He looked at Koshva. "We need clothes. Real ones. Not," he gestured at himself and Jax, "this."
Jax looked down at his hospital gown. "I think I pull it off."
"You don't," Wrench said.
"We also need somewhere to sleep that isn't here," Dokja continued. "No offence."
"Some taken," Wrench said.
"The Authority will have this sector flagged within the hour. They lost two anomalous signatures from a secure morgue. They're going to pull every feed, every record, every—"
"They won't find this place," Wrench said, with the quiet confidence of someone who had built that guarantee herself, brick by brick, over four years.
Dokja looked at her. Assessed. "Alright," he said, which from him was the closest thing to I trust you that existed in his vocabulary.
Wrench looked mildly surprised. She covered it quickly.
"There's a storage room in the back," she said. "It fits approximately three people if none of them have opinions about personal space."
"Six people," Koshva said.
"I'm aware of how many people there are, Koshva."
"I can sleep anywhere," Riko said, which was clearly true and clearly said without self pity, just the simple fact of a kid who'd made peace with harder floors than this one.
Something about that sat in the room for a moment longer than it should have.
Dokja looked at Riko. Riko looked back. That same look from the morgue, the one that didn't have the right shape for words yet.
"Tomorrow," Dokja said, to the room and to no one specifically, "we follow the coordinates."
"And tonight?" Jax asked.
Dokja looked at the hospital gown. At the den with its burnt wiring smell and holographic schematics and six people who had no particular reason to trust each other except that they'd already committed eleven felonies together, which was either the worst possible foundation or the only one that counted.
"Tonight," he said, "someone find me actual clothes."
"Dollar in the swear jar if you complain about what I find," Riko said.
"That's not how the swear jar works."
"It is now."
continue, not a new chapter tho
10:25 PM
"We're not going tonight," Wrench said, before anyone could suggest it.
Dokja looked at her.
"You died this morning," she said. "He's been in stasis for eight months." She gestured at Jax. "I've been awake for thirty one hours. Koshva looks like he's going to collapse into that chair and become part of it permanently. And Riko is twelve." She crossed her arms. "The coordinates aren't going anywhere. We go tomorrow, after everyone has slept and the two of you are wearing something that isn't a hospital gown."
A pause.
"She's right," Koshva said, with the profound relief of a man who had been hoping someone else would say it first.
Jax raised his hand. "I'd like it noted that I feel completely fine."
"You were dead," Wrench said.
"In stasis."
"Po-tay-to."
Dokja looked at the coordinates on the display one more time. Then at the chip in his hand. Then at the room, at the six of them crammed into a space designed for one, surrounded by schematics and empty nutrient packs and the soft hum of Wrench's equipment running its quiet diagnostics.
'Someone planned this very carefully,' he thought again. 'They can wait one more night.'
"Fine," he said.
He set the chip down on the console and looked at Wrench. "Do you have clothes that aren't hospital gowns?"
"For you, maybe. For him," she glanced at Jax, "he's on his own. He's too tall."
"I'll make it work," Jax said, with the confidence of a man who had woken up from eight months of nothing and decided the universe owed him some goodwill.
Riko had already curled up on the far end of the counter, back against the wall, arms crossed, eyes closed. Not performing sleep. Actually sleeping, the way street kids sleep, instantly and completely, in whatever space was available, because you learned early that rest was something you took when you could and worried about comfort later.
Dokja watched him for a moment.
'Four days,' he thought. 'I've been here four days and somehow I've accumulated a dead Ment, a criminal, a recon operative who was also dead, and a twelve year old who navigates this city better than anyone in the room.'
'I've had worse starts.'
He sat down on the floor with his back against the wall, close enough to the console that the soft light of Wrench's displays reached him. Not sleeping. Not yet. Just sitting with the quiet weight of everything that had happened since this morning and the thing sitting at the back of his skull that still didn't have a name.
Koshva was asleep in the chair within four minutes, which was a personal record even by his own estimation.
Wrench stayed at her console, running silent diagnostics on the Authority's search patterns, tracking the lockdown's radius, mapping the gaps. She didn't sleep. Dokja got the impression she didn't sleep much in general.
Jax sat beside Dokja on the floor, back against the same wall, long legs stretched out in front of him. He was quiet for a while, which was a different kind of quiet than Riko's or Koshva's. Comfortable. The quiet of someone who didn't feel the need to fill space.
"So," Jax said eventually, low enough not to wake anyone. "God of Humanity."
"Former," Dokja said.
"How's that work exactly."
"Badly," Dokja said. "And then you die."
Jax considered this. "Fair." He tilted his head back against the wall. "What's it like. Coming back."
Dokja thought about the morgue. The frost melting off the pod. The IV port in his hand. Riko grabbing the front of his gown with both fists.
"Loud," he said.
Jax nodded like that made complete sense. Maybe it did.
They sat in the quiet hum of Wrench's den, six people who hadn't known each other a week ago, breathing the same recycled air, and somewhere in the city the Authority was running search patterns and Valentina was presumably furious and Elias Vance was doing whatever Elias Vance did when nobody was watching him.
Tomorrow they would follow coordinates given to them by a man none of them understood.
Tonight they slept.
Most of them, anyway.