QQ

Quinn and Quinten sat at their usual table in the Crescent Ridge Academy library, textbooks spread between them like evidence in a trial neither had any intention of attending. From a distance, they looked immaculate, highlighters in hand and brows furrowed with scholarly concentration, every inch the gifted little Farraday prodigies their teachers desperately wanted to believe they were. The fact that neither had turned a page in ten minutes probably should have raised questions.

Quinn pretended to take notes while casually sliding her notebook toward Quinten and nudging his ankle beneath the table. He glanced down and found, wedged between increasingly half-assed bullet points about early European trade and The Treaty of Whatever-the-Fuck, a hand-drawn map of the school. A route had been carefully marked from the assembly hall to the records room, accompanied by Quinn's slanted handwriting: Operation Hide-and-Seek. Assembly. Diversion. Records room.

Quinten covered his mouth, disguising a laugh as intense scholarly contemplation. "You really think we can pull this off without getting caught?"

Quinn looked at him as though the question itself had damaged their shared genetic reputation. "Obviously. Everyone's at assembly, we blend in until we need to disappear, and by the time anyone realizes we're gone, we're already back. It's basically insulting how easy this is."

"That's usually what you say immediately before something becomes my problem." Quinten leaned back and dragged his highlighter across a random sentence for appearances. "What about the hallway cameras?"

Quinn's expression turned unbearably smug. She flipped the page to reveal another diagram, this one mapping the school's security cameras and the blind spots between them. "Service hallway. Nobody uses it unless something's leaking, broken, or both. It takes us straight behind administration."

Quinten studied the route for a few seconds, looking for the flaw she clearly expected him to find. Unfortunately for his ego, there wasn't an obvious one. "I hate when you're competent."

"You'd be helpless without me."

"I'd be significantly less supervised."

"Same thing."

The librarian passed their table before Quinten could answer, offering the twins an approving smile as she surveyed what appeared to be two exceptionally dedicated students studying in companionable silence. Quinn immediately lowered her eyes to her textbook while Quinten underlined a sentence with such solemn concentration that he might personally have been responsible for European mercantilism. The librarian continued into the stacks, blissfully unaware that she had just smiled at a conspiracy.

Quinten waited until she disappeared before leaning toward Quinn again. "Tomorrow at eleven. We disappear during assembly, take the service hall, get into the records room, and get back before anyone starts counting heads."

"Easy," Quinn said, already adding something to the margin of her notebook.

Quinten narrowed his eyes. "What are you adding?"

"Contingency."

"Your contingencies usually involve me running."

"That's because your legs are longer."

There it was, the entire operational philosophy of QQ reduced to one perfectly reasonable sentence. They bent over their textbooks again with matching expressions of academic virtue, although European trade had officially lost whatever microscopic chance it once had of competing for their attention. Crescent Ridge had given two bored Farradays an assembly, a poorly monitored service corridor, and something they weren't supposed to access. Really, the school had to accept some responsibility.

Quinn walked through the crowded mall with her hands shoved into her pockets, eyes drifting over displays of overpriced clothes and useless shit she absolutely would have wanted under normal circumstances. Usually, shopping with Quinten was less about buying anything and more about forcing him through increasingly offensive mini fashion shows, finding the ugliest accessory money could buy, and turning every store into a competition neither of them remembered starting. Without him, apparently, shopping was just walking around beneath fluorescent lighting while corporations tried to sell her pants. Horrifying.

She stopped in front of a window display where a mannequin wore something that probably cost four figures despite looking like it had survived an industrial accident. Normally she would have photographed it and sent it to Quinten from six feet away just to ask if it made her look approachable. Instead, she caught herself staring at the groups of friends drifting past and families arguing over where to eat, her fingers worrying at the strap of her bag. She hated how wrong everything felt without him. It had been a few hours, not a deployment. She was fifteen years old. Surely she could exist independently for one afternoon without developing Victorian wasting disease.

Determined to prove exactly that, Quinn marched into the store and started flipping through racks with renewed purpose. She pulled out a dress, held it against herself, and automatically turned to where Quinten should have been waiting to insult it. Nobody was there. She stared at the empty space for a second before shoving the dress back onto the rack, irritated with herself for apparently losing the ability to shop independently. Fucking pathetic. Her phone buzzed, and she had it out so quickly that whatever dignity remained died on impact. This place is so boring. Wish you were here to make it bearable.

The relief was immediate and embarrassingly warm. At least she wasn't the only one being pathetic. She could practically hear Quinten saying it from whatever leather chair he'd been sentenced to at the country club while their father and grandfather discussed FarraComm with men who considered golf a personality. Quinn typed back, LMAO sounds miserable. Need me to fake an emergency and get you out of there? Her thumb hovered over send before she deleted the last sentence and replaced it with, Steal a golf cart. Become ungovernable. She read it over once, decided it sounded considerably less needy, and hit send.

