Embarkation Grand Atrium, Deck Seven | Chapter One | Menace: Lull | Elena: Steady | Lamp: Full | Flares: 2

The embarkation collar read your salvage-master credentials, let you both through, and sealed behind you. Its status light is red.

The Invicta's Grand Atrium climbs three decks in brass and pale glass. Overhead, a chandelier the size of the Estoc turns without a sound. A string quartet recording plays softly, the air handlers breathe warm air that still smells of lilies, and a service chime rings for nobody. The lights run low and gold, as if the guests only stepped out.

Every armchair in the atrium lounge has been turned to face the collar door.

Elena Hartwell has stopped dead under the chandelier, head tipped back, curls coming loose from her ponytail. "Cap. Captain. It's floating. No cable, no hanger, it's riding mag bearings, and somebody spent a small moon's worth of power making it turn that slowly." She pushes her glasses up with the back of her wrist. "Stupidest, most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I want to shake the hand that tuned it."

At the foot of the grand staircase, a steward in burgundy livery jerks upright, its mirrored faceplate blazing white.

"WELCOME ABOARD THE INVICTA," it booms, loud enough to ring the crystal. "MAY I SEE YOUR BOARDING PASS FOR THIS EVENING'S-"

It stops mid-word, folds at the knees and lies on the marble, the chandelier turning in its dark face.

Elena has somehow ended up behind the concierge desk. "Nope. Fine. Steward on a flat reserve cell. Our footsteps booted it, poor thing. I'm fine. Heart's fine." She laughs once, too high, and it helps.

Three decks up, a door closes, softly. Nothing follows.

A woman's voice comes from the ceiling, warm as a hotel lobby. "Good evening, and welcome aboard. The embarkation collar is closed while the vessel is under hold. Guest Services thanks you for your patience."

"Under hold," Elena repeats. "Port paperwork. A courtesy lock." She taps a dark glass panel set into the marble. "And this is the concierge core. That voice is only her lobby script; the rest of her is asleep in here. Wake her and we get a deck plan, door access, and somebody to argue with about our collar." She glances at the dead screens around the atrium. "She'll light every one of those, though. Loud and hungry. Say the word."

Then she crouches by the fallen steward and sits it up against the newel post, gloved hands folded in its lap.

"There," she tells it. "Dignity."

Last Call The Halcyon Lounge, Promenade Deck | Chapter Two | Menace: Uneasy | Elena: Steady | Lamp: Full | Flares: 2

The band is still playing. Three musicians made of pale light (piano, bass and a muted trumpet) work through a slow number on the Halcyon Lounge's little stage for a room of empty tables, and every table is laid. Along the bar stands a straight row of coupes, each one poured, each with its twist of peel. The ice in the water jugs hasn't melted.

"Nine o'clock toast," Elena reads off a card propped against the first glass. She vaults the bar and lands on the service side with a clank of tools. "Service steward pours it every night on schedule. Nobody told it the party's over. Honestly, that's commitment." She runs her hands along the fittings like she's shopping. "Cap, look at this. Chilled rail, warming rail, a clear-ice press, and somebody's kept every gasket like new. What'll it be? House is buying, so don't you dare order the cheapest thing on the shelf again. I've watched you do it. It's heartbreaking."

Far aft and below, under the music, one thin note sounds, like a wet finger drawn round the rim of a glass. It holds for a breath and stops.

Elena is holding a bottle up to the light to read the label, and she doesn't look up.

Then the band goes out in the middle of a bar.

The stage goes dark, the lounge goes dark, and the air handlers wind down to nothing, so the silence arrives all at once. A strip of red emergency light glows along the floor, out to the Promenade doors. From the ceiling, the concierge speaks in the same warm voice as ever: "We apologize for the interruption to your evening. Engineering personnel are currently addressing the issue."

Elena sets the bottle down very carefully. She turns her head and looks at you, slowly.

"That's me," she says. "I'm engineering personnel."

She clicks on her headlamp and crouches at the lighting panel under the bar. "Breaker didn't trip. Something shut this off." She tilts the lamp. Along the panel's seam, hair-fine threads bristle out of the gap, glassy black, like frost grown on a window. She leans in until her glasses nearly touch them. "Warm. That's not wire. That's not anything I know."

