Ruvle dismounted Chain’s back, hunching over. “I’ll go get the wax…”

  “I’ll do it for ya,” Chain said, and patted the couch’s black cushion. “Lay back.”

  “I don’t want blood where the signators sit,” Ruvle said, putting her hand back over her non-eye. But maybe the people sitting to play the Silver Screen were less picky.

  “You got any other furniture?” Chain asked.

  “Not...really.”

  He gave his cocky grin. “Then lay down.”

  Ruvle shimmied past the low-set table for gaming controllers and external beverages; someone had moved it too close to the couch again. She lay back. Chain picked up a white throw pillow as if to toss it onto her, but thought better of it and dropped it. Ruvle nudged aside a coaster on the low-set table with her heel. “Go behind the desk and to the filing cabinets, back left corner of the room, the third one in the row,” Ruvle said, “and it’s in the tiny drawer labeled Miscellany. Bring everything in there.”

  “I’m on it,” he said. Ruvle looked towards the checkered ceiling, losing track of him. “Getting to dig through the back of a notary office, I feel like I’m on sacred ground…”

  “We’re people just like you,” Ruvle said. “Try not to mess with anything else back there.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it. I mean, I would, but I wouldn’t do it.” A metal cabinet slid open.

  “You have more restraint than the auditors.” she laughed weakly. “They just grab documents like wrapping paper, ones that are older than me. Even I don’t touch the ones Dad still kept around.”

  Chain returned shortly to lean over the back of the couch where Ruvle could see him from below, one hand holding a finger-trigger lighter—the sort with a heavy handle base and a long metal snout to reach into cooking equipment—and the other on a closed, puck shaped screw-top container of wax. He had his eyes on the wax, like he didn’t know what to say about it. And then Ruvle remembered the importance of the container’s chained-up blushing smiley face logo. “Oh. So, I have to use a skin-safe, low-melting wax that’s hard but flexible when it’s solid, and the best kind for that is in an adult intimacy store.”

  Chain popped open the tin of wax, exposing the bright red, the same color as her current eye socket covering. The original pour into her eye socket had only turned red because of the blood, but she’d chosen to keep the color ever since, reclaiming that small quality of her injury. Chain flicked the lighter on and spun the tin in his hand. “I had a girlfriend once who would have loved this stuff.”

  Soon the wax was molten and he bent down close to her, twirling the toothpick. “I assume I don’t just pour?” he asked.

  “You use the toothpick,” Ruvle said. “Trace these wax lines here, like you’re painting.”

  He dipped the toothpick into the wax and followed directions–each little brushstroke along her tributaries covering cold wax with hot, soon to harden. Ruvle held her breath, keeping still.

  “Sort of afraid I’ll miss a spot, or–”

  “Ow.”

  “Yeah, that, sorry.” A molten droplet had dripped onto her chin.

  “It’ll be okay.”

  When she did this in a mirror on her own, she enjoyed seeing the brighter red of molten wax darken as it cooled, the difference between oxygenated and deoxygenated blood, forming its protective layer. Now, Chain could witness his same handiwork.

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  “Make sure to get the edges of my eye socket,” Ruvle added. “Right up against the skin. Get the bleeding part, so it seals.”

  “Won’t it hurt?”

  “A little.”

  In between moments to re-dip, the toothpick’s blunt point burned along the edges of the wax seal, while she frowned and bore the pain. It wasn’t much, a sharp medicinal sting against the skin-seam that had fused with the original wax, deadened from many iterations of this repair treatment. With that part done, Chain swirled the toothpick in the tin, thinking. “How about the cracks on the edge of your…do I call it a pupil?”

  “Those, too.”

  These didn’t hurt at all as he filled them in. The wax was much, much thicker there, all the way into the eye socket. Already, her eye felt so much better.

  “Is that everything?” Chain asked, taking a step back to admire his work.

  “Almost, but, the last part I have to do myself,” Ruvle said, reaching up and taking the tin. “The pupil split goes really far down, and it tries to widen over time…”

  “Uh oh.”

  She swirled the toothpick in its red molten paint, and with delicate slowness–

  “I don’t like this part at all, no thank you.”

  “Shush.”

  –she inserted it into the vertical slit pupil, halfway down. Blood and broken skin were their own challenge, but the touch-ups to maintain the seal over the remaining ocular debris so close to her brain required an Exact hand.

  The toothpick came back out, and they were done. Ruvle sighed and closed the tin again, holding it to her chest, letting her good eye fall closed. She tried commanding any ocular muscle tissue left in the wax one, and felt nothing.

  “Aces, looking good. All touched up for the raid. Rest up, eh?” Chain asked, his arm depressing the back couch cushion she lay against.

  “I know, I know…” Ruvle hugged a throw pillow. “I’m not a child, I know to sleep…”

  “Eh, more than sleep.”

  She pouted. “I’ll be ready! You have to be ready too if you’re bothering me about it–”

  Chain cackled. “Aw man, I knew there was a reason I was friends with you.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t worry about it. Yeah, I have my scarf, got a new sandbox lid I sprayed down just in case, new random stuff in my pockets. I wanted to buy one of those crazy computer virus disks that shut down robots, but I can’t afford one; I’m pretty strapped on vo.”

  She blue a lock of hair out of her face. “Just steal it.”

  “Ruuuuvle,” he said, with footsteps and liek her were adjusting his stance for some pose, “I don’t steal stuff.”

  “I do!”

  “It’s not stealing if you buy it with your notary money.”

  “We don’t get paid as well as you think,” she said, squeezing the throw pillow tighter. “I don’t convert most of my vouchers into vo, anyway, so I can eventually buy Dye with the voucher discount…” Stepwise’s government had a dual economy, ensuring that most businesses paid in ‘vouchers’–currency slips assigned via serial number to the specific person they were printed for, which could only be spent by that one person on state-owned businesses that covered basic needs at steep discounts. The plan was that the poor could live entirely on vouchers if they had to, but the program had expanded dramatically since then. The bills didn’t circulate–once spent and back in the state’s hands, they were destroyed. One of the things that vouchers could buy was ‘vo’, a more traditional circulating spender-agnostic coin money, like the kind that states outside of Stepwise used.

  “You get paid well compared to me, let me tell you.” Chain repeatedly clicked the lighter in his hand. “We’re gonna do great. We’re better prepared this time.”

  “Maybe.” Ruvle shook her head. “I’ve trained a lot, but it’s still a raid and I’m still only Coarse. You have magic. I don’t think anyone uses magic. Most people come in highly Consolidated, or with an army, or lots of secret M.A.D. tech…”

  “We’ll be fine. I know we’re not usual raiders, but I don’t have the usual goal, so whatever. And there’s gotta be something in us two working together; we’re crossing two kinda weird and obscure skillsets here. Ever thought about that?”

  “A little bit.”

  “Don’t get down on yourself for not being ‘Fine’ yet,” Chain said, and she could hear the airquotes without having to open her eye, “I’m pretty sure it won’t make that big of a difference.”

  Ruvle wiggled her hips to nestle deeper into the couch. “There’s a difference….there’s so much of a difference…” The specter of sleep paced around her, waiting for its chance to pull her to the land of recovery.

  “And what is it?”

  “I haven’t told you about…about Elial…”