happy pride and something something bishova rooftop kiss!
the concept of kate kissing yelena right before her dramatic fall back and both of them feeling so thrilled is sooo 🛐🛐🛐 and you know rooftop kisses became their thing 👀
this was inspired by olivia rodrigo's song drop dead. highly recommend hallucinating bishova scenes to it
"kiss me and i might drop dead" -> "kiss me and i might do i really cool drop off the building to show off??"
Chapters: 7/?
Fandom: Thunderbolts (Movie 2025), Hawkeye (TV 2021), Black Widow (Movie 2021)
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Relationships: Yelena Belova/Kate Bishop
Characters: Yelena Belova, Kate Bishop, Fanny | Yelena Belova’s Dog, Lucky the Pizza Dog (Marvel), Alexei Shostakov, Clint Barton, James “Bucky” Barnes, John Walker (Marvel), Ava Starr, Robert “Bob” Reynolds (Marvel)
Additional Tags: Family, Established Relationship, Children, Childbirth, Fluff, Smut, The New Avengers - Freeform
Series: Part 2 of Yelena and Kate Found Family
Summary:
CHAPTER SEVEN NOW UP
Kate becomes ravenous in more ways than one. The cravings for Chinese food and sour candy from the first trimester remain, and she starts to crave sushi, which she does not allow herself to have, and begins crying about late at night.
Eventually, after complaining about it to the other Thunderbolts, Ava shows up with a shellfish and raw fish free, cucumber roll, which predictably makes Kate both happy and a crying, hormonal mess. Ava is mildly mortified with all of Kate’s thank you hugs, but offers to bring by cucumber rolls as needed. Bob especially makes himself available to help with cravings, often suppling Kate with sour candy that is so sharp and intense, that Yelena cringes when she is offered some.
These twins were gonna come out lemon and cucumber scented. She just knows it.
A/N: Finally got around to writing the mission! Is it toxic for me to enjoy jealous angry Yelena?👀
As always, let me know what you guys think! 💚💜
Word Count: 10,302
Chapter 7 begins below the cut. You can also find the fic on AO3
Chapter 7 - Miss Bishop
They'd gone through the plan so many times at this point that Kate could have recited it forwards, backwards, and probably in poorly pronounced Spanish.
Which meant her brain allowed for a certain percentage of her attention to be spent on something considerably less useful.
Analysing Yelena.
Something was different, not dramatically, but enough that she felt the shift, and Kate had been trying to decipher what it was for approximately three hours without success. Yelena was always so stoic and unreadable, but since this morning her demeanour had become ever so slightly more legible. Almost softer.
Kate had a feeling it was connected to the panic attack in some way, but that explanation didn't quite cover it, and the gap between what she could explain and what she could feel was where all the trouble lived.
Because she was ninety-nine percent sure she'd caught Yelena's eyes in the reflection of her mirror this morning, darkening, just for a second, before snapping away. And that made no sense to her at all, so the more she turned it over the more she convinced herself she'd imagined it.
She was probably imagining it.
Almost certainly.
Throughout the briefing Kate contributed where she was supposed to, watched the floor plan, answered questions. But in the margins of all of that, in the spaces between sentences, she was watching.
They bickered a few times during the briefing but it felt different than their arguments over the past week, it was lighter, and decidedly less heated…in certain ways, because there was multiple times that a verbal jab was delivered with a smirk, or a ghost of a smile on her face.
She filed it away, adding it to the list of things to go over in her head a million times.
Ava's feet were up on the table, fidgeting with one of Lucky's tennis balls, boredom prominent on her face, as Pete, Kate and Yelena stood around the blueprint in the centre of the table.
"Can we address something?" she said, swinging back and forth in her chair and looking between Kate and Peter with the expression of someone about to extinguish her boredom at someone else's expense.
Peter looked up from the table. "Oh come on, what else could there possibly be?"
Kate stood to full height and placed her hands on her hips. "What is it?"
Ava gestured between Kate and Peter and shot a small smile in Yelena's direction. "Do you think people will buy them as a couple?"
Yelena's eyes sparkled with mischief, taking the bait immediately. "Hmm. More little brother than boyfriend, no?"
Kate rolled her eyes, she'd clocked they were messing with them, but Pete clearly hadn't gotten the memo, because he threw both hands in the air. "Little brother?! I'm literally older than her!"
Kate tilted her head slightly and added, under her breath, "Technically you were blipped and I wasn't, so biologically, I'm older."
Pete shot her an incredulous look. "Dude, not helping!"
Yelena, clearly in full stride now, continued. "I do not think it is the age."
"Yeah," Ava chimed in. "It's something else right?"
Pete turned around, hands firmly clasped at the back of his head, half-looking at the ceiling. "It's my height, isn't it?" he shrugged.
Yelena tilted her head. "Maybe that is it. You are too short for her." She delivered it flatly, and then turned to Kate with a look that was waiting for something.
Kate's eyebrows rose. She crossed her arms, turned her entire body toward Yelena, and looked down at her. "Bold of you to assume I don't like ‘em short."
She held eye contact. Your move.
Yelena looked up at her, the corner of her mouth pulling slightly, and Kate caught it, the brief, almost imperceptible squeeze of her fist around the pen in her hand.
"I am secure in my height!" Pete announced, slightly too loudly for that to be entirely true, "Plus Kate agreed to wear her shortest heels, so it'll be fine!" He was clearly unaware of the silent battle going on between the two women.
Kate held Yelena's gaze a beat longer than she should have before finally pulling her eyes away. Noted.
"Speaking of what we're wearing," Kate said, steering them back on track, "did you guys sort the lanyards and name badges?"
"Yep, and both uniforms have the same base," Ava said, catching the tennis ball and sitting up slightly. "Which means we can skip the costume change entirely."
"Nice, so you can go straight to the staff entrance on the east side?" Kate confirmed, leaning over the blueprint and scanning for the position markers. Peter's was red, Ava's was white, Kate's was purple, obviously, and Yelena's was green.
Before Kate could reach for them, Yelena moved.
She stepped in close, closer than the table required, and leaned across Kate to reach the markers, her chest brushing Kate's forearm, the warmth of her pressing briefly along Kate's side as her arm reached past her. She was unhurried about it, deliberate, even. She moved Ava's marker first, then her own, her forearm grazing Kate's as she pulled back.
She straightened up beside Kate, close enough that Kate could still feel the warmth of where she'd been.
"So—" she looked at the markers, then up at Kate, "—this position?" her voice coming out slightly lower than usual, looking up at Kate with a completely innocent face. There was something in her eyes though, quiet and steady and not entirely neutral. Almost daring.