She teases one loose with the tip of her screwdriver and drops it into an empty coupe. For a moment it lies there shining. Then, while she watches, it goes dull and gray.

"Huh," she says, fascinated. "It died." She straightens up to set the coupe on the bar with the poured ones. "Some kind of growth, then. Like scale in a boiler. Somebody's bad repair. I want to know where the rest of it goes."

Down at the panel, in the red floor light, while her back is turned, the threads left in the seam draw back into the gap, all together, slowly, until the seam is clean.

Vow Renewal The Starlight Chapel, Promenade Deck | Chapter Two | Menace: Uneasy | Elena: Steady | Lamp: Full | Flares: 2

The Starlight Chapel has the only real window on the Promenade, and the window is full of stars. White chairs stand in two neat banks with ribbon on every aisle seat. Silk lilies, electric candles flickering on a timer, and on an easel by the door, a card in gold script: RENEWAL OF VOWS, 20:00. DEV AND CONSTANCE, TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. FOLLOWING THE VOWS, YOUR OFFICIANT WILL PRESENT THE KEY TO YOUR EVENING.

The clock over the door reads 19:58. Its second hand isn't moving.

Behind you both, the doors slide shut with a soft chime, and a little sign lights above them: CEREMONY IN PROGRESS. Beside the doors, under a glass flap, sits a brass lever: EMERGENCY EXIT. KINDLY DO NOT INTERRUPT THE CEREMONY.

At the altar, a steward in white livery lifts its mirrored face, and its voice is pure delight. "You made it, and right on time! Please, come forward. The couple stands just here." It opens its gloved hands toward two gold marks on the carpet. "The Invicta is so honored to share your special evening."

Elena makes a sound like a kettle. "Oh. No. It thinks... Captain, it thinks we're..." She pushes her glasses up with the back of her wrist and goes red to the roots of her hair. "Hi. Sorry. We're not Dev and Constance. Look at this one. Twenty-five years? It takes them a week to pick a docking slot."

"Every couple is nervous," the steward assures her. "Would you prefer the traditional vows, or have you written your own?"

"We're salvage," Elena tells it. "A salvage crew. Professionally."

"How wonderful," says the steward. "Please silence your personal devices."

Elena turns her back on it and drops her voice. "Okay. That lever gets us out any time we like, chiming all the way down the Promenade. But look at its chest." Through a gap in the white jacket, something small and brass hangs on a chain. "Steward's override key. Mechanical. Opens any manual lock on this deck without asking the ship a thing. That's the key to our evening." Her eyes slide to the organ console beside the altar, its keys lit and waiting, and to the seam under its lid, where a few glassy-black threads curl out like hair. "Trouble is, a ceremony comes with music. Big music. Bells. And whatever that black stuff is, it's grown right into the organ."

The guest book lies open on its stand by the door. Its last few pages aren't wedding wishes.

"I could pop its service hatch and drop it into maintenance mode," Elena whispers. "Ninety seconds, and it hands the key over like a good boy. Mind you, maintenance mode means it's properly awake, walking around, testing its joints." She hesitates, then adds, much too fast, "Or we just say the words. It plays its organ, we do the vows, it hands over the key and opens the doors. Chapel words, not real words, it's not legally anything. I'm not saying I'd mind. I'm saying it's efficient."

The steward folds its hands. "Whenever you're ready."

Wellness Check Infirmary, Wellness Deck | Chapter Three | Menace: Stalked | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 2

The Invicta's infirmary looks as if nobody has ever been sick in it. Twelve beds made with hospital corners. Instruments laid out under clear covers. Orchids in the waiting area, and over the consulting room, a lit sign: THE SHIP'S DOCTOR WILL SEE YOU SHORTLY. A wall of clear glass separates the ward from the corridor outside.

The cold store door has a notice at eye level, printed in the ship's tidy typeface: COLD STORE AT CAPACITY. ADDITIONAL GUESTS ARE BEING ACCOMMODATED ELSEWHERE. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE.

Elena read it on the way in. She hasn't looked at that door since.

She's crouched behind the dispensary counter beside the pharmacy carousel, a drum of numbered drawers taller than she is, locked behind glass. "Rebreather masks are in there," she whispers. "Oxygen canisters. Wound gel. The good painkillers. Half the sections we've crossed have had thin air, Cap, and we need those masks. Drum's asleep. I wake it, it spins to the drawer and drops the lot. Forty seconds of spinning. It'll sound like a slot machine."