By the time she reached the food court, Quinn had decided hunger was probably responsible for at least thirty percent of her mood and bought herself a strawberry smoothie. She dropped into a chair and immediately looked at the empty one across from her. Normally Quinten would have been there stealing sips after insisting he didn't want one, and they would have spent lunch ranking strangers by likelihood of committing tax fraud. Instead, Quinn drank half the smoothie while scrolling through her phone and discovering that even unlimited access to the internet became boring when the person she wanted to show things to wasn't sitting across from her.

The arcade seemed like a reasonable solution. It was loud, obnoxious, competitive, and full of flashing lights, which was basically medicinal as far as Quinn was concerned. She headed straight for the racing games, dropped into the molded plastic seat, and wrapped both hands around the wheel. "Alright, Quinn, stop being weird," she muttered as the countdown began.

For thirty glorious seconds, it worked. She floored the accelerator, cut between two cars, clipped another going into a turn, and felt that familiar little surge of satisfaction when she took first. Then she glanced at the empty racing cabinet beside her and immediately imagined Quinten sitting there, talking shit while deliberately trying to run her into a wall because apparently winning cleanly violated his personal ethics.

Quinn crossed the finish line in first place, and the machine erupted in lights and triumphant music, congratulating her with considerably more enthusiasm than the achievement deserved. She stared at her score, waiting for the satisfaction to arrive, then grabbed her bag instead. Beating a computer was bullshit. Computers couldn't gloat properly.

Her phone came out before she'd made it five steps, but there was nothing new. Quinn stared at the screen for another second, annoyed by the little drop in her stomach, then shoved it into her pocket and decided she was done. The mall had been given every reasonable opportunity to entertain her and had failed spectacularly.

She headed for the exit already calculating how long it would take to get home and how much longer Quinten would be trapped at the country club. Once he got back, they could find something actually worth doing. Quinn could entertain herself perfectly well without her brother, obviously. She simply saw no compelling reason why she should have to.

Quinten sat in a plush leather chair in the country club clubhouse, fingers drumming against the armrest while the room smelled of old money, expensive cologne, and whatever they treated the leather with to make rich men feel important. Everywhere he looked, men in pastel polos and meticulously pressed slacks laughed in polite little bursts, the sort of laughter you perfected after enough years of pretending someone's golf story was fascinating because there might be money attached to it.

His attention drifted toward his father and grandfather, who stood several feet away talking to some business associate Quinten had been introduced to and immediately forgotten. They had supposedly come here to golf, which was adorable. Preston and Albert could probably turn a funeral into a networking opportunity if someone sufficiently important died, and from what Quinten could gather, the conversation had already wandered back to FarraComm, investments, and the delicate business of ensuring the Farraday name remained stamped across Silicon Valley for another generation.

Presumably, that was why he was here. Preston had called it spending time together, but Quinten recognized professional grooming when he saw it. This was another installment in the ongoing educational program titled How to Become a Farraday Man Without Developing a Personality, and apparently today's curriculum involved sitting quietly while adults discussed market share between tee times.

He pulled out his phone and opened his messages, scrolling automatically to Quinn. This place is so boring. Wish you were here to make it bearable. Quinten stared at the message for a second before sending it, then immediately disliked how pathetic it looked sitting there in blue. Quinn was at the mall and presumably having a perfectly decent afternoon without him, while he had apparently lasted less than an hour before sending the emotional equivalent of a distress flare. Still, being apart from her always left everything slightly wrong. Not unbearable, obviously. He was a functional human being. Allegedly.

When he glanced up again, Preston was looking directly at him. His father didn't need to say anything because the message was painfully clear: phone away, shoulders back, at least make an effort to resemble someone who belonged here. Quinten straightened in his chair and slipped the phone onto his thigh, offering Preston an expression of such innocent compliance that it should have earned him an award. Preston turned back to the conversation, and Quinten immediately slouched again.

He hated this place, but more specifically, he hated how easily everyone else seemed to fit inside it. The dull conversations about investments and acquisitions, the careful handshakes, the assumption that one day he would wake up and discover an urgent emotional investment in quarterly earnings all seemed to point toward a future everyone had already decided for him. Crescent Ridge, the right university, FarraComm, probably a tasteful marriage to someone Vanessa approved of, then eventually his own pastel polo and a deeply concerning interest in golf.

Quinn would have made it tolerable. She would have been sitting beside him whispering increasingly vicious biographies for every man in the room, and by now they would have identified at least three exits and one opportunity for low-level sabotage. Quinten could practically hear her asking how much trouble they would get into for stealing a golf cart, which meant he would have spent ten minutes explaining why it was a terrible idea before helping her figure out where the keys were kept.

