” The next meal arrived with a printed card: Please use the toilet provided. She laughed, a short sharp bark that startled her more than the surveillance. The sound died against the felted walls like a bird hitting net.

When the door finally exhaled, she was doing handstand push-ups, dress pooled around her shoulders. She dropped to her feet without hurry. Jasper stood in the corridor dressed in a dark navy shirt and trousers that looked civilian but hung like uniform. His eyes went first to her bare legs, then to the neat row of books she had not read, then to her face. The inspection took less than a second.

“Twenty-four hours,” he said. “You’ve lost two pounds. Heart-rate variability improved. You’re adapting.”

She swiped hair from her forehead. “You weighed the sheets?”

“Every fibre.” He stepped aside, gesturing toward the hall. “Time to renegotiate the terms of service.”

Roni walked forward, barefoot, the carpet thick enough to hide her steps. As she passed him she caught the scent of cedar and printer toner, the smell of a man who owned the servers that owned the world. She did not look at his face. The door sealed behind them with the sigh of a lung closing, and the corridor stretched ahead, windowless, already deciding what it would take from her next.

The corridor ended at a single walnut door, its surface darker than the brushed-steel walls, as if it had been transplanted from another century. Jasper pressed four fingers to a bronze plate; the lock thunked like a coffin closing. Inside, the air smelled of vellum and dust, a deliberate anachronism. Shelves rose twenty feet to a coffered ceiling, packed with leather spines in languages Roni couldn’t read. Between the books sat fragments of marble statuary, a Greek helmet green with age, a astrolabe whose brass had dulled to the color of old honey. The only concession to the present was a slab of black glass that served as desk, its surface bare except for a fountain pen and a single sheet of cream paper.

He motioned her to the chair opposite. The seat was lower than his; her eyes would meet his sternum if she looked straight ahead. She sat anyway, back bare against the leather, and crossed her ankles because the dress had no pockets for fists.

Jasper picked up the pen but didn’t write. “Item one,” he said. “Housing. You will occupy the east guest suite until the debt is zeroed. You will not leave the penthouse without my authorization. Attempted egress triggers a lockdown and adds five hundred thousand to principal.”

He spoke the way other people checked pulse—mechanical, certain. Roni kept her face blank, the same expression she used when a safe’s tumblers finally aligned.

“Item two. Daily schedule. Zero-six-hundred wake, zero-seven-hundred calisthenics, zero-eight-hundred breakfast. Training sessions follow. Evenings are mine.” He rotated the paper so she could read. Columns of times, rooms, activities. The word ‘shower’ appeared twice, eight minutes allotted each.

“Item three. Tasks. You will acquire objects I designate, from locations I specify, under conditions I control. Success reduces principal by negotiated amount. Failure compounds interest at twelve percent per diem.”

He paused, letting the numbers settle. Twelve percent meant the debt could double in a week. She wondered if that was the point.

Roni cleared her throat. “And if I acquire something extra, something off-script? Do I get a bonus, or does it belong to you like everything else?”

His mouth bent, not quite a smile. “Spontaneity. I’d almost missed that.” He laid the pen down precisely parallel to the page. “Any deviation from protocol is mine to evaluate. If it pleases me, I may apply a discretionary credit. If it displeases me, we multiply.”

She hated the way the word ‘multiply’ sounded in his voice, like a virus replicating.

He continued. “Item four. Appearance. You will wear what is provided. Garments are tagged; removal from premises constitutes attempted flight.”

“I had a life outside polyester,” she said before she could weigh the cost.

“Had,” he repeated, gentle as a scalpel. “Inside these walls you are an asset class. Assets don’t choose their wrapping.”

Heat crawled up her neck, but she kept her tone flat. “Understood.”

“Item five. Information. You will answer questions fully and immediately. Lies incur penalties.” He leaned back; the chair sighed. “Let’s demonstrate. Your last job before tonight—target, proceeds, crew share.”

She hesitated three heartbeats, long enough to test whether silence itself carried a price. His stillness told her it did. “Cartier flagship on Fifth. Vintage mystery clocks. Net two-point-four million, split four ways. My cut six hundred even.”

“Location of your share now?”

“Bank box in Queens. Key’s in a locker at Port Authority, combo only I know.” Saying it out loud felt like handing him a scalpel and pointing to the vein.

He noted something on the paper, though she hadn’t seen him flip it over. “The locker and the box will be emptied by noon. Proceeds applied to principal.”

Anger flared, bright and useless. “That money’s clean. Serials were laundered.”

“Clean is a relative term. Here, everything is relative to me.” He capped the pen, aligned it again. “Any further questions?”

She had a thousand, but the only one that came out was, “Why the books?” She nodded at the shelves. “You strip me naked, weigh my shit, track my pulse—but you keep paper like you’re afraid electricity will forget.”

For the first time something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe approval. “Memory is fragile,” he said. “Ink negotiates better than hard drives when the power fails.” He stood; the conversation was over. “Training begins tomorrow. Tonight, rest. Or don’t. The room logs movement either way.”

