Their extraction was a blur. One moment they were on a ledge, the next Morgan's skiff slid out of the darkness, and Rielle hauled them aboard.
"Took you long enough," Morgan said, though she looked pleased. Rielle was already bragging about her lobby performance.
Back in the safehold, the celebration erupted. The valuable cylinder was secured. Scarlet had already bypassed its encryption and was reading out ludicrous Syndicate secrets about office supply budgets.
Someone broke out the synth-ale. It tasted like engine coolant , but it was theirs.
An hour later, the scene was pure, beautiful chaos. Rielle was arm-wrestling Kara—and losing. Scarlet was trying to teach a bewildered, synth-ale-flushed Nezra a complex dance from the upper zones, which mostly involved him tripping over his own feet and her laughing.
Morgan watched from the side, a real, unguarded smile on her face.
Nezra finally collapsed onto a couch next to Scarlet, breathless and smiling.
"See?" she said, nudging him. "Told you you'd fit in. You're one of us now. A slightly damp, very clumsy, but officially awesome one of us."
He looked around at the laughter, the camaraderie, the sheer, ridiculous life of it all. The hollow ache for Zone Three was still there, but it was quieter now, soothed by the unexpected reality of his new, dangerously dysfunctional family.
He smiled. "Yeah," he said, taking another swig of the terrible, wonderful synth-ale. "Looks like it"