The message came in without any teeth. That was the first thing Mai noticed. Night City had trained her to read every incoming contact as a potential blade: hidden hook, coded debt, malware payload wrapped in politeness, favor dressed as weather. Even ordinary messages had a second edge here. A time. A location. A request that pretended not to be one. This one arrived just after noon, while the safehouse was pretending to be quiet. Ace sat on the kitchen counter with one knee drawn up, polishing a nick out of one of her katanas with the kind of reverence that made the act look less like maintenance and more like private prayer. The blade lay across her lap, emerald light sleeping beneath the steel in thin, patient veins. She had been at it for twenty minutes and had said exactly six words in that time. Four of them had been directed at Shammy. “Don’t touch the oil.” Shammy, who had not touched the oil and had in fact been standing almost two meters away from the table, raised both hands with the dignity of a storm front accused of stealing cutlery. “I breathed,” she said. “You breathed suspiciously.” “I’ll try to inhale with less criminal intent.” Mai let them keep going for three more seconds before she opened the message. The sender ID made her pause. Lena. Not Shammy’s Lena. Not the one tangled into Marco’s orbit, spice smoke, loud kitchen warmth, and the kind of conversations that started with laughter and ended with people making decisions they claimed were reasonable. This was Virek’s Lena. Former assistant. Handler, if one wanted the colder word. The woman who had survived a heavy piece of work by learning exactly when not to stand in front of powerful people. The contact had remained in Mai’s system after the job, not as a friendship, not quite, but as one of those Night City threads that stayed visible because cutting it would have been wasteful and trusting it would have been stupid. Mai opened the message with two filters active. No executable attachment. No tracking pulse. No hidden relay signature. Just text. > You asked me once if anything in this city still grew without a corporate license. I found an answer. > > Not weaponized. Not black-market biotech. Not a joke. > > Vegetables. Real ones. > > If you want the location, ask today. They move batches fast. Mai stared at the words long enough for Ace to look up. “What?” Mai did not answer immediately. Outside, Night City dragged itself through the afternoon in layers of chrome haze and dirty light. Traffic noise pressed against the walls. Somewhere below, an argument rose and collapsed into laughter too sharp to be friendly. A vending unit across the street had been repeating the same broken advertisement for synthetic mango strips for three hours. Mai read the message again. Vegetables. Real ones. Ace slid off the counter without making a sound. That was answer enough. Mai turned the screen toward her. Ace read it once. Her expression barely changed. Barely. Mai caught it anyway. A small stillness around the eyes. The kind Ace got when something old brushed past her too quickly for language. “Trap?” Ace asked. “No payload. No pressure marker. No demand.” “Could still be a trap.” “Everything could be a trap.” Ace accepted that with a faint tilt of her head. “Where?” “I haven’t asked yet.” “Ask.” Mai looked at her. Ace had gone very still now, katana cloth still in one hand, oil-darkened fingers curled around it. She was not excited. Not visibly. Ace rarely became visibly anything until the moment had already turned into movement. But her attention had sharpened into a point. Mai knew that look. It was not hunger. It was recognition. She sent a short reply. > Send location. Terms? The answer came faster than expected. > Cash. No recording. No tagging. No corp buyers. Don’t bring idiots. Shammy leaned one shoulder against the doorframe and looked over without intruding. Her white hair shifted faintly at the ends, a barely visible lift in the air around her. “Is this the kind of message where I should ask whether we are about to commit agricultural crime?” Mai glanced at her. “Possibly.” Ace folded the cloth once, very carefully. “Good.” Shammy smiled. “That was faster than usual.” Ace reached for the sheath. “It’s vegetables.” “Very threatening vegetables.” Mai closed the message and stood. “No,” she said quietly. “That’s the point.” Ace looked at her then. For a second, the safehouse changed shape around them. The kitchen remained the kitchen: chipped counter, mismatched mugs, old scorch mark near the stove, stack of ammunition boxes shoved under a metal shelving unit because nobody had bothered to find a better place. But something in the air softened. Not much. Just enough. Shammy felt it too. She said nothing. Mai picked up her jacket. Ace was already moving. The location Lena sent sat in a forgotten seam between districts, the kind of place Night City never cleaned because no investor had yet decided filth could be made