He moved toward the door, then stopped beside her chair. His hand hovered a moment before settling on her shoulder, fingers resting on the ridge of clavicle as if testing the tensile strength of bone. “One more detail,” he murmured. “The tasks I require aren’t always larceny. Sometimes they’re simpler. Sometimes they’re harder. You’ll know when we get there.”

The pressure lifted. He left without looking back, the door sealing her inside the library with the smell of old paper and the echo of a future she hadn’t agreed to, but already understood she would perform.

He returned at nineteen-hundred on the dot. She heard the door’s exhale from the library’s far end where she had been counting the spines marked with gold leaf, anything to keep the seconds from pooling. Jasper carried no tablet, no folder, only a single espresso cup that he set on the desk between them. The coffee was for him; he didn’t offer her any.

“Let’s talk about locks,” he said, lowering himself into the high-backed chair. The overhead spots left his eyes in shadow but lit the sharp bow of his upper lip. “Pin tumbler versus wafer. Which do you prefer?”

Roni kept her shoulders level. “Depends on the door.”

“Expand.”

“Pin tumblers give better feedback. You feel the sheer line click, you know when each pin sets. Wafers are mushy—plastic guitars instead of piano keys.” She stopped, annoyed that detail had slipped through.

He noted it anyway. “So sound matters to you.”

“Sound, torque, temperature. Everything matters.”

“Temperature?”

“Brass contracts in the cold. A lock picked at twenty below can feel like a different animal at room temp. You plan for it or you snap your pick.”

A faint curve touched his mouth, the same expression he’d worn when the scales reported her two-pound loss. “Tell me about the first lock you ever opened.”

She folded her hands in her lap so he wouldn’t see the knuckles whiten. “Bedroom door at foster house number three. Foster dad kept the key on his belt. I used a hairpin.”

“Reward?”

“Bathroom privileges without asking.”

“Punishment if caught?”

“No dinner.”

“And were you?”

“Caught?” She met his gaze. “No.”

He sipped the espresso, pinky relaxed, no clink of porcelain. “Your first six-figure take.”

“Warehouse in Red Hook. Pharmaceuticals. Security system used a six-digit default the installer never reset.”

“Crew?”

“Three. Driver stayed with the van.”

“Split?”

“Even.”

He tilted his head. “You’re lying.”

The accusation arrived so calmly she almost laughed. “Prove it.”

“Your pulse jumped six beats. Capillary dilation in your left ear. You gave the driver eight percent and kept the rest for logistics—grease for customs, bribes at the port. You told the others it was even so they wouldn’t factor the overhead into future demands.”

Her scalp prickled. She hadn’t heard him activate a sensor, but a thin filament on the desk’s glossy surface glowed soft amber—biometric scanner reading her reflection. She kept her voice flat. “Eight percent keeps a crew loyal.”

“Indeed. Loyalty through engineered imbalance—useful to remember.” He set the cup down, handle aligned to ninety degrees. “Describe your first failure.”

“I don’t fail.”

“Everyone fails.”

“Then I don’t catalog it.”

“That, too, is a lie.” He leaned forward, elbows on the mahogany. “Try again.”

The library felt suddenly smaller, the scent of vellum thick enough to choke on. She swallowed. “Venice. Safe behind a Tintoretto copy. Cobbled mechanism, four-wheel with false gates. I rushed the read, dropped the nose of my pick, jammed the fence. Guard came back from smoke break earlier than scheduled. I left empty.”

“Feeling?”

“Annoyed.”

“Physical symptom?”

“Twitch in my right thumb for a week.”

“Lesson?”

“Never trust a Renaissance reproduction; the frame’s always heavier than it should be.”

His smile widened a millimeter, the equivalent of applause from another man. “Good. Now the truth you’re withholding.”

She exhaled through her nose. “I puked in the canal afterward. Adrenaline crash.”

“Thank you.” He sat back, the interrogation closing like a blade folding. “One last area—people. Who taught you to read micro-expressions?”

“No one.”

“Self-taught?”

“Survival skill. Kids in group homes split into predators and prey around day two. You learn or you bleed.”

“Current read on me?”

She let her eyes travel his posture: ankles crossed, fingers steepled, respiration twelve per minute. “You’re relaxed because you already know the next three moves. You’re probing for volatility—see whether I’ll lunge across the desk or fold.”

“Accurate.” He unfolded from the chair, circled around until he stood behind her, not touching, but close enough that the air warmed. “Final question. When you picture freedom, what do you see?”

Her throat dried. She saw a rooftop in Lisbon at sunrise, wind slicing between chimneys, no schedule, no ledger, no eyes on her spine. She saw the opposite of this room. She answered, “A door without you on the other side.”

