Troy had been on the parking garage roof for two hours and his knees were starting to lock up.
Forty-Seventh Street. The Diamond District. Four stories below, every storefront wore a roll-down gate with padlocks thick enough to anchor a boat. Security cameras on poles. A patrol car idling at Fifth Avenue, two cops in it who hadn't moved since midnight.
Three nights he'd been watching this block. Three nights of the same routine, the same gaps, the same locked doors opening for the wrong people at the wrong hours.
The building he wanted was mid-block. Six stories, old brick, offices converted into whatever you converted offices into when you needed a ground-floor jewelry exchange as camouflage. He'd figured out the exchange was a front from the foot traffic. The real business came through the service entrance on the side street after one AM. Men with briefcases. The briefcases went in heavy and came out light.
He didn't know what was in them. He didn't care. Whatever required this much security was worth enough to get him out of the flophouse, and that was the bar.
The bar job paid twelve an hour off the books. That covered rent, bodega sandwiches, and nothing else. No phone. No real clothes. No identity. He was building a life out of pocket change in a city where Spider-Man owned the skyline and the Avengers had a tower. Twelve an hour wasn't going to cut it.
He'd been casing the Diamond District because the Diamond District had money behind locks, and locks were problems, and solving problems was the only transferable skill he'd brought from his old life. Whether this body could solve them the same way remained open.
He pulled up the interface. Blue light, clean, patient.
STR: 3. SPD: 3. DUR: 2. STA: 4. CHA: 5.
The numbers hadn't moved in a week. Wouldn't move until the LP bar filled, and the LP bar was sitting at four from stray subway glances. At this rate he'd hit level two around Christmas.
He closed it. Went back to watching.
The service entrance had a keypad. Four digits, changed weekly. This week the one, the four, and the seven were worn shinier than the rest. Sixty combinations, fewer if the owner was lazy about repeats. They usually were.
The camera above the door swept on a twelve-second cycle. Blind spot against the left wall at the far end of its arc. He'd timed it to his pulse because he didn't own a watch.
Patrol car pulled out at 1:47. Came back at 2:22. Thirty-five minute window.
He was about to climb down when she landed on the roof across the street.
One second the roof was empty. The next there was a figure crouched at the parapet edge, motionless, and Troy hadn't heard a sound. Not feet on gravel, not the thump of a landing. Nothing. She just appeared.
She stood up.
Platinum hair. It picked up the city's ambient light, almost white, falling past her shoulders. The rest of her was black. A suit that fit close enough to show the shape of her ribs when she breathed, and she moved in it with zero resistance. She crossed to the far side of the roof and looked down at the same building he'd been casing and his stomach dropped because she was here for the same score and she was going to beat him to it.
She stepped off the edge.
Her hand caught a window ledge six feet below. Her body swung in a clean arc to the fire escape two stories down and the metal didn't ring under her weight. She went up the fire escape the way you'd climb stairs in your own house, no hesitation, no checking her grip, and she was on the target building's roof in eight seconds. Maybe less. He lost count.
His LP bar jumped.
Not the usual trickle. The number went from four to six to nine in fast twitches, climbing in little jolts, and she was sixty feet away on a different rooftop and hadn't looked at him once. He could feel the gain in his skin. A flush starting at his collar, spreading down his chest, his forearms prickling. His mouth went dry.
The system had tiers. He'd worked that much out. Normal women on the subway fed it a point at a time. This woman was spiking it from across a street. Whatever she was, the gap between her and baseline was big enough that proximity alone was making his blood run hot.
She went through a rooftop access door without slowing down.
LP: 14 / 100
Fourteen. More in half a minute than his entire first week.
He climbed down the garage.
The smart play was to leave. She was faster, equipped, experienced. Whatever was in that vault, she'd take it and be gone before he reached the stairs.
He crossed the street.
The keypad took three tries. 1-4-7-1. The lock clicked and he pulled the door open and went inside.
Concrete stairwell. One bare bulb per landing. His sneakers scuffed on every step and he was aware of the noise in a way that put his jaw tight. She hadn't made a sound. He sounded like a tourist.
Third floor. Hallway, closed office doors, the drone of servers behind the walls. A security panel by the stairwell door. Green light. Should have been armed. She'd already been through.
Fourth floor. A door at the end of the hall open two inches. Cold air pushing through the gap. Climate-controlled air. Vault air.
He pushed the door.
Smaller room than he'd pictured. Concrete on every surface, no windows, fluorescent bars throwing flat white light. Steel shelving on three walls, stacked with cases. A floor safe in the center with its door open, and a woman crouched beside it with both hands inside.
She looked up.
Green eyes. That registered first. Bright enough to catch fluorescent light across the room. Then the rest of her face: a jaw cut sharp, a mouth that sat in a permanent half-smirk, and the smirk was doing less work than her eyes, which were measuring him. Platinum hair loose on her shoulders. The black suit had white fur trim at the collar and wrists. It should have looked stupid. On her it looked like a dare.