Over the ward, the air handlers slow. The lights sag to amber. The little fan in the orchid display ticks to a stop.

Elena's headlamp goes off. Her hand closes on your wrist.

Beyond the glass wall, the creature comes along the corridor ceiling, braced from wall to wall, its long limbs folding at too many joints. It stops at the glass, at the height where Elena's lamp was shining a moment ago, and pale seams open along its flank toward the spot, like gills. Its long, eyeless head splits sideways down the middle, the halves swinging apart on a few fine black threads, and one long, uneven hand reaches out and lays itself flat against the ward door's panel.

The panel's standby light goes out.

Two rooms aft, a steward drops a tray, and the clatter rings down the corridor. The creature folds shut and goes after it, the dry click of its plates moving off. A moment later its note sounds again, farther away.

Elena doesn't breathe for a while. When she does, it shakes.

"I don't have a word for that," she whispers. "I've got a word for everything on this ship. I don't have one for a single piece of that." She looks at the ward door, at the dead panel, at the glassy black now showing at its seam. "It put a hand on our door. It did something to the latch."

Her grip on your wrist stays tight.

"Stowaway," she whispers at last. "Nobody sold that a ticket, and it's riding anyway." She almost laughs. "The Stowaway. Okay. Now I've got a word for it."

[FOUND: Sighting]

Lost and Found Purser's Office, Officers' Country | Chapter Three | Menace: Uneasy | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 2

The Purser's Office still keeps its hours on a brass plate: LOST PROPERTY MAY BE COLLECTED 09:00 TO 17:00. Behind the counter, the shelves are full of it, every item bagged and tagged in the same neat hand: gloves, a cane, reading glasses, a silver cigarette case, a single pearl earring.

The door marked A. LISLE, DEPUTY PURSER stands open a hand's width, and inside, somebody has fought a war with his own wall.

The cabin's concierge panel is buried. A towel hangs over the screen, gaffer tape crosses the grille, a desk has been dragged against it and a chair wedged on top of the desk. There's a sock over the ceiling camera. The vent grille above the bunk is off, its four screws lined up in a row on the pillow. His shoes wait under the desk, side by side. There is nobody here.

You both saw it once, an hour ago: at the far end of a corridor, something long and jointed turned toward your lamps and was gone. Twice since, from somewhere aft, its thin glass note has come through the walls.

Elena stands in the middle of the cabin with her headlamp turned low, its beam cutting the dust, turning in a slow circle. "He taped the mic," she whispers. "And the camera. And look." She points at the fuse board by the door, where one fuse is missing from its clips. "He pulled the cabin circuit. Knew exactly which one, too. He wanted this room dark and deaf." A pause. "Why'd you want your room deaf, Mister Lisle?"

On the desk, beside a dried coffee ring, lies a shipping tag: FINE ART. CLIMATE HOLD. DO NOT OPEN IN TRANSIT. The signature on the release line is a tidy A. Lisle.

Elena turns it to the light and frowns at the rating printed in its corner. "That's a biological containment rating. You don't ship a painting at that. You ship..." She stops. "I don't know what you ship at that."

Behind a framed print on the wall, the edge of a small safe shows, dark. His personal terminal sits on the desk, dark too. The missing fuse is in his coffee cup.

Elena fishes it out and dries it on her sleeve. "Safe, terminal, the lot. All on this one circuit." Her lamp drifts to the buried panel. "That too."

Above the bunk, the open vent breathes out cold air. Somewhere deep in the duct, something gives a dry chitter and goes quiet.

Elena's lamp stays on the vent a long moment. She turns the fuse over in her fingers.

"He was scared of his own room, Cap," she whispers. "I want to know why. I also really, really don't."

Below Decks Main Engineering, Deck Two | Chapter Four | Menace: Stalked | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 1

Main Engineering was built to be looked at. A passenger gallery runs round three sides of the hall behind brass rails, with little plaques for the engine tour and a brass-caged tour lift at one end, and below it the fusion torus sleeps in its cradle: a ring of polished housings as wide as a ballroom, stitched with cold blue sight-glasses. The whole hall smells of clean oil.

Elena has been whispering to it since you both came in. Whispering, because something came down the service stairs behind you, and nobody saw where it went.