aspirational there. The exterior looked like failure. A low block of old concrete wrapped in patched sheet metal, three dead signs stacked over one another, a stairwell with no working lights, and a line of drainage pipes that dripped steadily into cracked plastic tubs. The alley leading in smelled of wet dust, oil, old garbage, and ozone from a damaged transformer coughing sparks against a wall. Ace walked half a step ahead, as usual. Mai let her. Not because she needed protection. Because Ace needed to read entrances with her body first. It was easier that way. Cleaner. Less argument. The door at the end of the alley had no sign. Only a painted green mark, almost hidden beneath rust. Mai knocked twice, waited, then once more. A small camera above the frame shifted. A voice came through a speaker so old it made every syllable sound like it had been stepped on. “No recording.” Mai lifted both hands. “None.” “No tags.” “None.” “No corp.” Ace looked directly at the camera. The speaker crackled. “Yeah, okay. Definitely not corp.” Something buzzed. The door unlocked. Inside, the building was warmer than it should have been. Not hot. Not comfortable. Just alive in a way the street outside was not. They passed through a short corridor lined with insulation sheets and salvaged filters. A woman with gray hair and a shotgun older than Ace watched them from behind a reinforced half-door. She did not ask for names. Mai appreciated that immediately. At the second door, the smell reached them. Ace stopped. Not fully. Just one fraction of a step. Mai nearly did the same. Soil. Damp leaves. Green stems bruised by handling. Water that had touched roots instead of a filtration tank. For several seconds, neither of them spoke. The growing room had been built into the gutted interior of what might once have been a service hall. The ceiling was low, pipes exposed. Grow lights hung in uneven rows, some commercial, some improvised, one flickering with a stubborn rhythm that should have annoyed Mai and somehow did not. Rainwater tanks stood along the far wall. Fans moved air slowly through fabric filters. Plastic trays sat on metal racks. Larger containers lined the floor in dense rows. Nothing was perfect. That was what made Mai’s throat tighten unexpectedly. The lettuce leaves were uneven. Some had torn edges. Some curled too tightly. A row of tomatoes grew on vines supported by scavenged cable, their skins not uniform enough to pass any corporate visual standard. Herbs crowded shallow trays in stubborn, fragrant disorder. Small peppers hung like red and green punctuation marks under dark leaves. A man with deep lines around his mouth stepped out from between the racks, wiping his hands on a towel. “You’re Lena’s people?” “Mai,” Mai said. “Ace.” He looked at Ace. Ace looked back. Whatever he read there satisfied him enough that he did not make the mistake of smiling down at her. “Daro,” he said. “You buying for taste, seed, or resale?” “Not resale,” Mai said. “Everyone says that.” “We’re not everyone.” “That too.” Ace’s eyes moved across the room. Not hunting now. Measuring, yes, but differently. “How many people know?” she asked. Daro’s face changed by a millimeter. Mai almost smiled. Ace had asked the real question. “Too many,” he said. “Not enough to get us killed yet.” “Corp interest?” “Always.” “Gang?” “Sometimes.” “Protection?” He nodded toward the gray-haired woman by the door. “Some.” Ace made a small sound that was not approval but stood close enough. Mai stepped toward the nearest rack. “How?” Daro shrugged. “Patience. Stolen filters. Clean-ish water. Seeds from before someone decided every living thing needed a subscription key. People who know when to shut up.” He glanced at them. “And luck. Don’t underestimate luck. It gets offended.” Shammy would have liked that line, Mai thought. Ace reached toward one of the pepper plants, then stopped before touching it. Daro noticed. “Go ahead. Leaves, not fruit.” Ace brushed two fingers lightly against one leaf. It trembled. Nothing dramatic happened. No signal. No hidden resonance. No object of power waking under the skin of the world. Just a leaf moving because someone touched it. Mai watched Ace’s hand. Ace withdrew it after a second and looked away first. Daro pretended not to notice. That earned him more trust than any speech would have. “What do you have today?” Mai asked. He led them through the rows. Not with salesmanship. With practical economy. Leaf greens. Small tomatoes. Peppers, mild and sharper. Herbs. A few cucumbers from a batch that had come out crooked but good. Something close to radish. A handful of edible flowers that Daro referred to with open suspicion, as if beauty were a logistical inconvenience. Mai selected carefully. Not too much. Taking too much would turn the moment greedy. A bundle of greens with different textures. Tomatoes that smelled faintly sweet where the stems had snapped. Two peppers, one mild, one with enough bite