Kate's brain took a brief, unscheduled holiday. This position. The context of that phrase was not rooted in the mission anymore.
Kate nodded almost imperceptibly "Mhhmm, I like that positi—" the look on Yelena's face changed slightly, jaw a little more slack than before, and there was that look in her eyes again, Kate stopped herself, clearing her throat and turning back to face the table, wrangling back her imagination, "Yeah, that works fine!”
As Kate looked away Yelena let her lips curl slightly into a satisfied grin, and Ava barely hid her amusement, proud at seeing her friend almost back to her old self.
Peter was apparently oblivious to everything that was silently happening, “So like, be honest, do I need to get lifts?”
—
Kate got ready in a very specific order: hair, makeup, then clothes and shoes. She was self-aware enough to know she was clumsy, and the longer she had her dress on, the more likely she was to drop her mascara wand all over the front.
Her hair had taken slightly longer than she'd budgeted for, and it had taken an annoying number of attempts to get her eyeliner right, but other than that she was feeling relatively in control and surprisingly on time.
Right up until the moment she shimmied into her dress and attempted to zip it up herself. She could get her fingertips to the metal of the tab, but at this angle she couldn't get the leverage to move it even slightly.
She contorted herself into various unhelpful angles for about two minutes before flopping down onto the bed in a huff and accepting the fact that this was not happening alone.
She got up and stood in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror. The dress sat flawlessly against her frame, black satin wrapped close to her body before falling cleanly to the floor. A dramatic slit cut high along her left thigh, exposing long bare skin.
The Louboutins she wore were a gamble at this height, given her clumsiness, but they paid off. Despite her earlier objections, it was one of her favourite dresses, she looked the part. Except for the ten inches of open zip running from the base of her spine that absolutely could not stay like that.
She assessed her options.
Peter was on the opposite end of the residential floor, and was probably already running late and panicking.
Cassie and Kamala were still working.
There was really only one option.
She picked up her phone.
I need your help, come over pls and thx x
She sent it before she could reconsider.
The reply came in under a minute.
Two minutes
Kate put the phone down, smoothed the front of the dress, and tried not to overthink it.
The knock came exactly two minutes later.
"You don't have to knock, come in!" Kate called.
The door opened behind her. She turned around.
And stopped.
Yelena stood in the doorway, hair slicked back, blue eyeliner tracing under her eyes, black fitted trousers, a white button-up shirt with the top three buttons undone, a black tie draped untied around her neck, and a black jacket over her arm.
She looked genuinely, objectively hot.
Kate completely forgot the purpose of the visit and just stood there, barely blinking, as if not blinking would somehow extend the moment.
Yelena, for her part, had gone very still in the doorway, hands in her pockets, jaw set.
She'd learned her lesson from this morning and had mentally prepared herself on the walk over. For the most part, on the surface, she was holding it together considerably better than she had earlier. Internally, she was shutting down.
No amount of mental preparation could have prepared her for the sight of Kate.
Her eyes moved over Kate once, just once, slow and controlled, and then settled on her face with the focused neutrality of someone exercising considerable discipline. Her mouth was watering in a way she was choosing not to examine. She swallowed, took a quiet breath, and stepped inside.
"Hi," Yelena said.
"Hi," Kate said.
A beat.
Yelena sauntered across the room and stopped in front of Kate, a small smile playing at her mouth. "What can I help you with, Miss Bishop?" The opportunity was too good to pass up.
Kate's mouth went completely dry. Snap out of it. She asked you a question. What was the question?
"I umm—" she started, and Yelena's eyebrow rose with quiet enjoyment. "Zip." It was the only word available.
She gestured vaguely over her shoulder, resigning herself to sign language since full sentences were clearly off the table.
"Turn around," Yelena said. Low, like a command.
Kate's body moved on instinct, turning to face the mirror before her brain had fully signed off on it.
In the mirror she could see Yelena's reflection, eyes down, posture controlled, focused. She stepped closer to Kate's back, assessing the problem. Definitely not just taking in the expanse of Kate's bare back, committing it to memory.
Then she reached up and moved Kate's hair to one side, her fingers grazing Kate's shoulder in a touch so light it barely registered, except that Kate felt it everywhere.
The dress was fitted enough that the zip required care.
Yelena took it slowly. One hand moved to find the fabric at the base of Kate's spine, the other finding the zip tab, drawing it upward in a steady, unhurried motion.
Kate was very aware of her hands, the warmth of the one resting just above the small of her back, and the other, which grazed her skin lightly as the zip rose, fingertips tracing the line of her spine. It was deliberate in a way that made concentration impossible.
She fixed her eyes on the mirror and found she couldn't look away from Yelena no matter how hard she tried.
The zip caught.
The resistance pushed Kate forward half a step. Yelena's hand moved to her hip on instinct, steadying her. Then Kate felt fingertips press into her hip, not hard, just enough, and pull her deliberately back to where she'd been. Her breath caught, and a small, almost imperceptible sound escaped before she could stop it.
Yelena's eyes found Kate's in the mirror and didn't leave them.
The zip drew upward the rest of the way, slow and deliberate.
It was done.
Neither of them moved.
The room was quiet and Kate's mind was anything but. She watched Yelena behind her in the mirror, jaw set but not tight, eyes fixed and steady and darker than usual, close enough that Kate could feel the shallow warmth of her breath against her bare shoulder.
This was the look. The one she'd been turning over all day, the one she couldn't name. And now it was here, close enough to be undeniable.
On instinct, Kate's head turned slowly, wanting to see it without the glass between them. Her body followed and Yelena's hands shifted with her, still resting at her hip.
Kate watched her through her lashes. Yelena's jaw had gone slightly slack, her eyes almost half-lidded, and for one fraction of a second they dropped to Kate's lips.
Then Yelena blinked.
Something shifted in her expression, the look broke, replaced by something that was almost surprise, like she'd just clocked where she was and what she was doing. She stepped back, her hand dropping to her side.
She looked at her wrist, sliding the white cuff back to check her watch. A deliberate reset.
When she spoke her voice was even, just slightly quieter than usual. "We leave in fifteen minutes. Everyone is meeting in the garage."
"Right," Kate said. "Yeah."
Yelena nodded once. Her body didn't move immediately.
Kate couldn't exist in this atmosphere for one more second. Her body was fighting with her brain, every instinct pulling toward the distance between them, so she did the only thing she knew how to do.
"Thank you, by the way. I genuinely could not have done that myself without dislocating a shoulder, which I absolutely did not want to do before a mission… or ever, really, because dislocating a shoulder is soooo unpleasant, and doing it before a mission would be worse than doing it during one, probably, although neither scenario is—" she took a breath, "—ideal."