His phone buzzed against his leg, and Quinten looked down immediately to find Quinn's reply waiting for him. Steal a golf cart. Become ungovernable. A laugh escaped before he could stop it, which he disguised badly as a cough when Albert glanced over. Of course she had gone straight to the golf cart. Hundreds of people in Silicon Valley, and somehow the only person worth talking to had independently arrived at the same potential felony.

Quinten tucked the phone closer beneath the armrest and typed back, Already considered it. Need extraction plan. Bring fake mustache. The knot in his chest loosened as soon as he sent it, which was irritating enough that he decided never to examine what that said about him. Apparently knowing Quinn was on the other end of his phone was enough to make the clubhouse feel less claustrophobic.

He opened a game and let the garish colors occupy him between obligatory moments of pretending to listen, occasionally checking his messages while the clock crawled toward freedom. There were still two hours left, an amount of time that felt personally vindictive, but two hours seemed considerably more survivable now. If things became truly desperate, there was always the golf cart.

Saturday detention at Crescent Ridge Academy had been designed by someone who understood that the cruelest punishment available to teenagers was not hard labor, public humiliation, or even confiscating their phones. It was boredom. Quinn had lasted twenty-three minutes before deciding the Geneva Conventions probably had something relevant to say about fluorescent lighting and mandatory silence.

She sat sideways in her chair with one chunky boot hooked around the leg of Quinten’s desk, ostensibly working on the reflection essay they had both been assigned. Explain how your actions affected the learning environment of others. Quinn had managed three sentences, two of which blamed the learning environment for being so easily affected. Beside her, Quinten had already written half a page because apparently betrayal could happen inside the womb and reveal itself fifteen years later through superior bullshit skills. "Stop writing so much," she whispered, leaning over to inspect his paper. "You're making mine look worse."

"I'm rehabilitating," Quinten murmured without looking up. "You should try it."

"Disgusting."

At the front of the classroom, Mr. Callahan glanced up from his laptop. Both twins immediately lowered their heads. Quinn began writing with furious concentration while Quinten adopted the serene expression of a young man experiencing genuine moral growth. It lasted until their supervisor's phone rang and he stepped into the hallway to answer it. The door clicked shut behind him, and Quinn's pencil stopped moving almost instantly.

For several seconds, neither twin spoke. Then Quinn slowly turned toward Quinten, and Quinten looked back at her with the exhausted resignation of someone who had known her his entire life and therefore recognized that expression as an incoming problem. "No."

"I didn't say anything." "You got the face." "What face?" "The one that gets us additional detention."

Quinn grinned and glanced around the classroom, her attention eventually settling on the other unfortunate soul condemned to spend Saturday morning with them. Apparently, detention had finally provided something interesting. She leaned across the aisle and lowered her voice conspiratorially. "Okay, important question. How attached are you to getting out of here on time?"

Vanessa Farraday's annual charity gala occupied three ballrooms, required enough flowers to alter the local ecosystem, and had somehow raised several million dollars before anyone finished the first course. At the far edge of all that philanthropy sat the teen table, which Quinn had correctly identified as a decorative holding pen for wealthy people's children. Their parents could point to them occasionally, confirm they were still alive, and return to discussing donations, acquisitions, and whichever divorce everyone was pretending not to know about.

The conversation around the table had been unbearable for the last twenty minutes. Someone was complaining about having to spend August in Saint-Tropez instead of Mykonos because his mother's boyfriend had already booked the villa. A girl across from him was explaining why her parents' new Gulfstream was technically worse than the old one, which apparently constituted hardship now. Another boy had been talking about the Porsche he expected for his sixteenth birthday with enough specificity that Quinn briefly considered stabbing herself with the tiny dessert fork just to create a diversion.

She sat with her chin propped against one hand, blonde pigtails tied neatly with black ribbons and an expensive dress Vanessa had personally approved, while Quinten slouched beside her with his bow tie already loosened. He had stopped pretending to listen several minutes ago and was balancing a spoon across the rim of his water glass instead.

"If he says 'custom interior' one more time, I'm flipping this table," Quinn murmured.

Quinten adjusted the spoon by a fraction of an inch. "Don't. It's probably rented."

That earned him a snort, but not enough entertainment to save the evening. Quinn let her gaze wander across the table again, past the trust-fund Olympics and toward the neighboring seats, where someone had somehow escaped the gravitational pull of the conversation. They weren't bragging about vacation houses or pretending to have opinions about private aviation. More importantly, they actually looked interesting.