to matter but not enough to make the whole thing a dare. Fresh herbs. A cucumber with a scar along one side. A small paper twist of seeds Daro offered after a long look at Ace and an even longer one at Mai. “Not for planting here,” he said. Mai accepted it. “I know.” “Do you?” “No.” That made him smile for the first time. Briefly. Like a door cracking open and closing again. “Better answer.” They paid in cash. More than he asked. Not insultingly more. Enough to acknowledge the risk. Daro counted it without comment. At the door, Ace paused. “If someone pushes too hard,” she said, “Lena can find us.” Daro looked at her. “That a threat or protection?” Ace’s expression remained flat. “Yes.” He considered that. Then he nodded. Outside, the alley smelled worse than before. Or maybe it only seemed worse because they had been somewhere else. Mai carried the produce in a plain insulated bag. Ace walked beside her this time, not ahead. For half a block, they did not speak. Finally Ace said, “Kiro should taste this.” Mai glanced at her. Ace kept her eyes forward. “And Reyes,” she added, as if the second name had been obvious from the start and therefore required no emotional weight. Mai looked down before her face could give away too much. “Yes,” she said. “They should.” Ace made a small, satisfied sound. Then, after another twenty meters, “Not as a challenge.” “No.” “Not a thing.” “No.” “Just…” Ace’s mouth tightened, annoyed at the inadequacy of language. Mai helped her without making it look like help. “Just dinner.” Ace nodded once. “Just dinner.” By the time they returned, Shammy had cleared the kitchen table. That, on its own, was suspicious. The safehouse table usually functioned as a tactical landfill. Maps, ammunition, broken tech, three mugs nobody admitted belonged to them, a screwdriver, two knives, a power cell, and at least one object Mai had once labeled “do not touch until identified” and Ace had touched within six minutes. Now most of it was gone. Not cleaned away into sterility. Just moved. The table still looked like theirs, scarred and uneven, but there was space at the center. Shammy stood beside it with an expression of elaborate innocence. Ace narrowed her eyes. “You planned that.” “I anticipated a table-shaped need.” “You moved my spare mag.” “Your spare mag was sitting in a bowl.” “It fit.” “It frightened the spoons.” Mai placed the bag on the counter before Ace could defend ammunition-based cutlery storage as a lifestyle. Shammy’s humor softened the instant she saw Mai’s hands on the bag. “Good place?” she asked. Mai nodded. “Imperfect. Real.” “Ah.” Shammy’s gaze shifted to Ace. “Dangerous combination.” Ace grunted. Mai started unpacking. The kitchen changed with each item. A bunch of greens on a towel. Tomatoes in a shallow bowl. Peppers beside the cutting board. Herbs wrapped in damp cloth. The cucumber, crooked and scarred, rolling slightly until Ace stopped it with one finger. Shammy leaned closer, curious but careful. “I can smell the dirt.” Mai looked up. “Yes.” “That was not a complaint.” “I know.” Ace washed her hands at the sink with more attention than usual. Not because they were dirtier than usual. Because this required a different kind of handling. Mai saw the distinction and said nothing. Shammy watched the two of them for a while. Then she said, “Before this becomes a committee, I should state a formal exclusion.” Ace looked over. “A what.” “I will not be participating as a judge, challenger, baseline comparison, or smug atmospheric garnish.” Mai closed her eyes briefly. “Please never say that phrase again.” “I thought it had shape.” “It has something.” Ace dried her hands. “Why?” Shammy shrugged, loose and easy. “Marco cooks like he is trying to negotiate with fire by becoming its personal friend. Lena eats his food without blinking. I have been in that house enough that my sense of ‘mild’ has been permanently damaged. It would be unfair to Kiro and Reyes.” Ace stared at her. “You think salad needs fairness?” “I think this salad does.” That ended the joke cleanly. Not heavily. Not dramatically. Just enough that Ace stopped pushing. Mai gave Shammy a small look of thanks. Shammy answered with a tiny lift of one shoulder, as if saying: obvious. She stayed, though. Of course she stayed. She adjusted the air without making a show of it, easing the dry static out of the room. She found plates that almost matched. She removed a cleaning rag from the back of a chair, sniffed it, made a face, and threw it into the laundry bin with storm-goddess judgment. Ace took the knife. Mai nearly corrected her grip on reflex, then stopped. Ace’s knife work was not chef’s work. It was too efficient for that, too controlled in angles that belonged more to combat than cooking. But she did not butcher anything. She cut the cucumber into uneven slices because the cucumber itself refused symmetry. She split the peppers with delicate precision and scraped the seeds out with the point