A small smile crept onto Yelena's face.
"You are welcome, Kate Bishop," she said quietly.
She picked up her jacket, turned, and walked out.
Kate stood in the centre of her room, dress done, breath still shallow.
From the bed, Lucky huffed.
The sound broke whatever was left of the trance, and Kate turned to look at him. He stared back at her with the expression of a dog who had seen everything and had opinions.
"That wasn't a figment of my imagination, right?" she whispered.
He didn't answer. Obviously.
She turned to the dresser, put her earrings in, picked up her bag, and told herself very firmly that she was fine.
She was mostly fine.
—
The garage was cool and quiet at seven twenty, the overhead lights casting everything in a dim flat white that made people look like they were in a film.
Kate stepped out of the lift first, heels clicking against the concrete, and immediately heard a low whistle from somewhere near the cars.
"Damnnn." Ava was leaning against the side of the black SUV, arms crossed, uniform immaculate. She looked Kate up and down with exaggerated appreciation.
Peter stepped out of the elevator behind her, already straightening his jacket with both hands. "I know, I know… I ironed it myself." He did a small, entirely unprompted spin.
"So you decided against the lifts?" Ava jabbed.
Peter, clearly already in character for the evening, shot back without missing a beat. "Speaking of Lyft, you can wave goodbye to that five star rating."
Ava rolled her eyes and looked back at Kate.
Kate huffed out a laugh, amused at how their dynamic had grown over the past week, Peter was holding his own now.
The car was already running, exhaust barely visible in the cool air. She noticed Yelena was already in the driver's seat.
Peter appeared beside her, extending his arm with a slight bow. "M'lady."
"Oh, thank you, kind sir," Kate said, with a slight accent and a curtsy, taking his arm.
They walked toward the car, her heels steady on the concrete, and as she passed the bonnet she glanced through the windscreen. Yelena was looking straight ahead, hands on the wheel, the picture of composure.
Then Kate reached the rear door and caught a glimpse of the rear view mirror.
Yelena's eyes were in it.
They moved away the second Kate's found them, back to straight ahead, jaw set, focus apparently absolute.
Peter opened the back door and handed her in with practically comical ceremony, then the act broke and he slid in beside her. The squeak of leather echoed through the quiet of the expansive garage as he pushed Kate to the opposite side and pulled the door shut.
Ava, Yelena, and Kate all looked at him with blank expressions.
He turned to all of them, genuinely confused. "What?"
Ava shook her head and shifted straight into mission mode. "Comms," she said, pulling hers out and fitting the earpiece. "Everyone check in."
The familiar click of four earpieces settling into place.
"Parker, check," Peter said.
"Bishop, check," Kate said.
"Starr, check." Ava adjusted the fit, tapping the side once.
Then Yelena's voice, low and even, came through the earpiece directly.
"Belova. Check."
Kate stared at the back of the headrest in front of her for a moment.
She could get used to that. Yelena's voice, that register, directly in her ear all night.
No. Kate. Game time. Focus.
"All good," Ava confirmed, pulling up the venue on the dash display. "We drop you at the front entrance, escort you out, and then you head inside. Remember, upper class energy." She glanced back briefly. "Bishop, that shouldn't be a stretch."
"Born and raised," Kate said lightly, with a salute and a wink.
"Parker—"
"I know. No 'dude.'" He made air quotes around the word with complete sincerity.
"Good." Ava turned back to the display. "Once you're out, we take the car round to the side street, out of sight of the main entrance. From there we walk to the staff entrance on the east side and move into the service corridor." She looked at the map. "We'll be at the patch panel within eight minut—"
"Patty," Peter interrupted, solemnly.
A pause.
"What?" Ava said.
"The panel," Peter said. "We named it Patty."
Ava turned to look at him, squinting with equal parts confusion and judgement.
"Patty the patch panel," Kate confirmed, with a shrug.
Ava turned to face Yelena next to her. "We didn't agree to that name."
"They agreed. We agreed not to argue," Yelena said, eyes fixed forward.
"Why does it even need a name?"
"Kate wanted a name," Yelena said, with the exhaustion of someone who had already had this conversation and lost.
"Patty," Kate confirmed from the back, with a nod.
Ava exhaled slowly. "Fine. We'll be at….Patty within eight minutes of drop-off. Camera feed goes live shortly after."
"We'll have eyes on the office corridor and the main floor," Yelena added. "You do not go past the main hall without clearance from us." She glanced in the mirror. "Understood?"
"Understood," Kate and Peter said together.
The car pulled forward, tyres quiet on the garage floor, and moved up the ramp toward the street.
Kate looked out the window as the city opened up around them, the lights of evening New York sliding past the glass. Beside her, Peter smoothed his lapels one final time and seemed to decide he was done adjusting.
In the front, Yelena's eyes stayed on the road.
Kate tried to keep her eyes out of the rear view mirror. A few minutes in, her willpower gave out.
Yelena was watching the road.
Probably.
Shortly after, the car slowed to a stop at the base of the steps, and through the tinted window Kate could see the entrance to the Neurosphere building, glass and steel, lit from within, guests moving up the steps in a steady stream of black tie and decadent gowns.
She heard the driver's door open. A moment later, her door followed.
Yelena stood at the open door, one hand extended, the picture of professional discretion. Her expression was neutral, eyes forward, doing the job.
Kate took her hand.
It was a brief thing, the few seconds it took to step out of a low car in a floor-length dress.
Yelena's eyes came to hers the moment Kate straightened, and that look was there again. Just a flicker at the edges, there and gone before anyone watching would have caught it.
Kate caught it.
She held Yelena's gaze for precisely one second, their seconds seemed to stretch longer than normal seconds now, it was long enough to confirm she hadn't imagined it, but not long enough to do anything about it.
She looked toward the steps.
"Thank you," she said, in the polite, distant tone of someone thanking their driver.
Yelena released her hand and stepped back without a word.
Around the other side of the car, she could hear Peter being let out by Ava, she turned to see Peter attempt some sort of bow, probably, or a curtsy, it was hard to tell, but Ava had responded with the particular silence of someone choosing not to engage, exhaustion painted quietly on her face.
A moment later Peter appeared at Kate's side, arm extended, having apparently decided to save the performance for the steps.
Kate took it.
They walked up together, heels and dress shoes on stone, the low murmur of the event growing as they climbed. Behind them, she heard the car pull away.
The glass doors ahead reflected them back, Kate in red, Peter in black, looking every inch like they belonged here.
Ava's voice came through the earpiece, quiet and dry. "Show time!"
Kate didn't react. Neither did Peter. They pushed through the doors.
The Neurosphere headquarters at night was something else entirely.
