Amelia looked incredibly pleased with herself as she paid using a credit chip. I could only endure her smugness for a minute after we'd left the store, wearing some of our recent purchases, before I cracked and asked her why.

I loved her answer.

"One of the things my father stuck me with was managing his money," she purred, eyes dancing with delight. "So, skimming a little off the top was really easy. I didn't do it all that often, just in case, but I still have a nice little cache of credits saved up. And my father doesn't have a clue!"

"Well, in that case, would your father be up for buying us some food? 'Cause I could really use some."

"Oh, don't you worry about a thing! Stick with me, and you'll never go hungry again!" she declared, hands on hips and all.

For some reason, this made amusement bubble up inside of me, to the point that I was soon laughing with tears in my eyes. It didn't take long for Amelia to break down either, and we laughed like loons while stumbling to a nearby restaurant.

It was… nice. It felt like all the tension and fear were slowly bleeding out of me. By the time we'd ordered a couple of fancy sandwich thingies to-go, I was more relaxed than I could remember being in a very long time.

The laughter seemed to have a similar effect on Amelia, too. The smile she was wearing afterwards made me sneak a few more glances at her than I might otherwise have done.

Not that she wasn't nice to look at normally! But there was definitely a difference. The better-fitting outfit had done interesting things for her figure, hinting at more curves than you'd ever think the doctor's assistant had under those baggy clothes. Those green eyes of hers, twinkling behind her glasses, lit up her face better than a neon sign could.

I briefly wondered what she would look like if she stopped hiding behind those raven bangs all the time, but I shook off the idea quickly.

"Where to now, my oh so glorious leader?" I asked as we left the restaurant, sandwiches in hand.

"To the tech store, servant! Also, hold all my shopping bags so I can eat this thing properly!"

She thrust the shopping bags at me, which made the overlarge sandwich swing precariously too. The sauce and the filling almost went flying, defying gravity just to stick to the lightly toasted bread.

I eyed her many bags, then glanced at the two already in my hands, which contained four more copies of the same outfit she'd picked out for me. "No."

"Rebellion already?!"

"Yes. Down with the king. We've had enough of those throughout history," I quipped, drawing a burst of giggles.

"True, true. I still can't believe people kept trying to make themselves monarchs of newly conquered planets."

"Same. Don't see the appeal. Especially when any well-funded rebels could just order an orbital bombardment back then."

"I know, right? Idiots kept dying, and new idiots just kept replacing them!" She bit down on her sandwich like she was trying to emphasize her point, which resulted in a decent bit of sauce splashing all over her cheek.

My glorious leader froze, then turned to me, wide-eyed. She was stuck with the sandwich in her mouth, too afraid of more sauce splashing to finish the bite.

I couldn't help it. I laughed.

She grumbled something at me through a full mouth, and I finally took pity on her enough to dig some napkins I'd taken with me out of my shopping bag.

"Hold still, now," I insisted, trying to hold in more chuckles. Totally because I was feeling sorry for her, and not because she was glaring like she wanted to stomp me into the ground!

"Took you long enough," she groused when she was finally safe again and I'd thrown away the used napkins. She saw the way my lips were trembling and snarled very cutely.

We spent the next fifteen minutes sitting on a public bench and munching away. I finished long before her, but I didn't mind. There was so much to see that sitting there for the rest of the day wouldn't have been a waste.

Amelia, of course, spotted another shop to visit and stood up as soon as she was done. "Come on, this one will do."

I looked around as we stepped into a very well-ventilated tech store. The air felt pleasantly cool and dry against my skin, which was still flushed from laughing. Every which way I looked stood wonders of technology, from scrolls to extremely advanced watches that had more functions built in than some super computers. The prices popped up in my vision as my eyes swept over each object.

For a moment, I felt that same sense of dissonance I'd experienced walking down the street outside.

The tech available here, in the inner district, was something I couldn't even dream of owning in the slums. The scrolls alone had prices that rivaled the cost of my slum apartment. My mother had used up the entirety of her savings for that stupid room, and here some people were dropping that much on a single scroll.

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Amelia was one of those 'some people' apparently, because she immediately zeroed in on one of the more expensive models and requested it without batting an eye.

"What are you doing?" I whisper-hissed at her when the clerk happily went off to fetch a brand-new, sealed model.

"What does it look like?" she hissed right back. "You stole my scroll so a shadow can live in it. I'm not gonna live in fear of that thing doing something to me through the screen! I need a new scroll. You can have the one with the shadow."

"I don't need a scroll, and neither do you. I told you I sorted things out with —"

She elbowed me when the clerk showed back up. Which, fair. We didn't need anyone overhearing us as we talked about shadows. Still, a part of me died a little when she paid for the scroll.

"Excellent! Do you need our help setting up your scroll? We can assist you with moving the data and settings over from your old one."

Amelia opened her mouth, probably to agree, then closed it with a click and pouted at me. "No, that's fine. We'll handle it ourselves."

"Very well, then we'll just handle the OS setup for you and —"

"We'll handle that too," I cut in, earning myself a full glare from Amelia and a confused look from the clerk. I gave them both a reassuring smile to get things moving again. "We're very particular with our devices. Don't worry about it."