A low sound left him, half laugh, half exhale. “Honest at last.” He moved back to his seat, the distance reinstated. “We’re done for tonight. You’ll find new clothes on your bed—dinner is in thirty minutes. Wear the grey silk; it photographs neutral under LED.”

“Photographs?” The word escaped before she could cage it.

His knowing smile returned, small but unmistakable. “Some acquisitions require documentation. You’ll understand soon.” He flicked two fingers toward the door, dismissal crisp as paper tearing. She rose, pulse louder than her footsteps, and felt his gaze track her all the way into the corridor, a collector noting how the specimen glowed under specific light.

The dress was grey silk, sleeveless, cut on the bias so it clung to nothing yet left the outline of everything visible when she moved. No underwear had been provided; the fabric slid directly over skin that still smelled of the library’s old paper. She stepped into low, soft leather shoes that fit as if they had been lasted while she slept. In the mirror her collarbones looked sharper, the thief in her eyes newly cautious, like an animal that has felt the gate close.

Jasper was already at the table when she entered the dining room, standing behind his chair, napkin folded over his left forearm. The marble stretched between them, white with faint grey veins, reflecting the low halogen cones so perfectly that the surface seemed lit from within. Two places had been set exactly opposite each other, no third option, no corner to retreat to. He waited until she sat—back straight, palms on thighs—before he took his own seat. A server in a black uniform appeared, poured water, disappeared. The only sound was the crackle of wicks in the twin glass cylinders burning mid-table.

He lifted his fork. She did the same. The first course was white—poached halibut on a white plate, sauce the colour of nothing. She cut a piece, brought it to her mouth, felt the flake dissolve against her tongue. He watched the motion the way a technician watches a gauge, eyes tracking the hinge of her jaw, the swallow that followed. She kept chewing, counting to twenty before she set the silver down. By then he had finished his entire portion. The plates were removed.

Second course: slices of beet so thin they looked like stained glass, arranged in overlapping scales. She tasted earth, iron, the metallic memory of blood. He poured wine into her glass, a pinot the shade of oxygenated haemoglobin. She drank, felt it coat the inside of her cheeks, watched him note the reflex that made her throat rise and fall. No one spoke. The room’s acoustics swallowed even the click of stemware being replaced.

When the main course arrived—duck breast scored and seared, fat rendered to bronze—he picked up his knife and spoke at last. “You favour your left molars.”

The observation hung between them like a third presence. She set her own knife down. “Old habit. First filling I ever had, right side cracked. Chewed left ever since.”

“Protective adaptation.” He sliced precisely, blood pooling under the blade. “Retained long after the threat is gone.”

She took another bite, deliberately shifting the food to the right side of her mouth. The muscle memory protested; the meat tasted different there, flatter. He watched the adjustment, eyelids heavy, as if the tiny rebellion were a data point he had been waiting to capture.

The server returned, removed plates, refilled glasses. Between courses Jasper rested his forearms on the edge of the table, fingers aligned like rail tracks. She found herself matching the posture, then forced her hands into her lap, then returned them to the rail, uncertain which gesture was submission and which was camouflage. Each time she moved he blinked once, a shutter recording frame advance.

Dessert was a rectangle of dark chocolate so glossy it reflected her face in fragments. She broke off a corner; the snap sounded loud as a pick hitting a pin. He did not touch his. Instead he leaned forward, elbows on marble, chin propped on steepled hands, and studied her while she chewed. The chocolate dissolved into bitter powder, coating the roof of her mouth. She chased it with wine, aware of the purple rim the liquid left on the lip of the glass, aware that he saw that too.

When the plates were finally clear he stood, walked the length of the table, stopped beside her chair. He did not touch her. He simply looked down at the crown of her head, then at the reflection of her bare shoulders in the marble, then at the pulse visible beneath the silk at her throat. The inspection lasted long enough for her heartbeat to count itself aloud.

“Tomorrow,” he said, voice pitched low, “we’ll measure how hunger affects fine motor control.”

He left the way he had come, footsteps swallowed by the corridor before the door hissed shut. She remained seated, staring at the twin flames that had burned two centimetres shorter, tasting chocolate and pinot and the iron of her own blood where she had bitten the inside of her cheek to keep from speaking. The room felt larger without him in it, the table longer, the drop beyond the plate-glass windows absolute.

She left the table before the candles guttered, carrying the aftertaste of wine and her own blood. The corridor lights sensed her and brightened in soft gradients, guiding her back to the guest suite—though “guest” felt ceremonial now, like calling a lock a conversation. The silk dress came off in one motion, pooling at her feet like spent skin. She stepped out of it naked, unwilling to let the fabric keep any more of her heat.

The bed was larger than the cell of her adolescence, mattress calibrated to micro-adjust beneath weight. She lay on her back, counted the ceiling panels—forty-six—then the seconds between HVAC breaths—thirty-three. Sleep stayed away. At 02:17 she gave up, pulled on the grey cotton pants and T-shirt folded for her—no labels, nothing she could rip into cord—and started walking.