The atrium had been opened up for the event, a vast, double-height space that felt like someone had taken a reception area and made it beautiful. Everything inside was clean and deliberate: white marble floors shot through with pale grey veining, tasteful lighting that complemented the extravagant guests effortlessly. Long tables ran along the periphery, bearing technology displays under glass: devices, schematics, prototypes, each one lit from beneath like artefacts in a museum.
At the end of the room sat a stage and podium, behind it a large floor-to-ceiling navy blue velvet curtain, clearly concealing something significant.
People circulated with champagne and the practised ease of individuals who attended events like this often enough to have stopped being impressed by them. You could almost smell the pissing contest being conducted between guests; pompous expressions and passive aggressive nods prevalent in every interaction she could see.
Kate had grown up in rooms like this, and it did not feel nostalgic. It felt suffocating, but she could do this, for the mission.
A waiter appeared at her elbow almost immediately, silver tray extended. She took a champagne flute without breaking stride, Peter doing the same, and let her eyes move across the room in what looked like casual appreciation and was actually a full tactical scan.
She noted the exits, the staff doors, the corridor leading away from the main atrium toward the private offices, visible at the far end of the room. She clocked the cameras in the corners, four of them, covering the main floor with minimal blind spots.
These rooms always greeted her the same way, not with anything so obvious as heads turning, more a subtle redistribution of attention. She felt it in the way a few conversations paused a half-beat too long, the way eyes moved over her and then away.
The men leered unapologetically, as they always had, even when she was a teenager. Disgusting. The women were more interesting, a few faces she half-recognised from the circuit, corporate New York's particular ecosystem of fundraisers and product launches and charity dinners. One woman across the room met her eyes, assessed, and then said something to the person beside her.
The Bishop name had always carried weight. Since her mother's arrest, it carried a heavier kind.
Kate took a sip of champagne.
The comms crackled.
"Camera's live," Yelena's voice came through, level and quiet. "We have eyes on you."
"Begin schmoozing at any time, guys," Ava added lightly.
Kate huffed quietly. Let's get this over with. She turned to Peter, pitching her voice low under the cover of the room's ambient noise. "Let's stay together for the first couple. Then fan out and cover more ground."
Peter exhaled with the quiet relief of someone who hadn't wanted to ask for that. "Yeah. Good call."
She clinked her glass lightly against his and turned to face the room.
"Right then," she said quietly. "Now or never."
The defence contractor and his wife were easy to spot.
Kate had seen them before, twice at Bishop Security fundraisers, once at a gala for a veterans charity her mother had sponsored.
He was mid-fifties, silver at the temples, the bearing of someone who had spent a long time in rooms where decisions were made and had stopped being subtle about flaunting it. His wife stood beside him with the composed watchfulness of someone who missed nothing and forgave very little.
Kate steered them toward the couple with the unhurried confidence of someone who had simply recognised a familiar face.
"Richard," She extended her hand with a smile that hit exactly the right note: warm, recognising, not overly familiar. "I thought that was you. Kate Bishop."
Richard Hale’s eyes swept over her, lingering a fraction too long before recognition settled in. Then came the smile. Warm at first glance, but edged with something that made Kate’s shoulders tighten instinctively.
“Kate. Of course.” His gaze dragged over her again, entirely unbothered by how obvious it was. “Don’t you look lovely.”
He took her hand and held it just a beat too long, thumb brushing faintly against her knuckles before he finally seemed to remember his wife was standing beside him.
“You know Sandra.”
"Of course." Kate turned to Sandra, who was already assessing her with quiet precision, something cooler underneath the smile. "It's good to see you both."
"And you." Sandra's smile was polished. "We didn't expect you to…that is, it's lovely to see you out."
Kate absorbed the implication without reacting. These types always wanted a reaction. "This is Peter," she said, smoothly redirecting. "He's been working with our tech division. We're looking at some of Neurosphere's developments."
Peter nodded, doing a reasonable impression of someone who worked in tech investment rather than someone who had webbed a pepper grinder at breakfast.
"Interesting crowd for a health tech showcase," Kate continued, keeping her tone light. "I wouldn't have expected to see you here, Richard. This feels a little outside your usual territory."
Richard bristled almost imperceptibly, exchanging a brief look with his wife. "Quite the contrary, my dear girl. Nothing is outside of my territory."
Defensive. Exactly where she wanted him, because now he had something to prove.
"Of course." Kate's expression stayed warm. "Growing up, I'd always hear from my mother that you were at the cutting edge of governmental advancements in New York… though that was a long time ago—" she paused just long enough for it to land, "—but I'm sure that still holds true."
"Ooooo, get him," Ava said through the comms, clearly entertained.
Kate's saccharine smile didn't slip.
Richard's chest puffed out. "That it does Miss Bishop, I'm close with some key investors in Neurosphere," he said, dropping his voice. "There have been conversations regarding potential applications beyond the clinical space." He nodded toward the stage.
Kate kept her expression at politely interested.
He leaned in slightly with a wink. "But you didn't hear that from me."
"Of course not." She smiled, playing into the closeness. She was about to probe further when Sandra turned to her with the smooth pivot of someone who had enough of this interaction already.
"How are you doing, Kate? Really." Her voice had softened in the way that wasn't kindness. "It must have been an incredibly difficult couple of years. With everything that happened with your mother."
The room continued around them, oblivious.
Kate felt Peter shift almost imperceptibly beside her.
"I'm doing well, thank you," Kate said. Her voice came out exactly as she needed it to, measured, grateful for the concern, closed. "It's been a lot to navigate, but—"
"She was always such a force," Sandra continued, with the momentum of someone who had decided to say the thing. "Before what happened, of course." A small pause. "Such a shame. I'm just glad you still have the confidence to attend these things while she cannot. The Bishop name in any room still stands regardless."
Peter was already lining up to intervene, but Kate got there first.
She placed her hand over her chest. "That's very kind of you to say," she said.
Peter stepped in with the casual ease, "Actually, Richard, I'd love to pick your brain about the defence procurement side… we've been looking at some crossover with our portfolio and I think your perspective would be invaluable." He turned slightly, drawing Richard's attention with him.
Richard took it gratefully, and the conversation shifted.
Kate stood for another thirty seconds, finishing the exchange with Sandra with the graceful efficiency she'd been trained in since childhood, and then they moved away.
When they were far enough into the crowd, Peter leaned slightly toward her. "You okay?"
"Yeah." She meant it, mostly. "It was gonna happen at some point, might as well get it out of the way."
He nodded, didn't push, and changed the subject. "Great first schmooze though."
"I told you. Rich people loooove to talk," Kate confirmed with a smile.