Quinn nudged Quinten beneath the table. He followed her glance, considered the stranger for a moment, then gave the smallest nod of approval. Apparently they had reached the same conclusion, which saved them the indignity of discussing it.

Quinn shifted slightly in her chair and lowered her voice toward the neighboring seat. "Please tell me you have something more interesting to talk about than Gulfstreams, because we're about thirty seconds from faking our own deaths."

Quinten finally abandoned his spoon experiment and glanced over with a crooked smile. "Twenty seconds. She's been getting twitchy."

Take Your Kids to Work Day at FarraComm had sounded significantly more interesting when Quinn and Quinten assumed it meant unrestricted access to a forty-story telecommunications company. Apparently, it actually meant branded lanyards, catered lunches, painfully enthusiastic presentations about innovation, and several dozen employees pretending they were delighted to have children wandering around their workplace. By midafternoon, the twins had abandoned the official itinerary entirely. In their defense, someone had put AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY on a door, which was practically an invitation when Quinn Farraday was in the building.

That was how they ended up standing side by side in Preston's office while their father paced in front of them, the glass walls behind him offering a spectacular view of Silicon Valley and several employees outside doing an admirable job of pretending they weren't watching the CEO publicly reconsider fatherhood. Quinn stood with her arms folded across her chest while Quinten kept his hands buried in his pockets, both wearing expressions that hovered somewhere between chastened and annoyed at having been caught. Quinten was making slightly more effort to look sorry, mostly because one of them needed to.

"What were you two thinking?" Preston asked, his voice low enough that Quinn knew they were properly fucked. "You were given an entire schedule. Tours, demonstrations, lunch with the engineering team, and somehow you turned Take Your Kids to Work Day into an attempted breach of my server room."

"Attempted feels unfair," Quinn said. "We got in."

Quinten glanced sideways at her. "Helpful."

Preston stopped pacing and stared at his daughter. "You got into a restricted server room and attempted to access company data."

"We weren't going to do anything with it," Quinn insisted, because apparently the distinction mattered enormously to her. "We wanted to see if we could."

"That is not better."

"I told her that," Quinten offered.

Quinn turned toward him. "You literally held the door."

"I can participate and criticize simultaneously."

Preston pinched the bridge of his nose and stood there for several seconds, presumably revisiting every parenting decision that had led him to this precise moment. "FarraComm is not one of your playgrounds. You could have damaged equipment, triggered security protocols, exposed confidential information, or gotten an employee fired because neither of you could tolerate being bored for one afternoon."

That quieted them more effectively than the anger had. Getting themselves in trouble was practically recreational, but dragging some terrified IT employee into it because the CEO's children had decided to test the security system wasn't nearly as funny. Quinn's arms loosened across her chest while Quinten looked down, and they exchanged one of those quick glances that contained an entire conversation neither intended to have in front of their father. Preston caught it anyway, his eyes moving between them with the weary recognition of a man who had spent fifteen years learning that whenever his twins went silent, they were usually communicating more than when they spoke.

"If either of you actually wants to understand this company, then learn how it works instead of treating it like something you need to beat," Preston continued, his voice calmer now but no less severe. "You had engineers downstairs who would have answered practically anything you asked them, and instead you decided to break into a restricted floor."

"Technically, we didn't break anything," Quinten said, apparently unable to leave well enough alone for more than thirty consecutive seconds. Preston stared at him until he gave a small nod. "Bad time. Got it."

"You will both apologize to the head of IT, and then you will rejoin the group downstairs. You will stay with the group for the remainder of the afternoon, follow the schedule you were given, and refrain from investigating anything marked restricted. Understood?"

"Understood," they answered together.

Twenty minutes later, Quinn and Quinten were back among the other teenagers touring FarraComm, freshly apologized, thoroughly lectured, and under explicit instructions to behave like normal human beings until five o'clock. Their absence had apparently gone largely unnoticed, and the group had moved on to a demonstration floor filled with prototype devices, interactive displays, and employees explaining technology in the careful, simplified language adults used when they assumed teenagers couldn't possibly understand anything complicated.

Quinn stood beside Quinten near the back of the group, her visitor badge hanging crookedly from its lanyard while an engineer at the front explained something both twins already understood. "This is humiliating," she whispered. "We committed a minor corporate security breach forty minutes ago."

"Exactly. We've demonstrated advanced placement."

Quinten bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing and glanced around before Preston somehow sensed their happiness from several floors above. The rest of the group had begun drifting toward the next demonstration, leaving the twins momentarily near the back as another attendee approached their side of the exhibit.

Quinn noticed first and nudged Quinten lightly with her elbow before turning her attention toward the newcomer. "If you're about to tell us we missed something interesting while we were gone, lie."