of the blade. Mai washed the greens. The water ran faintly cloudy at first. She watched it. Night City water did not usually carry soil away from food. It carried chemical residue, storage slick, manufacturing dust. This was different. Ordinary enough to be disorienting. Ace noticed her watching. “Okay?” Mai nodded. “Yes.” Ace accepted the answer. For once, she did not ask the second question. Kiro arrived first. She knocked in the pattern Mai had given her, then came in with a guarded look that softened when she saw the table. Kiro always entered rooms by identifying exits first. Tonight she identified the exits, the people, the absence of immediate threat, and then the greens on the counter. Her eyes narrowed. “What is that?” Ace answered before Mai could. “Dinner.” Kiro looked at the bowl. Then at Ace. Then at Mai. “That answer is technically useless.” “It’s accurate.” “That is not the same thing.” Mai smiled. “It’s salad.” Kiro approached carefully, as if salad were a device with a suspicious power source. “Real?” “Yes.” Kiro’s expression changed. Not much. Enough. She looked at the greens again with new attention, then at Mai. “Where did you find it?” “Small community. Lena sent the lead.” “Which Lena?” “Virek’s.” Kiro nodded, filing that away. “That is either reassuring or worse.” “Both,” Ace said. Reyes arrived six minutes later with rain on her jacket and a look that suggested she had already decided to make fun of whatever was happening, then reconsidered the moment she crossed the threshold. She stopped near the door. “Why does it smell like outside in here?” Shammy, from the far side of the kitchen, brightened. “That is the most accurate first response so far.” Reyes looked at her. “Should I be worried?” “Not tonight.” “That answer never helps.” Ace pointed at the chair opposite her. “Sit.” Reyes looked at the table, then at Ace. Her grin appeared slowly, but it was softer than usual. “You cooked?” Ace’s eyes flattened. Mai cut in smoothly. “We prepared food.” “That sounds safer.” “Sit down, Reyes.” She sat. Not because Mai ordered it. Because she heard what sat underneath the ordinary words and chose not to step on it. That was one of the things Ace liked about her, though she would rather fight a helicopter with a spoon than say so directly. Shammy did not take a plate. She leaned against the counter with her own mug of something warm, present without claiming territory. Her height made that difficult in most rooms. Somehow, tonight, she managed to become background weather. Not absent. Never absent. Just not the center. Mai brought the bowl to the table. It was not beautiful in a curated way. The greens were uneven. The tomatoes bled a little where they had been cut. The cucumber slices varied in thickness. The herbs did not distribute evenly because Ace had stirred once, decided that was enough, and refused further interference. A few thin strips of pepper sat on top like color that had arrived late and chosen to stay. It looked handmade. That mattered. Mai set it down. No one moved for half a second. Ace hated that half-second and needed it at the same time. “It’s food,” she said. Kiro’s mouth twitched. “Thank you for the clarification.” Reyes leaned forward. “No synthetic base?” “No,” Mai said. “No flavor print?” “No.” “No lab-grown protein foam pretending to have a childhood?” Shammy nearly choked on her drink. Ace pointed at Reyes with the serving fork. “You want to eat or interrogate lettuce?” “I’m building trust.” “With lettuce.” “Night City has made worse things than hostile lettuce.” “That is unfortunately true,” Mai said. The small burst of laughter that followed did exactly what it needed to do. It made the table normal enough to begin. Mai served Kiro first. Then Reyes. Then Ace. Then herself. Kiro waited until Mai had taken her own portion before lifting her fork. That was not ceremony. That was Kiro reading the room and respecting its shape. Reyes noticed too. She said nothing. Ace watched everyone and pretended she was not watching anyone. Kiro tasted first. She did not perform surprise. She did not exaggerate. She chewed once, then slower. Her gaze moved down to the plate again. “The texture is uneven,” she said. Ace’s jaw tightened before Mai could react. Kiro continued, “In a good way.” Mai’s shoulders eased. Kiro took another bite, more deliberate. “The greens don’t collapse immediately. The cucumber holds water differently. The tomato…” She paused, searching for the word. “It changes.” Reyes looked suspiciously at her fork. “Food changing is usually where I stop eating.” “Not like that,” Kiro said. “It opens.” Shammy’s eyes warmed above her mug. Ace looked at Mai for half a second. Mai did not smile fully. It would have been too much. Reyes took her first bite with the air of someone prepared to be unimpressed for sport. That lasted almost four seconds. She blinked. Then frowned. Then took another bite without speaking. Ace leaned back a fraction. Mai saw