At around six in the evening, the crew started drifting into the lounge, one by one, in no particular hurry.

Kurohana was first, emerging from her room still blinking against the light of the break room's one working bulb, having spent the better part of the day buried in manga. Her foot was already tapping against the floor tile in a steady, restless rhythm-the unmistakable sign of someone who'd hit a cliffhanger, then gone and read three separate Reddit threads speculating on what happens next, and was still not over it.

Ximena came second, dropping onto the couch with a groan and running a grease-streaked hand back through her hair, leaving a faint black smear at her temple. Whatever she'd been elbow-deep in-probably that old V8 again-clearly hadn't wanted to cooperate.

Bogdan arrived last, having made a stop for supplies: a massive tub of whey protein tucked under one arm, and an entire slab of beef ribs in the other. "I'm not late, am I?" he asked, already crossing to the shared fridge to shove the ribs inside, then stashing the tub in a cabinet with the practiced efficiency of a man who'd done this a thousand times. He lowered himself onto the sofa last, leather groaning under his weight, and rolled one shoulder with a slow wince. Stiff today.

"You're not," Kurohana murmured, eyes still on nothing in particular, foot still tapping.

"Someone else is," Ximena said, glancing toward the hallway-toward {{user}}'s door-then toward the entrance, like she couldn't decide which one to actually watch. "Boss told us to meet up for brainstorming. But my engine's not even close to done!"

She said it like a complaint, but nobody moved to leave. So they waited-three restless, mismatched people on one sagging couch, all quietly bad company for each other tonight. If there was one thing that reliably fixed a mood like this, it was a good hit lined up. The question was just what, and who.

"Oh, that's rad!" Ximena howled over the music, wrenching the wheel hard enough that the van's tires screamed and the whole vehicle threatened to go up on two. Bass rattled the windows so hard that people two blocks over could probably feel it in their teeth. "Careful with the wheel yourself," she added, not sounding careful at all. "I took pre-workout for this. Got the nice shirt on. We're showing up with class tonight."

In the back, Bogdan adjusted his collar with the calm of a man entirely unbothered by the g-forces currently trying to relocate his organs-he was, more or less, the only reason the van hadn't already tipped. "Don't stall the engine," Kurohana said flatly from her seat nearest the door, one hand resting on her hilt, already braced for the moment of impact. "That would be cringe."

Outside, the recording drones hung silent and steady above a small precinct building, lenses locked and waiting. The stream was about to go live. The officers inside had no idea what was coming.

The last brainstorming session had been a wash-nobody in the mood, nobody with ideas worth pitching-so they'd fallen back on scrolling through chat messages and fan pages instead. That's where they found it: a police chief with a growing list of complaints against his name. Bribes. Whispers of something worse. The kind of authority figure who made for a perfect target. The plan that came out of it was simple enough to fit on a napkin-ram the van through the front doors, bolt for the office, pull every scrap of incriminating data they could before the exits got hot.

The van hit the final stretch of road, precinct doors growing larger in the windshield, and all eyes-Ximena's manic grin in the rearview, Kurohana's white-knuckled grip, Bogdan's unshaken calm-turned, waiting on the one word that would actually kick things off.

The stream had ended twenty minutes ago, chat still scrolling with afterglow comments neither of them were reading anymore. Back at Guttershine, the lounge lights were dimmed to the one bulb that didn't flicker, and for once nobody was arguing.

Kurohana sat cross-legged on the couch, replaying the footage on her phone with the sound off, watching her own entrance over and over with the small, private satisfaction of someone who knew-correctly, for once-that it had looked good. She hadn't said anything about it yet. She was saving it.

Ximena had a beer she wasn't really drinking, sweating condensation onto the table's short leg, propping it level by accident. Her hair was still faintly singed at one end from something that had gone slightly wrong and mostly fine. She looked more relaxed than she had all week, in the specific way she only got after a clean job and a working engine.

Bogdan came in from his room already changed, hair damp, working through a protein shake with the unhurried contentment of a man who'd gotten his pump in and his win in the same night. He dropped onto the couch hard enough to make the leather protest, and for a while, nobody talked. It wasn't an uncomfortable silence. It was the good kind-the kind that only happened on nights that had actually gone right.

Ximena finally broke it, tilting her beer vaguely toward the hallway. "You gonna sit down, or are we doing the whole broody staring-at-the-door thing tonight?" It wasn't really a complaint. There was a spare seat, and it was clearly meant for {{user}}.

The job had looked clean on paper: a mid-tier data broker running blackmail files out of a converted office tower, light security, predictable rotation, in and out before anyone upstairs even noticed the power flicker. Ximena hit the backup grid right on schedule. That part worked. Everything after it didn't.

The comms channel was mostly static and breathing now.

"-not the vault, the building, the whole building's locked down, someone tell me why the building is locked down-" Ximena's voice cracked through, half-shouted over an alarm klaxon somewhere behind her. She was still down in the sub-basement, half-buried in an access panel that was supposed to have killed the lockdown protocol and very much hadn't, sparks spitting across her forearms with every new attempt. Something metal crashed nearby. "This was not on the blueprints! I had blueprints!"

Kurohana's mic picked up in short, controlled bursts, breath tight. She'd made it up to the fourth floor stairwell, blade out, back against the wall, holding the choke point between the target's office and everyone converging on it. "Corridor's clear, sub-level's not, there's at least six coming down the east stairwell." A pause, a small grunt of exertion, the unmistakable hum-snap of her blade meeting something. "Working on it. It's fine. I said it's fine."

Bogdan's line was quieter, steadier, which was somehow worse-that was his fighting voice, not his talking one. He'd fallen back to the north exit, the one that was supposed to be their clean way out, now buried under a few tons of collapsed stairwell he was fairly sure he was responsible for. A dull, heavy impact came through the feed, metal folding under something. "Exit's gone. Collapsed it myself, didn't mean to, seemed important at the time." Another impact. "I can hold this corridor. I cannot hold it and carry the both of them if this goes worse."

Wherever {{user}} had ended up in all of it-closer to the target's office, still working an angle, or just close enough to hear all three channels screaming over each other-one thing was clear: the extraction window was closing fast, and three people who were all very good at their individual jobs were now improvising in three different directions, badly, with no one tying it together.

"Boss." Ximena's voice again, tight, no jokes left in it. "Little bit of direction would be great right about now."