There’s some luck in being an Old One.

Firstly, I look about twenty-five. Twenty-five and Neutral is an accomplishment. Twenty-five and Neutral is the buzz of potential energy under your skin. It’s people drawn to you in anticipation of what you will become. It’s excited whispers and sketched out futures filling notebooks.

I am, of course, wearing fake marks. Today they are gaseous ones, carefully lightened and stretched so that I’ll be easily disregarded as I weave through the streets. That’s the second advantage of being an Old One.

You’re always something on Regent street: a victim, a thief, a saviour. If you’re marked, you can’t change it. Those damned things bleed through the thickest make up, and the most determined tattoos. Covering them makes people curious. Suspicious.

An Old One has to be something too, but at least we can choose. Lex’s facsimiles hold up against anything but the closest technical examination.

The final advantage is freedom, though I can’t say that everyone you speak to will agree with that.

I run to catch the bus, barely hopping in before the doors close, squeezing past people as I move from cart to cart.

Everyone here has somewhere to be. I’m no different. Except in every single other way.

I fall into a seat, digging into my messenger bag in hope of gum, candy, anything. This place always leaves a funny taste in my mouth.

A man across from me is far too comfortable staring. His solid markings aren’t new, but they aren’t particularly old either. I’d put him around forty, but really, who knows?

He thinks I’m helpless. He’s not wrong. But he’s not right, either.

My stop is soon, so I try to slip a few carts up, but he doesn’t even hide his interest, following me with the lumbering steps of an S. Well. Can’t blame a girl for trying.

No gum in my pockets either, but my hand circles around a cold sphere.

I hop off the vehicle the second the doors swing open.

I could run. This isn’t a place I would want to provoke him. The cracked concrete and crumbling buildings give too much ammunition. I need surprise, or I’m gone.

As I walk, I press the blue metal sphere to my lips.

“Make your mamma proud,” I say, and kiss it.

Then I drop it behind me.

I can hear the mechanical wings spread, the buzz quiet and quiet and then gone.

I pick up the pace. I still hear the man scream.

Forty years ago I would’ve felt guilty, but I’ve known too many Faded who had met men like him. One life for a dozen more.

I’ve never liked math.

The sphere returns to me, one drone at a time. In an alleyway, I hold out my hand as they slot together, tiny puzzle pieces, until the baseball-sized thing is back.

“Thank the skies,” I mutter, “Lex woulda killed me if I lost another one of you bastards.”

It’s not long before the scenery around me starts to change. Concrete turns to grass, walls turn to glass, and even the sun shines a little brighter.

I adjust the strap of the camouflage that is my messenger bag. I’ve been here before, as an L, an S, an E… Don’t know what it is, exactly, but it’s like the people here can smell the Neutral on me. And if they smell the Neutral, it doesn’t take long to connect the dots to Old One.

Like an ancient hunter, I am forced to cover up my natural pheromones with the musk of poverty. Or something. I don’t know much about hunters. Or history. Or pheromones.

Public school, ya know?

I think part of me had hoped I had misremembered the location of the condo I was headed towards. But Bren had wrote the address down, and I know this city well. I think I am one of the only people who has ever managed to bore themselves with it.

I know this area. My brain refuses to process it. Bren messed up. Emergency construction moved things around. I’ve accidentally been transported into a parallel universe. Something has to be wrong, right?

My gaze climbs the structure in front of me. The opalescent windows beginning at a point and spreading out upwards. A pyramid balancing on its tip, just to prove it can be done.

A sky garden wound around the complex with stairs that allowed you to walk to your condo through foreign plants kept alive via an S and E team that work impossible hours.

Normally, I would take that path. The verdant swirl could be surprisingly calming, and the tropical birds were a helluva sight. But if this address was right, I might finally Activate before I reach the top.

It’s a good thing I didn’t bother trying. The moment I step into the deliveries elevator, I know that Bren had dug out this file just in time.

NATs are idiots. No television show or gritty crime novel could convince me otherwise. In a place where marks were proudly displayed, emphasized, even accessorized, NATs wore cuffs and chokers, as if the information regarding their classification could be more valuable to an aggressor than the fact that they were goddamn cops.

The NAT was already in the elevator when I stepped in. He hadn’t even secured his choker properly. I could see the bright E markings peeking out. His i’ll-fitting jeans didn’t match his combat boots, and the outline of body armour was obvious under his polo.