"Look at the field coils. Look at the welds. They hand-dressed the welds, Cap, on a passenger ship, just so people on the tour would see them shine." She's flat on her stomach on the gallery floor behind the startup console, glasses pushed up into her curls, naming the start interlocks under her breath, in order, and approving of every one. "And here's the start. Right here. Bottle, then pre-heat, then she lights. Three minutes start to finish, and the whole ship has power. Lifts. Doors. Air. The bridge." A fat brass key on a red tag sits in the console's start slot. "We'd be halfway home. And a liner with her engines lit isn't a wreck anymore, Cap, she's a claim. That's the Estoc paid off twice over."

She takes a breath. "And it'd be the loudest thing on this ship for all three of those minutes. And afterwards everything with power in it is something it can reach. Every door I'd ever open for you."

You're behind the console's other end, an arm's length from her, beside the coolant crawlway hatch. Its manual latch is by your hand, not hers.

The sight-glasses on the torus dim from blue to gray, one after another, all the way round.

Across the hall, the aft door the two of you came through, still a hand's width open, eases wider.

The creature comes through low, folded almost flat, and unfolds onto the far catwalk. It stops. The pale seams along its flank open toward the dark hall, and it stays like that, listening, long enough to count to ten. Then it turns back and puts a hand on the edge of the aft door, the one that was left open, as if checking the latch. It doubles back along the catwalk. It stops again, almost directly across from the console.

Elena has gone completely still. Her cheek is on the gallery floor. Her hand lies flat beside the brass key, not on it.

The note starts, thin and clean, and the hall carries it the way a cathedral carries a voice.

Then the creature climbs a service ladder into the deckhead, and the click of its plates moves aft along the pipes above the gallery: a few steps, a pause, a few steps more.

Elena turns her head, just enough to find you. "Three minutes," she mouths.

Up in the deckhead, one plate clicks, and stops.

Shuttle Service Spine Platform, Midships | Chapter Four | Menace: Uneasy | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 1

The Spine runs the whole length of the Invicta, a straight, bright tunnel with a single rail down its middle, and the little tram car that shuttles along it has kept perfect time through everything.

"The next car to Bridge Deck is now approaching," the platform announces, in the concierge's warm voice. "Please stand behind the yellow line. Thank you for traveling with the Invicta. Comfort, unconquered."

Above the benches, a departures board flips its letters with a sound like shuffled cards: NEXT CAR: BRIDGE DECK. ON TIME. The bridge has power now. It's eight decks up and half the ship forward, and this line goes straight there. Every time the two of you have stopped tonight, the thin glass note has come from somewhere behind: never close, never gone.

"On time," Elena says softly. She's sitting on the edge of a bench with her kit open on her knees. "Every run, for months. Not one late departure. You'd love it here, Cap. Nobody's ever late and nobody talks through the safety drill." Then, lower: "I'd have given anything for a timetable like this on the station I grew up on." She says it without smiling.

The rail hums. Along the conduit that feeds it, at every junction box, black threads show at the seams, fine as hair, catching the platform lights like wet glass.

"Line's threaded end to end," Elena murmurs. "The car, the doors, every camera. It's live because we need it live, and it's live for the Stowaway too."

The car slides in without a sound, lit gold inside, cream leather seats, a vase of silk flowers bolted to the wall. The doors open with a chime. "Bridge Deck," the car announces. "Doors closing in thirty seconds."

The doors stay open. Thirty seconds pass. Then more. The car sits there, chiming softly.

Elena watches the open doors. "Schedule says thirty," she whispers. "It's holding the doors. For us."

She has already lifted a panel off the platform wall beside the bench. Behind it sits a row of heavy switches, the line's feed. "Pull these and it all sleeps," she says. "Car, cameras, doors." Her eyes go to the service walk beside the rail, where it runs off into the dark. Every thread on the line comes up out of there.

Inside the waiting car, the silk flowers tremble very slightly, as if the car were breathing.

"Doors closing," the car says again, and doesn't close them.

Do Not Disturb The Sovereign Suite, Deck Twelve | Chapter Five | Menace: Lull | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 1

The suite door's manual bolts seat one at a time, the way Elena said they would. The first. The second. The third sticks, and she leans her whole weight on the handle until it goes home with a clunk that sounds much too loud.