"Ok so we know they're probably developing products that could span into the security sector, but we don't know what," Ava chimed in.
"Even if we did, it's still not concrete enough to directly tie it to the weapons shipment," Yelena added.
Peter started tapping Kate's arm with increasing urgency. "Oh my god," he said, his voice low.
"What did we say about dude!" Ava's voice came through the earpiece immediately.
Peter apparently didn't hear her. He was already practically vibrating. "Five o'clock. Grey suit. That's Marcus Yuen."
Kate found him without turning her head fully. Mid-forties, slight build, holding a champagne flute with the careful grip of someone who wasn't entirely comfortable at parties. He was standing adjacent to one of the glass display tables, close enough to look like he belonged next to it without quite committing to a conversation about it.
"One of the lab techs?" Kate said.
"Not just a lab tech. He’s the lead on the neural interface project. The man’s tied to over fifteen patents in the last five years. That’s unheard of!" Peter’s voice had already taken on the reverent tone of someone discussing a personal hero. "We have to talk to him."
Kate looked at him. "We can go over there, but you need to dial…" she gestured vaguely at his entire existence, "…all of this down. Several notches."
Peter straightened immediately, smoothing his expression into something more professional. He took a measured breath. "Sorry. My bad. I’m notched down."
Kate didn’t entirely believe him, but he was still playing the part well enough that it probably wouldn’t matter.
They drifted towards Yuen as casually as Peter could manage, which still carried the faint energy of a golden retriever trying very hard to behave at a wedding.
Peter caught Yuen’s eye and extended a hand with the easy confidence of someone who did this all the time. He absolutely did not, but he gave a decent impression of it.
"Marcus Yuen? Peter, Bishop Securities. We’ve been keeping an eye on Neurosphere for a while. Exciting time to be in this space."
Yuen shook his hand with the automatic politeness of a man who had been introduced to three hundred people already that evening. "Thank you. Yes, it’s been a busy period."
"The wearables division especially," Peter continued smoothly. "The clinical trial outcomes have been impressive. Way ahead of most of what we’re seeing elsewhere in therapeutic tech."
From there, the conversation disappeared into increasingly incomprehensible tech jargon.
Peter and Yuen launched into an animated discussion about neural interfaces, signal mapping, and wearable integration systems, a surprising amount of which went straight over Kate’s head, which was honestly impressive. Tech was usually her thing too, but this was very specifically Peter territory.
So she let him take the lead.
Instead, she scanned the room again, searching for security blind spots, staff doors, anything that looked remotely useful. They still hadn’t found an access point, and sooner or later they were going to need to make strides in getting the local files.
After a few minutes, Kate sensed the shift before she fully registered it.
Yuen’s attitude seemed off. His eyes flicked briefly across the room, not socially, but analytically, like he was nervous.
"If you’ll excuse me," he said smoothly, "I should make my rounds. Pleasure meeting you both."
He shook Peter’s hand again, nodded politely to Kate, then disappeared back into the crowd with the purposeful stride of someone removing himself from a conversation as quickly as etiquette allowed.
Kate and Peter watched him go.
Then Peter turned to her, lowering his voice dramatically.
"Electrode array?" he repeated, scoffing as if this should register to Kate at all.
Kate blinked at him. "I’m gonna be honest, Pete, I completely zoned out. Give me the cliff notes version."
“I knew we should've attached some jingling keys to the Spider's jacket”, Yelena delivered dryly, she could almost hear the smile on both of their faces through the comms.
"Weeee were listening the whole time," Ava cut in over comms, "but it barely counted as English, so make the cliff notes English."
Peter exhaled sharply. "Okay, so we started with less invasive models. Wearables, EEG, ECoG, that kind of thing. I used your tactic."
Kate frowned. "My tactic?"
"Yeah. Pretending to know slightly less than I do so people explain things because they like sounding smart." He paused. "Except… he got stuff wrong." Peter looked genuinely disturbed by this.
"Like, I know I’m a nerd," he continued, "but how do I know more about neural interfaces than the guy supposedly leading the division?"
"Maybe he was being careful?" Kate suggested. "Not wanting to hand out trade secrets to random investors?"
"He got the tech wrong," Peter repeated, still sounding faintly horrified. "Like, once I moved past EEG and ECoG and started asking about the fully invasive systems they publicly claim to use, he completely blanked."
"You’re sure?" Ava asked.
Kate glanced across the ballroom. Yuen had already rejoined another cluster of guests, slipping effortlessly back into the performance of charming executive.
"Honestly?" Peter placed his hands on his hips and took a deep breath. "I’d bet my lucky soldering iron he didn’t work on any of it."
Kate’s jaw dropped, that soldering iron had emotional significance.
"Like somebody slapped his name on the patents and gave him just enough information to sound convincing at surface level. It explains the ungodly amount of patents he’s had…honestly I'm a little disappointed" He seemed genuinely deflated.
“Never greet your hero”, Yelena supplied.
Kate noticed the incorrect idiom, and tried to suppress her smile and get back onto the matter at hand. "So the real team is buried somewhere in those files."
"Surely," Peter said, already thinking three steps ahead again. "We need those files."
Kate reached for a fresh champagne flute from a passing tray and looked back out across the room, mind already turning over possibilities. “Ok, we should start looking for access points; let's split up so we can cover more ground.”
“Roger that, I’ll take the left side” Peter peeled off toward the tech display tables on the far side of the room, and Kate turned to face her half of it.
She took a slow circuit, champagne in hand, playing the part. Pausing at a display, tilting her head at a schematic, exchanging polite nods with passing guests. All the while her eyes were doing something entirely different, tracking baseboards, AV equipment, staff-facing fixtures, anything that looked like it might have a cable running behind it.
Nothing obvious. Nothing accessible without drawing attention.
She had positioned herself in the corner of the room, subtly checking behind a display case, when a hand closed around her elbow.
"There she is." The man was around her age, broad, with the easy entitlement of someone who had never had to work particularly hard for anything. He didn't introduce himself. He just looked her over and took his time about it. "You are a sight for sore eyes. Finally, someone to make this gala more fun." He delivered it with a smirk he clearly assumed was charming.
Kate kept the smile in place. "Can I help you?"
"You can start by letting me get you a drink." He hadn't let go of her elbow.
"I'm fine, thank you," she said, already shifting to leave.
"Come on" His grip tightened slightly. "You wear a dress like that and expect a red-blooded male to take no for an answer?" He gave a short laugh, like he'd said something reasonable. "I'm only human."
Kate's smile didn't move. At this point, it was more of a grimace. Over the comms she heard a clatter, and quickened footsteps.
"Incoming," Ava sighed through the earpiece.