First the bedroom: drawer slides soft-close, no removable rails; window tempered, laminated, set into steel rebate; balcony door mag-locked, red LED steady as a heartbeat. She tried the screwdriver trick she’d learned in Marseille, slipping a fingernail where a flat-head might go; the lock chirped once, threat and refusal. Beyond the glass the city sprawled, distance measured in vertical neon and the slow wink of aircraft lights. Forty-two floors, she remembered. Even if the glass yielded, the fall would do Jasper’s corrections for him.

She moved into the hallway. Motion sensors woke discreetly, painting her in infrared she couldn’t see but felt as warmth on her cheekbones. No obvious cameras, which meant they were excellent. She mapped the ceiling cornice with her fingertips, searching for the tell-tale pinhole or refractive glint. Nothing—only the faint seam of a fiber channel every three meters, thin as a hair, impossible to snap without tools.

The library door stood ajar. Inside, the air smelled still older than the building, parchment and leather releasing molecules of vanished centuries. She slid a random folio from a shelf—botanical plates, hand-tinted—then flipped it, feeling for a hollowed compartment. Board solid. She replaced it exactly, aligned spine to the stamped gilt, and caught her reflection in the lacquered cabinet glass: eyes wide, hair wild, a creature pacing a diorama.

His office was locked. She pressed her ear to the wood, heard the soft rotational hum of hard drives in sleep mode, no human breathing. The handle refused rotation even under body weight; dead-bolt, probably biometric on his side. She pictured the schematic she’d studied the night before the first job, remembered a service corridor running parallel. If she could reach the crawlspace she might bypass— No. No tools, no pick set, no ceramic blade. Her fingers flexed, useless.

Kitchen next. Knives locked inside a carbon-steel block that sensed RFID tags; the block wouldn’t release unless Jasper’s ring came within ten centimeters. Refrigerator drawers sealed with suction she couldn’t break bare-handed. She considered the fire-suppression hood—triggering it might buy chaos—but the glass break-point was behind a tamper screw. Every convenience doubled as custody.

She drifted to the living room where the city view wrapped three hundred degrees. The glass was polarized; when she cupped her hands the skyline sharpened while her own outline dimmed, a one-way mirror rendering her ghost. She knocked once, heard the dense thud of laminate layers. Even a shaped charge would spider-web, not breach. And the noise would bring him.

Her bare feet registered minute temperature shifts in the Italian marble—here warmer where under-floor heating looped, there cooler beneath the cantilevered sofa. She knelt, pressed her cheek to the stone, hoping for a seam, an access panel, anything. Only flawless grout and the faint vibration of elevator cables far below, shut down for the night.

Standing again, she caught her pulse in her ears, a drum counting debts. Every surface reflected her: window, black granite countertop, polished steel fixture. Dozens of Ronis, all caged. She lifted her right hand, watched the army of copies do the same, and felt the first genuine shiver since he’d switched the lights on in the bedroom twenty-four hours earlier.

She walked until the motion sensors tired of her and stayed lit, a small rebellion. At the eastern window she stopped, forehead against the cool glass. The East River slid below, black silk stitched with barges. A helicopter crossed the sky, altitude maybe thirty floors lower, its searchlight sweeping rooftops like a fingertip feeling for cracks. She imagined leaping, arms spread, the brief sensation of flight before physics claimed her. The thought wasn’t suicide; it was measurement—distance, velocity, outcome. The math said: no.

Her reflection stared back, eyes ringed with exhaustion. Somewhere inside the circuitry of the penthouse Jasper slept or pretended to, secure in the knowledge that architecture could accomplish what chains accomplished in cheaper stories. She pressed her palm to the window, watched condensation bloom around the edges of her hand, a ghostly glove that lasted three seconds before evaporating.

Control, she understood then, wasn’t the lock or the glass or the biometric filament; it was the drop itself, the certainty that nothing she did here could reach the ground without his permission. The city kept breathing, indifferent, while she stood on the wrong side of forty-two floors of altitude, already owned by a man who collected absences the way others collected stones.

Morning came through polarised glass, a cool white slab across the bed. She had not slept. At seven-thirty the door slid open with a pneumatic sigh; Jasper entered carrying a grey hard-case the size of a carry-on. He wore black trousers and the same grey T-shirt she had on, only his fit tighter, as if the fabric had been calibrated to the millimetre. No greeting. He set the case on the duvet, popped the latches. Inside, foam cavities held objects she recognised—carbon-fibre grapple bar, fingertip polymer, micro-drill—and others she didn’t: a wafer-thin slate labelled ‘bio-mimic’, earpiece buds no larger than pomegranate seeds.

“Julian Thorne,” he said. “CEO of Halcyon Data. You’ll relieve him of this.” He lifted a small black drive, no thicker than a credit card, turned it so the security foil caught the light. “Contents encrypted, thirty-six petabytes. I want the physical slate, not a copy.”