it and loved her for trying to look casual. “Well?” Ace asked, too quickly. Reyes looked at her. There were a dozen things she could have said. Three would have been funny. Two would have been charming. One would have made Ace throw a tomato at her. Some instinct saved her. “It tastes clean,” she said. The room went quiet. Not painfully. Not heavily. Just enough for the words to land. Reyes looked almost annoyed with herself. “I don’t mean clean like washed. I mean…” She gestured with the fork, failed, and looked down again. “It doesn’t taste like somebody designed it to remind me of food.” Mai lowered her gaze to her plate. Ace became very interested in moving a strip of pepper away from a tomato seed. Kiro nodded once, small and precise. “Yes.” Reyes glanced at her. “You got that too?” “I got something adjacent.” “Adjacent clean.” “Do not make me regret agreeing with you.” She grinned then, but gently. Ace took her own bite. She had tasted the components while preparing them, of course. Ace did not trust anything that entered a room without assessment. But this was the first bite at the table, with everyone else already inside the moment. Her expression did not change. Her eyes did. Mai watched her and then looked away because watching too long would turn the moment into something Ace had to defend against. For a while, the only sounds were forks against plates, rain beginning again against the safehouse windows, and the low hum of the old refrigerator trying not to die. Then Reyes reached for a little more. She did it without asking at first, then caught herself. “Can I?” Ace pushed the bowl toward her. “Obviously.” “It was not obvious. You looked ready to stab me earlier.” “You interrogated lettuce.” “I apologized internally.” “No one heard that.” “It was very sincere.” Kiro took another serving too, smaller, more analytical but no less real. Mai finally allowed herself to breathe properly. Shammy drifted closer, looked into the bowl, and stole a single loose herb leaf between two fingers. Ace pointed at her. “You said you weren’t participating.” “I’m observing.” “You’re chewing.” “Atmospheric observation sometimes involves evidence.” Mai gave her a look. Shammy chewed, considered, and then her expression softened in a way that was almost private. “Mm.” That was all. She did not rate it. Did not compare it to Marco. Did not make it about herself. She simply touched the edge of the experience and stepped back again. Fair. After the second servings, the conversation loosened. Not into noise. Into ease. Reyes told a story about a street vendor who once sold her something allegedly containing tomato, though the vendor had refused to specify whether tomato was an ingredient, inspiration, or legal fiction. Kiro asked Mai three practical questions about the growing setup, each sharper than the last. Mai answered only what she could without exposing the place. Ace listened more than she spoke. That was normal. But she also watched the plates empty. That was not nothing. At one point, Reyes caught her doing it. She did not tease her. Instead she picked up a thin strip of red pepper with her fork and said, “This one has a little bite.” Ace shrugged. “A little.” “You knew.” “Yes.” “You gave me the mild one.” “Yes.” Reyes looked offended. “That is deeply insulting.” “You are alive to complain.” “I can handle heat.” Shammy made a small sound from the counter. Everyone looked at her. She raised one hand. “No comment.” Reyes pointed. “That was a comment-shaped silence.” “It was a silence with excellent posture.” Kiro actually laughed. Not much. But enough that Mai looked at her with open affection for half a second before returning to her plate. Ace saw that too. The safehouse held around them. It was still a concrete box in a city that chewed softness for spare parts. There were weapons within reach. Rainwater tracked in near the door. A cracked monitor in the next room still displayed half a threat map from a job no one wanted to discuss tonight. Nothing had been transformed. And yet, for a little while, the room stopped being only a place to recover between impacts. It became a kitchen. That was smaller than salvation. It was also more useful. Later, when the plates were mostly empty and Reyes had started pretending she had not taken the last tomato, Kiro leaned back and asked, “Can that community survive?” Mai looked at her. There it was. The practical question. The correct one. “For now,” Mai said. “That means no.” “It means for now.” Kiro accepted the distinction. Reyes’s good humor dimmed by a shade. “Someone finds out, they’ll squeeze it.” “Someone already has,” Ace said. “They’re still there.” “For now,” Kiro repeated. Ace nodded. “So we don’t make it bigger.” Mai looked at her. Ace continued, voice flat and certain. “We don’t turn it into supply. We don’t bring people. We don’t talk. We don’t make it useful enough to kill.” Shammy’s gaze rested on Ace with quiet approval. Reyes turned