Outside in the corridor, something stops.

The note starts up right on the other side of the door, so thin and close it seems to be inside the wood. It holds. It holds. Elena stands with both hands on the handle and her forehead against the door, and does not move at all.

Then the dry click of plates, moving off. Aft. Farther. Gone.

Elena slides down the door until she's sitting on the carpet.

The Sovereign Suite is dark, cold and enormous: a sunken lounge, a bed like a small continent, a minibar, and one whole wall of glass. Through it, far aft along the curve of the hull, a small bright shape rests against the Invicta's side with its running lights on. The Estoc, two hundred meters away, right where you both left her.

"There she is," Elena says, very quietly. "There's our girl."

For a while she only breathes. Then she gets up, goes to the minibar, and starts doing something with a sachet, a cup and her cutter on its lowest setting, her back to you. She leaves the kettle alone.

"I woke that door panel," she tells the cup. "Back there. I didn't need to. I just wanted to see if I could make it open for me. Then the Stowaway was coming down the corridor, and then it had my ankle, Cap." Thin black scores run across the leather of her boot. Her hands shake; she keeps working. "And lying there, I wasn't thinking about the ship. I was thinking about the patch on your left glove I never finished."

She turns round with a cup of hot chocolate, steaming, the handle wrapped in patch tape so it won't scald. "Forty credits a sachet. Don't tell the purser. Bridge is two decks up, and we go when you say. Not before." Her glasses have fogged, and she doesn't push them up.

"That wasn't true, about the glove," she says. "I mean, it's a terrible patch, I'm ashamed of it. But down there it was you I was thinking about. Just you." She sets the cup down, takes your hand and holds on. "I'm really glad it's you in here."

Far down the corridor, a steward's voice says, "Turndown service," and knocks on a door. Then on the next door. Closer. It stops outside this one.

By the suite's entrance, the little DO NOT DISTURB light glows red on its own battery.

"Of course," the steward murmurs through the wood. "Enjoy your evening." Its footsteps move on.

Elena laughs, very quietly, into your shoulder. She doesn't let go of your hand.

Crew Only Crew Ways, Deck Five | Chapter Five | Menace: Stalked | Elena: Cut off | Lamp: Low | Flares: 1

The crew ways were never meant to be seen. Bare steel, cable trays, stenciled frame numbers, a laundry cart abandoned at an angle with its sheets still folded, and a door every few meters marked CREW ONLY in the same tired yellow. The lights down here run dim and flat on their own circuit. Somewhere a condensate line drips, steady as a clock.

Elena is sealed in a crew storeroom two sections forward. Both of its pressure bulkheads slammed down when the creature came through the crew ways, and neither has opened since.

"Captain? It's me." Her voice comes out of your wrist comm, small and crackly and entirely hers. "I can see you. The crew cameras came back when we routed power, and I've clipped my scanner into their loop, so I've got you on the one over the junction. Say something every so often so I know you can hear me."

The little camera above the junction has a red light on. At its seam, a thread of glassy black.

"You're at the Avenue," she says. "Main crew corridor, it's painted on the wall. Straight up it, forward, is my door: three minutes, lit all the way. The release wheel's on your side, big and red. Stores doors only have them on the outside, so nobody walks off with the good napkins." A breath. "The Stowaway went up the Avenue a little while back. Forward, right past my door, and I lost it at the next camera. It's up there somewhere past me. Or you go right, through the laundry and the dry stores, round to my back door. Dark all the way. Half an hour, maybe a bit more. I've never seen it go in there."

Silence on the comm for a second. Then, brighter than she means it: "Air's a bit thin on my side. Not bad. Rebreather's on, and it's got thirty-five minutes in it. I'm sitting on a carton of napkins. Premium napkins. I've counted them twice." A laugh that doesn't come out right. "You don't get to do anything stupid, all right? One of us stuck in a cupboard is plenty."

Above the junction, the camera turns. Slowly, a few degrees, on its own, until the lens is looking straight down at you. Its red light blinks once.

"Cap." Elena's voice drops to almost nothing. "I didn't do that."

Far up the Avenue, forward, the thin glass note starts, and holds.

"I'm going to be quiet now," she whispers. "I'm right here. I'm just going to be quiet."