Roni sat up. “Halcyon keeps offline vaults under the Hudson tower. Their internal security is military-grade.”

“Which is why you’re not stealing from the vault.” He tapped the side of the case; a hidden drawer slid out revealing blueprints rolled into tight cylinders. “Thne brings the slate home every Friday. His apartment occupies floors fifty-eight through sixty. You’ll enter during the fund-raiser he’s hosting tomorrow night—three hundred guests, white-noise generators, catering staff in constant motion. Perfect cover.”

He spread the first sheet across the bed. A floor plan bloomed under her fingers: private elevator, panic room, server closet hard-wired to a rooftop relay. Red ink marked camera arcs, laser grids, heat sensors. The detail was obscene—down to the brand of lock on Thorne’s humidor.

She traced a corridor. “This corridor pressurises if the alarm trips. We’ll have thirty seconds before the inner doors seal.”

“Twenty-eight,” he corrected. “I ran a vacuum test last month.”

She looked up. “You broke in already?”

“Reconnaissance.” His tone flattened. “I don’t send assets blind.”

The word ‘asset’ stung harder than she expected. She closed the case. “And if I refuse?”

He produced a phone, thumb poised over the screen. “One press sends your fingerprints to every federal database. Another uploads CCTV of you inside my vault. You’ll be extradited before sunset.” He slipped the phone back into his pocket, the gesture almost gentle. “But I’d rather have the slate.”

Her pulse thudded in her ears. “You’ll be watching.”

“Constantly.” He tapped one of the tiny buds. “Encrypted loop, bone-conduction. I’ll hear everything you do. If you deviate from the timeline by more than eight seconds I trigger the building’s fire protocol—water, foam, lockdown. You’ll drown before you reach the stairwell.”

He lifted a second object: a matte-black cuff. “Biometric monitor. Heart-rate spikes above one-forty and the system flags panic. Keep below.”

She took the cuff, felt the weight of the lithium cell inside. “Anything else?”

“Yes.” He reached into the case’s last compartment, drew out a spool of monofilament no thicker than hair. “Cutting edge. Molecular edge, actually—sever a femur before you feel tension. Bring the spool back; it’s worth more than you are.”

The sentence landed without inflection, a fact rather than an insult. He zipped the case, leaving her alone with the tools and the blueprints. At the door he paused.

“Don’t disappoint me,” he said again, softer this time, almost intimate. Then he was gone, the latch clicking with mechanical finality.

Roni dressed in the tactical suit he’d laid out—black, seamless, engineered to dissipate heat so infrared cameras saw nothing. She strapped the cuff above her wrist, felt it tighten automatically, recording her resting pulse at sixty-two. In the mirror she looked like a reflection scraped from glass: eyes sharp, mouth set, the bud already nestled against her mastoid.

She practised the route he had marked: bedroom window to parapet, parapet to service elevator, elevator to Thorne’s private foyer. Each step measured, memorised, repeated until the sequence lived in muscle. When she paused to drink water her hand trembled; the cuff vibrated a warning—heart-rate climbing. She breathed through her nose, slowed the beat, imagined the filament slicing air, the slate sliding free, Jasper’s voice the only sound in her head.

Outside, the city kept its own time, indifferent to the choreography being drilled into her bones. She looked at the drive on the table, at the blueprints, at the open case. No locks to pick here, only the one already closed around her. She snapped the latches shut, hefted the weight, and started again.

The gym occupied the entire north-east quadrant of the penthouse, a single glass box cantilevered over the city like a lit stage. Roni stepped onto the shock-absorbing mat at 05:00 sharp, lungs still tasting recycled night air. Jasper waited barefoot in dark shorts, the overhead spots silvering the angles of his shoulders. No music, only the low hum of climate control and the distant grind of garbage trucks thirty-eight floors below.

“Warm-up,” he said. “Burpees, four-minute Tabata. Twenty seconds on, ten off. I’ll count.”

She hated Tabata; the protocol turned her legs to wet cement before the real work began. She dropped anyway, palms smacking polymer, sprang back, jumped, repeated. Jasper circled, stopwatch in hand, bare feet silent. At the third interval her quads burned; at the sixth the cuff on her wrist vibrated—heart-rate 148. She kept going. On the eighth rep his hand settled between her shoulder blades, pressing her an inch lower.

“Hips flat. Core tight. You’re sagging.”

The contact lasted maybe two seconds, long enough for her skin to record temperature, texture, the faint callus at the base of his thumb. She hated that her body catalogued the data with the same precision it reserved for alarm frequencies.

When the timer chimed she straightened, sweat stinging her eyes. He didn’t offer water. “Again,” he said, and increased the pace.

Next came suspension straps bolted to a ceiling beam. She hooked her feet, inverted until blood pooled behind her eyes, then hauled torso to knees, reps counted in a voice that never thickened. Jasper stood so close her knuckles brushed his thigh each time she rose. On the twelfth curl he caught her waist, thumbs digging into the hollow beneath bone.