Amelia was on my case as soon as we left the store.

"What was that about?!"

"Oh, come on! You're not telling me you seriously think it's a good idea to trust a scroll you picked up from a random store, when we're hiding from your father? What if he follows our tracks to this store? Don't tell me they don't have a way to track devices they've sold!"

She immediately deflated. "Well… okay… but you said my old scroll is safe!"

"Yes, because it was scrubbed clean by a shadow. And currently has one living in it still. I'd honestly pay to see someone try and track us through it, especially if they tried to hack the scroll. Wouldn't end well for them, that's for sure."

"So… I wasted money on a scroll?"

She pulled the sad puppy eyes on me, and I sighed. It was honestly kind of unfair how cute she looked like that.

"No, it's fine. I'll look it over. I might need to temporarily move the shadow into it, but I promise there won't be any signs of eldritch entities on it once I'm done. I just need you not to boot it up before then, okay?"

"I can work with that."

I snorted, then looked around again. Amelia was apparently done buying things, because she was leading us towards the elevators that would take us out of the shopping complex megabuilding.

"Where are we going, anyway?"

"You'll see!" She grinned, all her bounciness from before making a reappearance. "You'll love it."

I considered keeping my mouth shut and letting the nearly hyper girl have her fun, but good sense won out.

"Amelia, I really don't want to be an asshole, but I'm asking because I'm worried. Not because I want to 'ruin the surprise' or whatever. We're on the run, and I'm still not sure if I should try to book it on my own."

That was a bit of a lie, to be honest. I was stuck in an inner district, when my papers only allowed me access as far as the middle districts. The second I so much as tried to pass through a checkpoint, I'd get flagged and bagged.

That was without taking into account the good doctor's connections and any flags he might have already put on my records. Even if my citizenship record was suited to this part of the city, I'd still be wary of trying to cross a checkpoint.

Amelia didn't know that, though. Or I was hoping she didn't.

From the way her shoulders drooped, it was at least not at the top of her mind.

"Oh, well, right…" She did rally quickly, though the heady excitement of freedom was replaced by the calculated expression I'd seen on her once or twice in the lab. "I'm sorry for worrying you. For what it's worth, I really think we should stick together, at least for now. I'd appreciate the help and protection. I can offer resources, plus a couple connections I managed to make, away from my father."

I pretended to think, but the right answer was pretty clear.

For the time being, at least.

"I agree. I'm sure we can help each other."

"Good." Her smile resurfaced, but it was much smaller and more restrained than before. "Okay. So, I managed to purchase a small apartment on the outskirts of one of the neighboring districts. I know it's not as far removed from my father as either of us would like, but he actually spends a ton of his time in the core district, not here."

That both made sense and was alarming. If the doctor was actually from the core district, then he could tap into even more resources than I'd originally feared.

"How likely is he to track us down immediately?"

"With the mess we caused? Not very. He'll be busy putting out the fires and covering his own tracks. That lab was not legal. Not by a long shot. He can and will make it through unscathed, but it'll still keep him busy for a while. We'll be laying low by that point."

Something about 'laying low' sounded vaguely ominous to me.

It wasn't the first time I'd had to do it, of course. When the Kittens were attacked the first time, we'd been confined to the HQ for a while. Still, I didn't enjoy it much back then, and I strongly suspected I wouldn't enjoy it any more now.

"Laying low?" I repeated.

"Yeah?" She arched an eyebrow at me. "Please don't tell me you want to try and run away from the city right now, or reach the outer districts or something. We'd get caught so quickly, it wouldn't even be funny."

"No, no, I'm fine with this. Lead on."

I was lying, but it was a teeny tiny lie.

She didn't need to know how tempted I was to find out exactly what had happened to the Kittens as soon as possible. Or how much I dreaded getting stuck inside an apartment with nothing to do but think.

I didn't need to think. I needed to keep moving and doing things, so I never had a single chance to feel the effects of everything that had happened to me.

Not to mention the prospect of spending all that time with her. Oh, we were doing just fine now, focused on survival as we were. But there was no guarantee we would be able to stand each other after even two days of confinement.

Unfortunately, over the next hour, the hope that I might avoid self-reflection time died a slow and painful death.

Amelia led us through several rides, all with different taxi services. Then she had us travel on foot ten blocks from the spot of our last drop-off point. Finally, we reached a towering megabuilding at the very edge of a neighboring district. She dug out a key fob from one of her pockets, which let us enter the building with no fuss and pile onto one of the elevators.

"I got a place on the top floor," Amelia explained as the elevator droned on, journeying ever upwards. "I liked the view."

I just grunted.

When we finally hit the top, and Amelia led us towards a door that opened for us, I realized that her definition of the word 'small' differed wildly from mine.

The apartment was huge. A short hallway opened up into a living room with a massive balcony on the far end, which gave us a stunning view of the rest of the city. Just that one room could have fit eight of my former apartments inside it, to say nothing of the many doors and three hallways branching off to other rooms.

Amelia was clearly not as taken aback as me, though. She just dropped her shopping bags and dramatically turned to me with her arms held wide open.

"Welcome to home sweet home for the foreseeable future!" she beamed, clearly expecting praise.

I gave her a wobbly smile instead.

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