Kate kept looking at the man in front of her. She was practically pressed against the wall at this point. In any normal scenario she'd have kneed him and broken every bone in his hand so he couldn't do this to anyone else. But she was on mission, and the last thing she needed was eyes on her.
His hand dropped from her elbow and moved toward the slit in her dress, toward the exposed skin of her thigh.
"Seriously?" he said, leaning closer. "One drink. Stop pretending you're the type of girl to say no—"
From behind him came a decisive collision, the neat, controlled bump of someone walking into his back, followed immediately by the clatter of a tray shifting, glasses catching themselves.
"I'm so sorry, sir. Please excuse me."
Kate recognised the voice before she'd fully processed that it was there.
Yelena stood just behind him, tray steady, uniform immaculate, expression perfectly mortified in the way of someone who had just committed an accidental social transgression. Her eyes told a different story. There was fire behind them.
The contact between his hand and Kate's thigh had not happened.
The man turned, irritation flashing across his face, the moment broken entirely. "Do you know who the f—"
"My sincerest apologies," Yelena cut him off, jaw tight, and fixed him with a look that was barely contained. She extended the tray toward him. "Champagne, sir?"
He stared at her for a second, then snatched a glass and turned away, already looking for someone else to prey on.
Yelena straightened, tray resettled, and looked at Kate with the polite neutrality of waitstaff acknowledging a guest. Her jaw worked.
"Miss Bishop."
"Thank you," Kate said earnestly.
Their eyes met for one second. The fire in Yelena's hadn't fully receded, but there was a softness there. She nodded once and turned to walk back toward the service corridor, unhurried, as though nothing of note had occurred.
Peter appeared at Kate's side a few seconds later, looking confusedly at Yelena's retreating form. "Did I miss something?"
A pause on the comms. Then Yelena's voice snapped through, all that contained rage finding somewhere to go. "Where the hell were you?"
"I went to the bathroom, I took my comms out so you didn't hear the—" Peter stopped himself. "You know what, doesn't matter." He looked at Kate for backup.
There was a crackle on the comms, followed by a beat of silence.
"Piss on your own time, Spider-Boy," Ava said.
Yelena didn't say another word.
Kate shook her head and changed the subject. "Find anything?"
Peter shook his. "Display tables are all sealed units, no open ports. Found one Ethernet socket near the east wall but it was blanked off."
"Same on my side," Kate said. She looked toward the far end of the atrium, where the corridor leading to the private offices sat in relative quiet, a single staff member disappearing through a door. "Whatever's running the event is locked down on the main floor. Which means anything accessible will be back there."
"The offices," Peter said.
"The offices," Kate confirmed.
She touched her earpiece. "We need to move toward the back corridor. Anything promising on the feed?"
"Tech display just inside the corridor entrance," Yelena said. "Adjacent to the bathrooms. Gives you a reason to be heading that way."
"Two offices on the ground floor with lights on," Ava added. "One looks like active use. Nobody in there right now."
Kate set her champagne flute on a passing tray.
"Right," she said. "I think I need to find the bathroom."
"Oh, I'll show you," Peter said earnestly, not picking up that Kate didn't need the bathroom.
They drifted toward the corridor with unhurried ease. They were about fifteen feet from the entrance when Kate heard her name.
"Kate?" The light, raspy, slightly accented voice came from about five feet behind her.
Kate turned. Her ex threaded her way through the crowd toward her, dark-haired, red-lipped, with the kind of blue eyes that looked almost artificially vivid against her tanned skin, and shorter than Kate remembered her from college.
She'd dressed up for the evening, but practically, she wore a fitted turtleneck dress in dark brown, smart enough for the room but clearly chosen by someone who also had to work in it.
Kate steeled herself. She'd known they were going to cross paths at some point, Maggie was her contact, the reason they were in the building in the first place, but that didn't make it less of a thing she'd have chosen to avoid.
"Mags!" she delivered with as genuine a smile as she could manage.
"Ooo who's Mags?" Ava asked over the comms, in the tone of someone watching reality TV.
Kate ignored the question. "I was wondering when we'd bump into you! This is Peter."
"Of course." Maggie looked at Peter with a sickly sweet smile that somehow communicated he was an inconvenience. "Your plus one."
"Hi, yeah. Thanks for getting us in," Peter said earnestly, clearly sensing something was off but unable to identify what. "So, uh. How do you know Kate?"
Kate wished he hadn't asked.
"We were a thing back in college." Maggie paused, letting her eyes move over Kate slowly and deliberately, as though they were the only two people in the room. "Really struggling to remember why we broke it off, to be honest."
Because you cheated on me with half the volleyball team after a month.
"Oh, you know," Kate said lightly. "We drifted into different circles. Different interests. I spent most of my time on archery." A beat. "You spent yours on the volleyball squad."
Although she was completely over it, she couldn't resist.
Maggie laughed briefly, looking at the floor. Then she looked back up, directly into Kate's eyes, with a smirk that hadn't changed since college. "That was a long time ago. Interests change."
Kate stood there with nothing useful to say.
Yelena's voice came through, sharp and clipped: "Sorry to break up the reunion, but we are on mission. Move."
Beside her, Peter had gone very still in the way of someone who had correctly identified that they were a third wheel and had no idea what to do about it. He took Yelena's prompt gratefully. "I'm gonna go to the bathroom…weak bladder!" He turned on his heel and headed toward the corridor.
"Yeah, I should also—" Kate started, already turning, when Maggie's hand shot out to stop her.
"Yanno, I got you an invite" Maggie was playing with her empty champagne glass. "I have to get back to work soon. Have a drink with me first?"
Through the earpiece, Peter's voice: "Maybe you could get some information out of her."
Yelena: "Megan is not needed. We focus on getting the files."
Ava, half-reluctantly: "She works the event. She might have some useful insight."
Ava and Peter were right. Maggie had been on the same cybersecurity course as Kate at college, maybe her job is adjacent to that, she could be useful. Kate exhaled quietly.
"Fine. I'll treat you to one." She let a small smile land. "I remember your tolerance."
Maggie gasped in mock offence, and they headed toward the bar.
"So," Maggie said, falling into step beside her. "What are you actually doing here? I was shocked to get your email. I didn't have you down as a Neurosphere investor."
"Our tech division is looking at some of their developments," Kate said, keeping it light. "The therapeutic tech space is interesting right now. What about you, how long have you been here?"
"Just over a year," Maggie said. "Cyber security. Pretty low down the food chain—" she gestured at her outfit, "—which is why I'm technically half working tonight. My office is just down the hall, so I've been coming back and forth to steal appetisers." She laughed softly.