“Angle’s wrong. You’re recruiting hip flexors.” He twisted her five degrees, fingers sliding under the hem of her shirt, skin on skin. “Again.”

She obeyed, pulse spiking, the cuff buzzing a reprimand. The burn migrated from abdomen to somewhere deeper, a low, treacherous heat that had nothing to do with lactic acid.

They moved to the vertical wall: a fifteen-foot pane of tempered glass fitted with micro-LEDs that lit random footholds like a giant Simon game. She had sixty seconds to memorize the sequence, then climb blind while Jasper called corrections. Halfway up, left foot hovering, she hesitated. His voice materialized at the base of her spine.

“Trust the pattern. Don’t look.”

She felt his breath first, then the length of his body leaning in, stabilizing her knee with one hand, the other flat against her ribs. For a moment her weight was split between the wall and the pressure of his palm, a precarious balance that made her stomach lurch. She reached, caught the next hold, continued. When she dropped to the mat he was already stepping back, distance re-established as if the contact had never happened.

“Time’s slipping,” he said. “We repeat until you’re under forty-five seconds.”

They repeated until her forearms cramped and the cuff recorded dehydration. He let her pause long enough to swallow two mouthfuls from a stainless bottle, then positioned her at a waist-high rail.

“Balance drill. Palms flat, back neutral. Lift left leg until I say stop.”

She hinged forward, fingertips on cold metal, leg extended. Seconds stretched. A tremor started in her hamstring, travelled inward, became a throb between her hips. Jasper moved behind her, not touching, but close enough that she could feel the radiant heat of his chest along her spine. He spoke low, almost conversational.

“Thorne keeps the slate in a Faraday sleeve. You’ll have eight seconds to swap it for the dummy once the drawer opens. Your hand must not shake.”

The tremor worsened. She focused on the skyline beyond the glass, on keeping her breathing shallow so the cuff would stay quiet. Still he didn’t touch her, letting anticipation do the work of fatigue. When her leg finally dropped he caught it, fingers circling her ankle, lifting it back into line. The contact was clinical, except for the thumb that drifted, perhaps accidentally, along the inside of her calf, tracing the path of a vein that jumped under the skin.

“Again,” he murmured. “Until stillness is default.”

They worked until sunrise bled pink across the mat. When he dismissed her she was soaked, muscles twitching like live wires. He remained in the gym, scrolling data on a tablet—her heart-rate graph, respiration efficiency, caloric burn. As she passed he spoke without looking up.

“Shower. Eat. We run the simulation at nine. And Roni—”

She paused, hand on the frosted glass door.

“Next time you climb, keep your hips square. I shouldn’t have to adjust you twice.”

The reprimand landed softly, but her skin retained the ghost pressure of his hands all the way down the corridor, a map of correction she carried like a secret bruise.

At 09:00 sharp the wall screen in the strategy room lit with a three-dimensional cutaway of Thorne’s tower. Roni stood at the console, coffee bitter on her tongue, still tasting electrolyte from the gym. Jasper entered without sound, jacket gone, sleeves rolled to the elbow, and tapped the glass. The projection zoomed in on the forty-second floor, corridors rendered in translucent blue.

“Simulation one,” he said. “You have the slate. Elevator’s dead, stairwell pressurised. What do you do?”

She studied the ducts. “Roof hatch to the freight lift motor, ride the cables to the service level.”

“Forty-two seconds,” he answered. “Thorne’s response team reaches the motor room in thirty-nine. Try again.”

She bit back irritation. “Cut power to the floor, force the fire doors, slide down the standpipe.”

“Water pressure’s rigged; you’d hit a check valve at twelve metres per second and fracture both ankles.” He dragged a slider and red icons bloomed—heat sensors she hadn’t seen. “You’re captured. Restart.”

The screen reset. She forced her pulse down so the cuff would stay quiet. “Monofilament on the window seal, rappel to the setback below, re-enter through the gym.”

“Wind gusts at that elevation average thirty kilometres per hour,” he countered, voice flat. “Line whips into the HVAC mesh, alarm triggers. Dead.”

She exhaled through her teeth. “Then give me the correct route.”

“I’m not interested in correct,” he said. “I’m interested in fast. Think faster.”

They ran it again. Each time he introduced a new failure: biometric lockout, randomised guard patrol, server heartbeat that demanded the slate remain inside the Faraday sleeve an extra five seconds. By the sixth iteration her coffee was cold and her temple throbbed.

“You’re stalling,” he observed. “Hesitation is a fingerprint; Thorne will see it.”

“I’m calculating.”

“Calculate while moving.” He tapped again; the building rotated. “New problem. You exit the vault corridor and find a child standing there—Thorne’s daughter, visiting the office. She sees your face. Decision?”

Roni’s stomach tightened. “I abort, backtrack, wait for another window.”

“Abort costs nine minutes. Thermal sensors re-calibrate, your route closes. Debt unpaid, prison inevitable.” His eyes stayed on the screen. “Choose.”