How could they fail so badly at something so simple?

Still. They don’t make this any easier. They confirmed my suspicions, but it’s not like I’ve ever actually doubted Bren. They’ve had about 90 years to get it right.

It’s almost cartoonish. The elevator door opens and the man doesn’t move. He stares. I am tempted to stare back.

NATs may be stupid, but the one thing they know how to do is spot an Old One. Instead, I walked down the hall to the penthouse door.

It swings open seconds after I knock.

I hadn’t been expecting the woman inside.

She doesn’t look like her pictures. Not so composed, or well lit.

Her locked hair is tied up haphazardly, with more than one piece falling to her shoulders. Her eyes have dark circles under them. Her lips are dry, but her brown eyes are steady.

“Yes?”

“D-deliver for Ms. Holly Jacobs—“ I say.

Holly holds out her hand expectantly.

I glance back at the elevator doors. They’re closed, but I don’t take chances.

“I need your bio-sig.”

She sighs, and steps aside to let me in.

I wonder why she’s still here. Maybe it has to do with where she came from. I was on my fourth identity by

thirty-five, but both my parents were faded. My mother was almost invisible, having gotten her marks when she was all of three years old. She used to tell me that by puberty they were stretched thin around her wrists like a piece of string. My dad hit eleven, but his whole family was like that, so no surprises there.

I used to get in scraps at school with kids who called her things like “leech” and “user”. Funny thing was, whenever one of those kids Activated early, they’d hide behind my unfortunate and unfair reputation. I let them, of course. There’s no use humiliating those who are already humbled.

But Ms. Jacob’s comes from a different world. You can tell because the clock is ticking, and the NATs are still dutifully waiting for it to hit twelve. I knew a kid snatched at twenty-eight. They’ll deny it of course, but demons will denounce their deeds.

Whatever this woman has, whatever money or power it is, has to be worth more to the Orgs than a few extra years of energy and experimentation. This will be a problem if she trusts the NATs enough to believe their lies.

I find my scanner and hold it out. Holly presses her thumb into it. The thing doesn’t work, but it lights up like it does.

Finally, I pull out the gift bag and hand it to her. She takes it carefully.

“Is this a joke?”

All of this is a joke, Ms. Jacobs. And every second closer we get, the funnier it becomes.

“I couldn’t tell you, ma’am,” I say. “It looks like a birthday gift.”

Ms. Jacobs stares at me, searching for something.

I’m better at hiding now. There are tricks to it, to mask your energy signature. Vibrations. Whatever it is that makes an Old One, or any Neutral, stand out. On top of it all, I used to have to wander around markless.

About a decade ago I was found by the Ordo Futurorum Antiquorum. They think we’re gods.

Or. No. They think I’m a god. Lex and Bren got demoted to mere saints post-Activation. And also I’m not really a god. I’m more of a god-caterpillar. I still have to pupate.

I’m the OFA’s last hope, but since they’ve been waiting for about a millenium, I’m about the twenty-seventh last hope, so they’re not that worried.

I don’t believe their prophesies, but they’ve been good to me, so I’d like to bring them another divinity-in-waiting. They look so happy when Bren gets a lead.

“A birthday gift.” Ms. Jacobs says.

I give my best clueless nod.

“It’s cruel.” Ms. Jacobs says, and tries to give it back.

I won’t take it.

“You haven’t even opened it yet,” I point out.

“I turn fifty the day after tomorrow,” Ms. Jacobs says, waiting for the truth to land.

“Happy early birthday,” I say, as it bounces off of me.

Doubting her own sanity, Ms. Jacobs checks her wrists, as if she might have Activated during the conversation.

“I hope you have a good one,” I say, “and remember to read the card first. It always bugs me when people don’t do that.”

I hesitate in front of the elevator before deciding to take the sky garden down. I should wear myself out; I need to sleep well tonight.

It’s always hard when it’s tight, and this one is tighter than most.

We don’t even know if she’ll follow the instructions. Her money has protected her until now, so she might think it will after they take her. It won’t. The only thing that beats money is fear.

That’s what we are to them. Fear. Nothing scares men like the Unknown.

There’s luck in being an Old One. We know so much that sometimes the Unknown comes as a relief.