Kate smiled. She remembered when she'd done the same thing on the Bishop Securities cyber team, her mother had insisted she start at the bottom like everyone else. "How bad’s the office?" she asked, keeping it casual.
"Ground floor," Maggie confirmed. "Basically a cupboard. But it has a window!"
She laughed. Kate laughed with her.
Ava's voice came through quietly. "Ground floor offices, we flagged one with a computer on earlier. Must be hers?"
Peter, somewhere in the building: "Wait, that's the best case scenario. If we can get on that machine we don't need an access point at all. We'd already be on the internal system."
"Parker," Ava said. "Second door on the right. Computer's on. Go."
A beat. Then Peter, barely audible: "Copy. Going."
Kate kept her attention on Maggie, and let the conversation drift for a few minutes. College, the city, how much had changed, until Peter's voice came back through the earpiece.
"Bad news. I'm in but it's password protected. Might take me a while to hack, any ideas?"
Kate looked briefly at one of the cameras and gave the smallest nod she could manage. She hoped it was enough to communicate: I've got this. Give me a minute.
The password structure. She remembered it clearly, Maggie had explained it in college and they'd laughed about how unsecure it was, but she'd always insisted at least she'd never forget it. Cat's name. First three letters of her street. Last five digits of her phone number.
The cat's name she already had. Salem. He was a kitten when they’d met.
She needed the street.
"At least it's not a long commute," Kate said, steering naturally. "You still near that old Italian place?"
"No, I moved last year. Still in Brooklyn though, only about a block from Vernon, actually. I'm on Cobbs Hill now."
Cob. Filed.
Now the number. This was going to require a more direct approach.
"Umm, Kate?" Peter again. "Do I risk starting a hack?"
Kate glanced at the camera once more with wide eyes, and whispered, "Wait"
Maggie had turned to the bartender to order. Kate used the moment.
She thought about a particular night at her place, where they’d worked up quite the appetite. She leaned slightly closer to Maggie as she turned back. "So," she said, keeping her voice low. "You can still get pasta at 2am?"
Through the earpiece came a sound she couldn't fully identify, a muffled voice, and footsteps pacing.
Maggie recognised the reference immediately. Her elbow came to rest on the bar, chin tilted up, looking at Kate through her lashes. "Yeah. We can."
This was genuinely uncomfortable. Flirting in front of Yelena… and Ava, and Peter, none of whom she could acknowledge, or explain to.
Not that she needed to explain herself to any of them.
"We can. Maybe I should get your number then?" Kate said, voice dropping just enough.
"Of course." Maggie smiled. "I know how much you liked that pasta." The insinuation was not lost on Kate.
Kate kept her expression warm and her feelings firmly off her face. She'd been over Maggie practically a week after they'd broken up and had no interest in actually taking her up on anything. She felt bad about leading her on, but she needed that number.
Maggie reached into her clutch, produced a pen, took Kate's hand, and wrote the number directly onto the back of it.
Her fingers lingered.
Kate practically ripped her hand away, grabbed her drink and downed it in one, already standing from the stool. "Actually… I was heading to the bathroom when we bumped into each other and I genuinely cannot hold it any longer. You get it. Catch you later!"
Maggie's mouth opened, then closed. Clearly not expecting that particular exit.
Kate was already moving.
She put enough crowd between them before she touched her earpiece. "I have the password."
"We were listening the whole time," Ava said, "and I don't remember her mentioning a password during your date?"
"That was not a—" Kate stopped herself. "Doesn't matter. She has a terrible memory so she built a password structure in college. I'd bet anything she still uses it."
"Thank gods, I don’t know how long breaking into this thing would take!" Peter exhaled.
Yelena was still silent, but she could practically hear the sound of her jaw creaking from the tension.
"Salem, capital S, a, l, e, m. Then C, o, b. Then—" she read the last five digits from the back of her hand.
A pause.
"Trying it now," Peter said.
Kate kept moving, smiling at a passing guest, looking like someone heading somewhere entirely unremarkable.
"Oh my god," Peter breathed. "We're in. She should not be working in security."
Kate exhaled.
"Running the script," he said. The quiet click of keys. "Timer's up, five minutes for the full download."
"Ava, where am I going?" Kate said, already turning.
"To Mandys for pasta?" Yelena's voice came through the mic, barely.
Ok, that's got to be intentional.
"Down the corridor, past the tech display," Ava said, talking over Yelena. "Second door on the right."
"Copy." Kate moved toward the corridor entrance, more hurried than she had been previously.
Kate was almost at the office door when Yelena's voice came through the earpiece.
"You have a stalker." A beat. "Mildred is heading your way."
Ava, in the service corridor, fixed her with a pointed look, Yelena for her part, kept her eyes on the feed.
"Ok that time you weren't even close" Kate said, already moving.
“I think she’s heading to her office, Kate you have to intercept!” Ava said.
“I can pull fire alarm instead?” Yelena delivered dryly, low enough that only Ava could hear next to her.
Kate acted quickly, she took a sharp left down an adjacent corridor, reversed her direction, and started walking backward, slow, confused, the picture of someone who had taken three wrong turns.
Maggie appeared at the corridor entrance about fifteen seconds later, spotted her, and her expression shifted from purposeful to amused.
"Are you lost?"
"Oh thank god," Kate said, relief flooding her voice with genuine conviction. "I cannot find the bathroom in this building. Everything looks the same."
Maggie laughed. "It's back through the main room, near the entrance—" she started, already moving to redirect her, but her body language was still angled toward the corridor. Toward the office.
"Back through the main room?" Kate let her face fall with theatrical dismay. "I literally just came from there. How is it possible that I walked past it?"
"Parker. How long?" Yelena asked now.
"Still downloading. I need two minutes." His voice low and tight.
Maggie was smiling at her, warm and a little knowing, she placed her hand on Kate's arm and span her around in the correct direction, both her hands were resting on Kates shoulders now.
“Keep walking that way until you see the bathrooms on your right” She rolled forward onto the balls of her feet tiptoeing slightly to talk directly into Kates ear, “You can’t miss ‘em”
Kate stood there for a moment, not know what to do, she had to think of something.
“I’ll meet you back out there” Maggie was a step away from the door now, moments away from entering.
Yelena on comms, sharp: "Pull the drive. Take what we have."
"No!" Kate said.
Maggie blinked.
Kate's brain caught up a half-second later. “I mean…no I don’t want to go back out there alone.” She stepped slightly closer, letting her hand trail lightly up Maggie's arm.
Maggie looked at the hand on her arm with a knowing smile, “I have to work, I won’t be long” she said, raspy and low.
"Come on. You were never a stickler for the rules." There was practically no space between them now, her fingertips stroking the bare skin of her upper arm.