The comm hisses softly in the dim. She's still there. She isn't talking.

Disembarkation The Bridge, Deck Fourteen | Chapter Six | Menace: Peak | Elena: Shaken | Lamp: Low | Flares: 1

The bridge is a long, dark crescent of glass at the top of the ship. Through its port wing, far aft and down the hull, the Estoc's running lights blink green, green, green.

Your salvage-master credentials sit in the command reader, the same ones the collar read when you came aboard. The faint ring of light around the slot fills one segment at a time.

VERIFYING COMMAND AUTHORITY. 40%.

"Forty," Elena says. She's on her back under the helm with the access panel off and a splice in each fist, holding the bridge's borrowed power together with her hands. "Don't touch anything."

Behind the bridge doors, down in the lift shaft, the note starts, thin and clean, then stops. The click of plates follows, against the shaft wall, slow and even, coming up.

"Shaft," Elena says. "Climbing."

60%. The concierge, bright as a party: "Welcome, Captain. Please hold while we verify your authority. Your patience is appreciated."

The clicking comes again. Louder.

80%. The ring of light flickers, dims, and for one long second goes dark. Elena's hands lock on the splices. It catches, and climbs.

"It's pulling current," Elena whispers. "It's close. Come on. Come on, sweetheart, come on."

The ring closes. The reader chimes, pure and sweet.

"Command authority accepted," says the concierge. "Welcome to the bridge, Captain. The vessel is yours." Across the main console, one panel lights up amber:

RELEASE DOCKING PATH. CONFIRM?

Elena twists the splice shut, clamps it and rolls out from under the helm. The shaft has gone quiet. Very close, a single plate clicks.

"Release opens everything from here to the collar," she says, fast and flat. "Every door, and the Estoc's clamps. It'll feel every one of them go, and it'll follow us down."

Her eyes go to the reader, where your credentials still glow in the slot.

"Or release and leave that in. Your ticket stays in there, the bridge stays open: the whole ship's brain, unlocked, the one thing it's never been able to touch. It might stop for that and let us run." She breathes out. "Might not. And that's our claim on her, Cap. Leave the ticket and we lose the payout. We can get you a replacement. We can't get this score back."

She looks at the lift doors, then at the amber panel.

"I could stay and hold the path shut behind you," she says. "I could." She stays exactly where she is. "I don't want to. I want to get home with you. If we do this, we decide it together."

Behind the lift doors, something taps once against the metal. Testing.

The amber light waits.

Port of Call Beach Cabana, Coralline Bay | Epilogue

The sea at Coralline Bay comes in all evening, slow and loud and exactly what it sounds like. Somebody down the beach is playing a guitar, badly and happily. Paper lanterns sway along the cabana's roofline, and the warm air smells of salt and frying dough.

Five weeks out from the Invicta, Elena Hartwell sleeps through most nights again. She has a tan line from her glasses. She spent this afternoon with the cabana's ice maker in pieces on a beach towel, and it runs quieter now than the day it was built. She still checks which way every door opens; these days she laughs about it.

She's sitting on the cabana rail with her bare feet swinging, in the Estoc's old grey crew shirt knotted at the side and cut-offs she trimmed herself, her first brand-new navy jumpsuit folded in her bag, and a glass of sparkling lime in her hand. Up the beach, on the resort's landing pad, the Estoc sits in fresh paint bought with the Invicta's salvage money, her running lights off, because there's nothing out here to keep watch for.

"Salvager of record," Elena says, for the fourth time tonight. "My name. On a record. Hartwell, spelled right and everything." She shakes her head at the sea. "I still owe the inquiry my statement, mind you. I've started it nine times. Between them and that Inez asking me questions all afternoon, I've told it out loud more times than I've written it down. And the feeds still say unverified." She snorts. "They're welcome to go and verify it."

She sets the glass down on the rail.

"Sparkling lime," she says. "No rum. I wanted to be sober for this."

She hops down, takes her glasses off, folds them and hooks them in her collar, and comes close enough to see you without them.

"I've been in love with you since about my second week aboard, Cap. Five years of fixing things so I'd have a reason to be in the room." She's pink to the ears, and she doesn't look away. "Nothing's chasing us. Nobody's listening. So I'm asking. Kiss me, and not like I'm the mechanic."

Down the beach, the guitarist finally lands a chord.