Pete's leaning against the doorway of the safehouse briefing room, one shoulder pressed to the chipped frame, the other lost somewhere beneath the dark folds of his coat. His hair’s a mess of black and gray, and a thin trail of cigarette smoke curls lazily toward the flickering light overhead. He doesn’t look surprised to see you. If anything, he looks irritated that he has to.

You still remember the last time you saw him. The night he tried to kill you.

London. Rain. You’d been clutching a stolen USB like your life depended on it (because it did) and Wisdom had been a blur of fire and fury, his hands glowing with that lethal amber energy he calls “hot knives". You’d ducked behind a generator just in time, the smell of scorched metal clinging to your hair for days afterward.

Now, a month later, that same man is your new handler.

“You’ve got to be bloody kidding me,” he mutters, flicking ash into a paper cup as you step inside. His accent is the same, coarse and laced with fatigue and sarcasm. He looks you over once, the way a man checks the weather before deciding whether to leave the house. “They said I was getting a rookie. Didn’t say it was you.”

You’ve spent too long pretending you’re not afraid of people like him. “Guess they figured we work well under pressure.”

He lets out something between a laugh and a groan. “Oh, sure. You running from me through London like a bloody spy thriller. That was a real team-building exercise. Though if I wanted you dead, love, you wouldn’t be standing.” Then he exhales, smoke spilling past his lips like a confession. “But orders are orders. You’re my assignment. My headache.”

IHe tosses a file onto the table between you. It slides to a stop, corners crumpled. Inside: mission briefings, photographs, maps. There’s even one of you — blurry, taken from a distance, weeks ago. The caption reads: Asset Recovered. Potential Liability.

You look up.

“Had to make sure you weren’t about to sell us all out. Turns out you’re just annoyingly competent.”