“I don’t hurt kids.”

“Did I ask you to? I asked for a solution that preserves the mission and the variable. Find one.”

She stared at the hologram until the lines blurred. “I loop the hallway cameras, feed her image to the security desk as a missing minor. Guards converge on her location, corridor clears, I walk out.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “Time cost?”

“Twelve seconds to splice the feed.”

“Acceptable.” He keyed the answer; the simulation turned green. “Next.”

Hour bled into hour. They argued over milliseconds: whether a magnetic shim could defeat a rotary bolt, whether the Faraday sleeve could be spoofed with a second dummy inside the same drawer. When she proposed bribing a guard, he demanded the exact blockchain route to move untraceable coin. When she suggested seduction, his mouth thinned.

“Your body is already mine,” he said. “Don’t waste it on expendables.”

The comment shot heat up her throat. “Then maybe stop piling on contradictions. You want speed but won’t let me improvise.”

“Improvise within parameters.”

“Parameters are cages.”

“Cages keep you alive.”

She stepped back from the console, arms folded. “You hacked your own company to ruin Thorne. That wasn’t in anyone’s parameters.”

His gaze flicked to her, sharp. “Where did you hear that?”

“Your systems leak when you’re bored,” she lied, gambling. “Maybe tighten your own cage first.”

A pause stretched, thin and metallic. Then the faintest curve appeared at the corner of his mouth—approval or threat, she couldn’t tell.

“Good,” he said. “Anger shortens reaction time. Store it.”

He shut the projection. The room felt suddenly small, filled with the smell of ozone and her own sweat. He handed her a fresh earpiece, identical to the one she’d wear tomorrow. “Run it in your head tonight. If you wake up tomorrow still irritated, bring it with you. It’ll keep you sharp.”

She took the bud, fingers brushing his. The contact was accidental, lasting less than a second, yet her skin catalogued temperature, pressure, the microscopic ridge of a callus she now knew came from monofilament spools. She hated that the data arrived uninvited, hated more that it nested beside an unwilling flicker of respect: he had anticipated every vector, including her temper.

He turned to leave, pausing at the door. “One more variable,” he said without looking back. “Tomorrow the simulation’s live. I won’t be here to argue.”

The door sealed. She stood alone with the ghost of the building rotating behind her eyes, every corridor a line of potential failure, every beat of her heart ticking against an invisible clock.

The simulation had crashed again—this time because she’d misjudged the latency between the vault’s pressure plate and the redundant motion sensor by 0.3 seconds. Jasper had terminated the program with a single keystroke, the screen snapping to black, his silence louder than any reprimand. Roni had walked out without waiting for dismissal, the cuff on her wrist blinking a steady, accusatory red.

Now the city sprawled below her, a glittering circuit board of lives she no longer belonged to. Wind slipped over the balcony rail and sliced through the damp tank-top, cooling the sweat that still clung to her spine. She felt the glass door slide open behind her, heard the hush of expensive soles on stone, but she didn’t turn. Jasper stopped half a pace away, close enough that the faint cedar of his cologne cut through the metallic night air. For a long minute neither spoke; the only sound was the low hum of traffic forty floors down and the measured drag of his breathing.

He leaned forearms on the rail, fingers loosely laced, the cuffs of his shirt rolled to mid-forearm. A thin scar crossed the back of his left wrist—she had noticed it first that morning when he corrected her grip on the monofilament gun. She wondered how he’d earned it, then hated herself for wondering.

“Thorne collects things,” he said eventually, voice pitched low enough that the wind almost carried it away. “Artifacts, companies, people. Whatever isn’t nailed down.” His gaze stayed on the skyline, but she felt the words press against her skin like brands. “He believes possession is a transitive verb—once he touches something, it becomes his.”

Roni’s knuckles tightened on the rail. The irony tasted bitter: she had come here to steal from Jasper, and now stood stripped of every autonomy, her body mapped by his drills, her nights owned by his simulations. She swallowed. “Sounds familiar.”

A faint exhale that might have been a laugh. “Difference is, I keep what’s mine.” He turned his head; she could feel the weight of his stare without looking. “He takes what isn’t.”

She met his eyes then. In the ambient glow of the penthouse behind them his irises were almost colorless, reflecting the city in miniature—thousands of captive lights. “And you’re going to make me take it back for you.”

His gaze dropped to her mouth, lingered, returned to the horizon. “Tomorrow night you’ll walk into his building, and for eight seconds you’ll be the only thing he doesn’t own. Enjoy the novelty.”

The wind gusted, lifting the hair at her nape; his fingers twitched on the rail, a fraction closer, but he didn’t touch her. She found herself cataloguing the distance anyway: three inches of chilled air, the heat radiating from his forearm, the pulse she could almost see beneath the thin skin at his temple. Her own heartbeat felt too large for her ribs.