She stayed on the floor. Hands still in the safe. She looked at him like he'd walked into her kitchen while she was cooking.
"You're either very brave or very stupid."
Low voice. She sounded like she was already bored with whatever he was going to say next.
"Working on figuring out which."
"Work faster. I'm on a clock."
He stepped into the room. The LP bar was climbing. Two points. Three. She was ten feet away and hadn't touched him and the flush was back, hotter now, prickling up his neck, his cock thickening against his thigh without his permission. Just from being in the same room.
"You missed the laser grid."
She stopped.
"Excuse me?"
He pointed at the floor between the door and the safe. A thin red line at ankle height. Barely visible against concrete. Running between two small housings bolted to the shelving bases.
"Trip it and I'm guessing the night gets a lot shorter."
She looked at the line. At the housings. Back at him.
"I see it."
"You didn't when I walked in."
"I would have." Flat. No defense in it. Just fact.
"Before or after your ankle broke it?"
The smirk went wider. She stood. The motion was continuous, no pause between crouching and upright, her body unfolding until she was at her full height and he could see the suit was doing more than he'd thought. Long legs. Narrow waist. The fur trim sat on her collarbones and framed the hollow of her throat. She stepped over the laser line without looking down, without breaking stride, the way you'd step over a crack in the sidewalk you'd walked past a thousand times.
"You're not security."
"No."
"Not a cop."
"No."
"You're here to rob this place."
"I was. You beat me to it."
She turned her head. Platinum hair slid across her shoulder. He caught her scent. Perfume, expensive, underneath the concrete and metal smell of the room. Vetiver and vanilla, maybe. The kind of thing you'd notice at two in the morning in a vault and hate yourself for noticing.
Her eyes went over him. Head to feet. Shoulders, arms, hands. Pure assessment. She was deciding what he could do and how fast, and her face said the answer was middling.
"You got past the keypad downstairs. You found the grid. That means you spent at least two nights watching this building and you can do math." She paused. "You're calm in a room you shouldn't be in. And you don't have a weapon."
"I'm new in town."
"Obviously. Anyone from here would know this building belongs to Silvermane."
He let the name go past. Didn't react.
"Is that a problem?"
"Silvermane is Maggia. Old guard. The kind that puts people under construction sites in Queens. Robbing him isn't a hobby."
"But here you are."
"Here I am." She pulled a velvet bag from the safe. Weighed it in her palm. Her mouth changed. The smirk went loose and satisfied. She tucked the bag into a pouch at her hip. "And now I'm going."
She walked toward the door. Stepped over the laser line without looking.
She stopped next to him.
Close. Close enough that he could see individual hairs at her temple and the texture of the fur at her collar and a tiny scar on her jaw, old, white against her skin. Close enough that the perfume was the whole room. Close enough that his LP bar surged four points in a single jump and he felt it below his belt, a pull, heat pooling, and he had to lock his knees to keep his breathing level.
"You spotted something I missed. That doesn't happen." She looked at his face. Slower this time. Her eyes dropped to his mouth and back up. "You're interesting."
"People keep telling me that."
"No they don't." She smiled. Not the smirk. A real one, quick, gone in under a second. Her whole face opened with it and then closed again. "Nobody tells you anything. You're brand new. You're winging it. And you're out of your depth by about ten floors."
She was right. He had nothing.
She pulled a phone from a pocket he couldn't see. Burner. Cheap plastic, the kind from a bodega cash-register display. She pressed it into his hand. Her fingers were warm. He felt calluses on her pads, rough and specific, against his palm. Two seconds of contact. She let go.
"My number's the only one in it. You were useful tonight. I might need useful again."
"What do I call you."
"You can call the number."
She walked past him. Her footsteps on the stairs were fast, light, and then gone. The room was just a room again. Concrete, fluorescent, cold.
He stood there. Burner phone warm in his grip. Checked the bar.
LP: 34 / 100
Thirty-four. One encounter, no names exchanged, and the system had logged more than his whole first week. The interface was flashing a new notification. He focused.
POTENTIAL PARTNER DETECTED: FELICIA HARDY CLASSIFICATION: ENHANCED HUMAN AFFECTION: NEUTRAL / CURIOUS ESTIMATED LP MULTIPLIER: 2.5x
Felicia Hardy.
He looked at the open safe. The shelves she hadn't touched. She'd taken what she wanted and left the rest. Clean work.
His hands were shaking. The LP gain was doing it. His pulse was running high and his skin felt tight and the concrete room was ten degrees warmer than it should have been and he was half-hard in his jeans from standing next to a woman for ninety seconds.
He put the phone in his pocket. Left the building through the service entrance. Street empty. Patrol car still gone. The roof across the way was bare.
Fifteen blocks home. The burner phone sat against his thigh and he could feel its outline through the denim with every step.
Platinum hair. Green eyes. The suit on her collarbones. The calluses on her fingers.
Thirty points in an hour.
The flophouse stairs groaned. His room was cold. He sat on the mattress edge and stared at the phone.
His hands wouldn't stop shaking.