Maggie's expression shifted, her eyes dropped to Kate's lips. "Still so impatient," she drawled, her hand reached for the door handle.
Peter heard the click of the door handle, "Kate, ten seconds!" Peter breathed.
The next part almost happened in slow motion, Maggie went to turn her head to open the door fully, and step into the room. Kate panicked.
Kate closed the distance and Maggie released a sharp inhale of surprise before she sank into the kiss, one hand coming up to Kate's arm, the other still loosely resting on the door which was, fortunately, no longer being pushed open.
Over Maggie's shoulder, through the gap in the door, Kate could see Peter at the terminal, wide-eyed, the hard drive still in the machine, he mouthed “Five seconds”.
Maggie went to lean back, so Kate deepened the kiss.
Peter's eyes went wider.
A few seconds passed. Then Maggie pushed Kate back, flushed, lips curved into something between a smile and a question. She looked at Kate through lidded eyes, "You still always get what you want, huh," she said, soft and faintly amused.
She turned toward the office.
Behind her, Kate watched Peter yank the drive from the machine, pocket it, and shoot a web to the ceiling in one fluid motion, pulling himself up and out of sight in the space of about a second.
Kate stepped through the doorway after Maggie, keeping her attention on her for a moment to give Peter a chance to crawl out of the door.
Maggie took a small step toward her. "I really do have to work."
"Of course, yes, obviously… I'm so sorry," Kate was apologising for more than just keeping her from her work. She took a step backwards. Then another. "Bye."
She turned and walked into the corridor at a pace that was brisk without technically being a sprint.
Pete dropped from the ceiling and fell into step beside her.
"That," Peter was walking backwards with a little more energy in his step, pointing towards the office, "was not in any of the backup plans." he delivered with a smile.
Kate pinched between her eyebrows "Please just tell me you got the full download."
He pulled the drive from his pocket and held it up between two fingers. "Fully downloaded."
Kate exhaled for what felt like the first time in five minutes.
"Nice moves, Bishop," Ava said through the comms.
She could practically hear the shit-eating grin on her face. “I had to buy time!” Kate retorted.
Kate and Peter drifted back into the atrium, hearing the sound of someone speaking over the mic.
Guests had gravitated toward the stage in the loose, half-attentive way of people who had been at a drinks event long enough to welcome something to look at. A man in his fifties stood at the podium, silver-haired, polished, with the particular confidence of someone who had rehearsed this moment several hundred times.
Guests had gravitated toward the stage at the end of the room, champagne glasses in hand; the energy of the room suggested he'd been talking for a while.
"—and what we're unveiling tonight," he was saying, "represents not just a breakthrough in therapeutic technology, but a fundamental reimagining of what it means to care for the people who care for us."
Kate and Peter exchanged a glance and turned to face the stage.
"Ladies and gentlemen." He paused, letting the room settle. "Neurosphere is proud to present the next chapter."
He nodded toward the wings.
The navy velvet curtain behind the podium drew back slowly, revealing a display case lit from beneath, and inside it, mounted on a clean white stand, was the device.
The room responded with the restrained appreciation of people who had been trained since birth not to look impressed.
"The NovaMind device," the man continued, his voice warm with pride, "has been seven years in development. And I want to be clear with you tonight, we are not finished. We are in active trials. But what those trials are showing us—" he paused, "—is extraordinary."
He let that breathe.
"As many of you in this room know better than most, the people who keep this country safe do so at enormous personal cost. They see things no person should have to see. They carry what they've witnessed long after the work is done." He gestured toward the display case. "Post-traumatic stress. Addiction. The conditions that follow our service members and security professionals home, that sit at the dinner table, that end careers and marriages and, too often, lives."
The room had gone properly quiet now.
"NovaMind works with the brain's existing architecture, through direct neural interface technology, to address the pathways responsible for trauma response, addictive behaviour, and emotional dysregulation. While wearing the device, our trial participants report that symptoms are effectively non-existent." He held up a hand. "We are not claiming a cure tonight. We are sharing results that, frankly, we are still working to fully understand. What we can tell you is that the data is unlike anything we have seen in this field."
Kate looked at Peter. He was watching the stage with the careful expression of someone cataloguing information.
"We are a proud American company," the man continued, "and we believe deeply that the people who protect this nation deserve the same level of care and investment that this nation asks of them. NovaMind is our answer to that belief."
He stepped back from the podium and extended a hand toward the side of the stage.
"I'd like to introduce someone who has been part of our trial programme. His name is David. He served two tours, came home, and spent three years losing everything that service had cost him. I'll let him speak for himself."
A man in his early forties walked onto the stage, broad-shouldered, the particular stillness of someone who had learned to carry themselves carefully. Behind his right ear, almost invisible against his skin, was the device.
The room was very quiet.
"I'm not much of a public speaker," David said, into the microphone, with the slight self-consciousness of someone who meant it. "But they asked me to come and say something, so." He paused. "I came back from my second tour in pretty bad shape. I don't need to go into details; a lot of you in this room probably know someone who's been in a similar place, or you've been there yourself." A beat. "Three years ago I couldn't hold down a job. My marriage was struggling. I couldn't sleep. I relied on alcohol and substances to carry me through the day" He looked at the device in the display case. "I've been in the trial for 3 months. I no longer turn to substances. I can sleep through the night, my beautiful wife doesn’t have to suffer through my night terrors anymore." He smiled towards a tall blonde woman at the edge of the stage. “It gave me my life back.”
The applause that followed was different from what had come before. Warmer. More genuine.
Kate clapped because not clapping would have stood out. Beside her, Peter did the same.
The silver-haired man returned to the podium. "Thank you, David." He let the moment settle, then straightened. "We are here tonight because the work is not finished. Additional trials cost money. Development costs money. And we believe, fundamentally, that this technology is too important to move slowly." He looked out across the room. "The investors in this room who commit tonight will have first access to the programme, first licensing, first partnership opportunities, first involvement in a technology that we believe will define the next decade of human performance and mental health." He raised his glass. "Help us finish what we started. The people who protect this country deserve nothing less."
The room applauded again, fuller this time. Voices echoed throughout the atrium, in awe.
Kate didn't move immediately. She was looking at the device in the display case. It sounded extraordinary. A device that could give a veteran back his sleep. That could reach into the brain and quiet the noise that wouldn't stop. That should have been the most straightforwardly good thing she'd heard all evening.
So why did her chest feel like it was full of something cold?
"We need to see what's on that drive," she said quietly, low enough to be nothing in the ambient noise.
In the service corridor, Yelena's voice came back immediately, level and controlled, though something underneath it wasn't quite either of those things.
"Car will be out front in five."
They began making their way leisurely to the front of the building.
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