“Why not send someone else?” she asked. “You’ve got an army of employees who’d crawl through fire for a bonus.”

“None of them move like you.” The answer came too quickly, too honest, and it scraped something raw inside her chest. He straightened, the movement bringing his shoulder alongside hers, not quite brushing. “Besides, fire’s easy. You—” He paused, seemed to reconsider, then finished quietly, “—you’re precise.”

Precise. Not valuable, not beautiful. A tool calibrated to millimetres. She should have felt insulted; instead the word sank through muscle and bone and nested low in her belly, warm and treacherous.

Below them, a siren dopplered into silence. He lifted a hand, not to her skin but to the collar of the thin jacket she’d thrown on, tugging the fabric straight where the wind had bunched it. His thumb grazed the hollow beneath her ear—deliberate or not, she couldn’t tell. The touch lasted a heartbeat, then withdrew, leaving her nerve endings shouting.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “Tomorrow you’ll need to be perfect.”

He stepped back. The absence of his heat felt like a slap. She listened to his footsteps recede, the glass door whisper shut, the electronic lock engage with a soft, final click. The city kept breathing below her, indifferent, and she stayed at the rail until the chill had seeped into every joint, replaying the almost-contact, the way he’d said perfect like it was a destination she’d already reached—and wondering how it would feel when, inevitably, she slipped.

She woke before the alarm, the room still drowned in night, and lay staring at the ceiling until the glass began to pale. No hunger, no thirst—only the metronome of blood in her ears. When the cuff on her wrist pulsed green she rose, showered in tepid water, and dressed in the clothes laid out for her: matte-black base layer, socks knitted with carbon thread, the rest of her body waiting for armor she hadn’t yet been allowed to touch.

The equipment room was lit like an operating theatre. Jasper stood at the central bench, backlit by LED strips that bleached the color from his face. He had arranged every piece in order of application: lightweight cuirass, articulated greaves, forearm sheaths, the monofilament gun coiled like a sleeping snake. Nothing bore a logo; everything looked newly minted, issued for a single night.

“Approach,” he said without looking up. His voice carried the same neutral register he used during simulations, but the air felt denser, as if the oxygen had been thinned. She stepped onto the marked square of floor. Sensors beeped once—biometrics confirmed—and he lifted the first garment.

The tactical suit slid over her limbs with a hush of graphene and Kevlar. It fit as though cut while she slept; every seam aligned, every hinge kissed a joint. She sealed the front zipper herself, the teeth clicking shut like a verdict. Jasper watched, arms folded, pupils narrowed to pinholes of appraisal. When she reached for the collar tab she couldn’t quite angle her gloved fingers into the channel; before she could tug it free he closed the gap.

He stood behind her, close enough that the heat of his chest grazed the cooling fabric between her shoulder blades. Two fingers slipped beneath the edge of the collar, smoothing the fold flat against her neck. The pads were dry, calloused, the nails trimmed to a clinical arc. A millimetre of skin—hers—was caught beneath his thumb, pinched then released. The contact lasted less than a second, yet the nerve bundle beneath her ear spat electricity down her spine and pooled, hot and unmistakable, low in her abdomen.

“Don’t disappoint me,” he murmured, breath stirring the fine hairs that had escaped her braid. The words weren’t loud, but they occupied the room like a third presence. He stepped back, the withdrawal of heat instantaneous, and picked up the earpiece. “Channel’s live. I’ll be in your head until you’re clear.”

She took the bud, inserted it, felt the faint click as it seated against bone. Sound collapsed to her own pulse, then opened again to his quiet exhale—already listening. He handed her the belt next, fingers brushing the buckle she’d fastened a hundred times before. Tonight the metal felt heavier, charged with consequence.

When the last strap was cinched he circled her slowly, inspecting from every angle, the way a handler studies a thoroughbred before loading it into the gate. At her left wrist he paused, tugged the sleeve a fraction lower to cover the blink of a status light. At her right ankle he knelt, testing the flex of the boot with a squeeze that shot pressure through the sole. Each adjustment was precise, impersonal, yet her skin registered the ghost of every touch like after-images of bright light.

He rose, finally meeting her eyes. “Clock starts in forty-three minutes. You’ll ride the service elevator to P-2, exit through the storm grate, rendezvous with the bike. From there you have a twelve-minute window to reach Thorne’s outer perimeter before their patrol drone reboots.” He spoke the plan they had rehearsed, but tonight the recitation felt ceremonial, a final blessing before sending her into fire.

She nodded once. Words seemed flimsy, unnecessary; anything she said would be measured against the single imperative already branded on her skin. She turned toward the door, boots silent on the resin floor. The corridor beyond was a rectangle of matte black, waiting to swallow her.

His voice followed, low, just above the threshold of the earpiece. “Eyes up, hands steady. Come home.”

Home. The syllable lodged beneath her sternum as she crossed the threshold, the lock cycling shut behind her with a hiss that sounded, for all the world, like a breath held and finally released.