Silk and Sundial

Sundial stared out at the Arctos skyline through the large window of Silk’s new 18th-story office, and wondered, not for the first time, what she was doing with her life. She was great at dealing with the sorts of problems she could infiltrate, exfiltrate, and purloin her way out of, but that didn’t seem to be a useful approach here. If a girl buys you tickets on an intercontinental flight and has you move in together, does that mean she likes you? Or were they just fleeing the country as friends?

Silk stared down at the wooden case on her desk, and at the object inside, whirring to itself and glowing softly. She stared back up at the thief, Sundial, sitting across from her, face nervous and expectant. She stared back down at the case.

She’d seen plenty of well-constructed fakes over the years, but this … no, there was no mistaking it. The longer she looked, the more the whirring seemed to resolve into whispered words on the edge of hearing, and the harder the clearly-unnatural sense of joyful wonder tried to shove its way in from the back of her mind. She lowered the lid of the case, closing it slowly with a fearful caution stronger than her sense of urgency.