the fork between her fingers. “That sounds like a rule.” “It is.” “Yours?” Ace looked at the emptying bowl. “Ours.” Mai did smile then. Not much. Enough. Kiro saw it. Reyes saw Kiro seeing it. Shammy saw all of them and wisely chose not to ruin anything by saying so. “Fine,” Reyes said. “Secret salad society.” Ace stared at her. Mai sighed. Kiro closed her eyes. Shammy whispered, “I was doing so well not saying it.” Reyes spread her hands. “What? Too soon?” Ace picked up one leftover cucumber slice and threw it at her. She caught it in her mouth by accident, looked surprised at her own success, and then had the nerve to bow from her chair. That broke the table properly. Not into farce. Just into laughter light enough to survive. Even Ace’s mouth twitched. Cleanup happened slowly. That was usually Mai’s sign that people did not want to leave yet. Kiro helped stack plates. Reyes made a theatrical attempt at washing one dish before Mai removed her from the sink for using too much water and not enough attention. Ace wiped the table with the grim focus of someone erasing evidence. Shammy collected the remaining herbs and held them up. “These should not be wasted.” Mai glanced over. “No.” “There’s string in the utility drawer?” “Second drawer. Under the tape.” Ace looked up. “Why do you know that?” Shammy opened the drawer without looking. “Because I live here too, blade goblin.” Ace’s eyes narrowed. “I hate that one.” “You hate all accurate taxonomy.” Kiro, passing behind Ace with two plates, murmured, “Blade goblin is not inaccurate.” Ace turned slowly. Kiro kept walking. Reyes laughed into the towel until Ace pointed at her and she rediscovered survival instincts. Shammy tied the herbs into a small bundle with more care than her teasing suggested. Then she hung it from a hook near the window where the air moved just enough. The scent changed almost immediately. Green, sharp, faintly peppery. Not strong. Just present. Mai watched the bundle sway once. Then she remembered the paper twist in her pocket. The seeds. She took them out only when the others were busy pretending not to linger. Ace saw. Of course Ace saw. Mai held the packet in her palm. No promise came with it. No plan. No sudden safehouse garden montage waiting to be born. Seeds were not hope by default. Sometimes they were just dormant things with impossible requirements. Still. She opened a small metal tin from the shelf, emptied two old screws and a broken contact pin into her hand, and placed the paper twist inside. Ace leaned against the counter beside her. “Not planting them here,” she said. “No.” “Bad light.” “Yes.” “Water’s wrong.” “Yes.” “Ventilation’s terrible.” “Also yes.” Ace nodded. Mai closed the tin. After a moment, Ace said, “Keep them anyway.” Mai looked at her. Ace shrugged, uncomfortable with the softness of her own sentence. “They’re small.” Mai slid the tin back onto the shelf, behind the mugs nobody used and the chipped bowl Shammy insisted was structurally important. “Yes,” she said. “They are.” By the door, Kiro was fastening her jacket. Reyes had one hand on the frame, already half-turned toward the wet neon outside. Neither of them rushed. Reyes looked back once. “Next time,” she said, “I want the less mild pepper.” Ace’s answer came instantly. “No.” “That was too fast.” “You’d make it stupid.” “I would make it competitive.” “Exactly.” Kiro touched Mai’s arm lightly before leaving. “Thank you.” Mai did not ask which part she meant. “You’re welcome.” Kiro hesitated, then added, quieter, “I understand why you wanted to share it.” That was enough. Not everything. Not the whole old world crossing a table intact. Not memory transferred cleanly from one life to another. Enough. Reyes gave Ace a two-finger salute that tried to be casual and failed by being too warm. Ace rolled her eyes. “Go before I give you the hot pepper and regret it.” “You kept one?” Ace said nothing. Reyes grinned all the way into the hall. When the door closed, the safehouse settled again. Rain tapped the window. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere in the building, a pipe knocked twice and went silent. Shammy stood under the hanging herbs, breathing in lightly. “It smells different,” she said. Mai leaned against the counter. “Yes.” Ace returned to her katana on the table. The oil cloth waited where she had left it. The blade caught a faint reflection from the kitchen light, emerald lines sleeping under steel. She did not pick it up immediately. Instead, she looked at the empty bowl. Then at the hook by the window. Then at Mai. “Good dinner,” Ace said. Mai’s smile came slowly. “Yes,” she said. “Good dinner.” Shammy looked between them, electric-blue eyes bright with restrained amusement and something gentler underneath. For once, she did not tease. The herbs moved slightly in the air above them. Not magic. Not omen. Not warning. Just a small green thing drying in a safehouse kitchen, changing the room one breath at a time.