Twenty minutes to ten, I lie down on the one couch in Dax's living room.

The very faint, hushed sounds of nightlife arise from the city: distant purring of cars, far-off sirens, soft bumps and voices from the residents around us, all settling down for the evening. I remember these sounds. Like the windshield wipers of a car, they used to calm me. They used to lull me to sleep every night as a child, as a teenager. I told myself I wouldn't miss them. But now, hushed by them, I realize I do.

Before my eyes droop closed, I catch sight of Trip stepping towards the shaded window in the kitchen. With the contrast of the darkened living room and the light blazing down on the kitchen, he seems to be standing on a stage. His eyes—gleaming, always gleaming—peer down at the street below.

He hasn't sat down. He's restless. Brooding. Back to whatever time and space he'd been wallowing in before.

I wonder where he is, what he's thinking.

My consciousness slips.

It feels as though I have just closed my eyes when a pop! wakes me. I jerk, eyes fluttering open. The kitchen is dark, Trip is gone, and the only light in the kitchen is pouring from the open refrigerator door. Dax looks up from the can of Diet Coke he just popped open.

"Opps." A nervous laugh presses from him. "Sorry about that."

Disoriented, groggy, I sit up. My eyes, blurry with sleep, skim over the kitchen, the hallway, then behind me at the rest of the living room. All is still. All is quiet.

"What time is it?"

"About..." Dax checks his watch. "One-thirty."

Almost four hours I've been sleeping. It doesn't feel like that much time has passed.

"Where is he?"

Dax gestures at the front door. "He went out."

"He left us here?"

"He said he won't be gone for long."

"And—" my brow furrows "—you're here?" I'd been sure that the moment Dax saw an opportunity he would be scaling down the side of the building with tied off bed sheets to escape.

Glasses blinks a couple of times, staring at me as if I've grown a second head. "Well, yeah, I'm here." Then realization lights across his face. Quickly, he shakes his head. "Oh, no, no, no. I'm not stupid. He'd rip me in two."

Of course.

Trip wouldn't have left in the first place if he thought Dax would split. He wouldn't have left if he thought I would split either. He's got us both precisely where he wants us. Dax, scared to death of him. Me, scared to death and dependent upon him—the ice devil himself—for survival.

That thought makes me ill. Sighing, I ask, "Where did he go?"

"Not far. I know he wouldn't have gone far. He just needed some fresh air, I think. Being cooped up in here seems to make him... a bit tense. Maybe claustrophobia or something." Dax shrugs, seeming not to care where Trip is or what he is doing, as long as the devil isn't here looming over him right now.

I can relate. I guess it gives us some breathing time.

With his free hand, Glasses grabs another Coke from the fridge. "You... want one?"

"Sure." A soda sounds good right now. I stand from the couch and cross the living room into the kitchen. Taking the can from him, I offer another weak, apologetic smile—the same smile I'd offered earlier when we barged into his apartment. "Thanks. It's Dax, right?"

"Yeah." He nods and, after a beat, shrugs. "Well, that's what everyone calls me anyway. It's David Xavier, actually. So, it's more of a nickname, a combination of my first and middle name. It's kind of stupid."

"I don't think so. I think it's nice. It's different." I pop open my Coke and sip at the fizz that spews out.

With a timid smile, Dax scratches the back of his head. In the light of the fridge I can see the slight tint of red creeping up his cheeks. "You said your name is Evette?"

I nod. "Eve for short."

Floundering for a second, Dax rolls his Coke between his fingers. "Well... You're welcome to join me in the computer room, Eve—I mean, if you want. I wouldn't mind the company."

"Sure." Truthfully, I wouldn't mind either. It feels like it's been forever since I've had pleasant company, even though it's only been a couple of days I have had to suffer Trip's coldness.

Pleased, Dax shuts the refrigerator door and leads the way down the hall to the computer room, where monitors set the dark room aglow.

Each screen has something different going on. Some are websites. Some purely codes, hundreds of letters and numbers and symbols. As I approach the screens in curiosity, Dax grabs a stool from against the wall and drags it over to me.

"Is this okay?" he asks. "I mean, I can sit on the stool if you want to take the chair—"

"You don't have to do that. I'll be fine."

He sets the stool down next to the computer desk and throws a glance towards the littered desktop—the old soda cans, the Chinese food boxes. "Yeah, um, sorry about the mess. I don't get a lot of visitors."

"No, it's fine." I am only half listening now as I climb onto the stool. I am still surveying the screens. "What is all of this?"

"Work." Dax plops into his rotating chair and spins it around to face the computers. "Well, most of it." He gestures at one of the bottom monitors. "Right here I am working on getting those Officials' names. I've already got the list of computers hooked to the Database."

My eyes move from screen to screen. "What kind of work do you do?"

"Mostly blackouts."

"Blackouts?"

"Basically, I go into a website and take down an article or a video. Sometimes I shut down the whole site. This is a blackout I've been working on." He points to a screen towards the top. This screen has different windows popping up here and there, and it takes me a minute to notice the cursor is moving on its own. "See him? This fellow here has been putting up a fight," Dax continues, "putting up all kinds of firewalls and other useless crap, but the bug is already in. There's not much he can do. His website, along with all the personal files on his computer, will be bye-bye in a few more minutes. See?" He taps the side of another monitor where a loading bar is inching towards 90%.

Bewildered, I ask, "Why?"

"My guess is he was posting articles about Government. It appears something he said must have pissed them off. I got the orders to shut him down." When Dax sees the surprised look slapped all over my face, he gives me a pointed look, computer screens glaring over his lenses. "Trust me. He'll be lucky if that's the only thing Government does."

While I stare at Dax, slowly those words begin to sink in—and with them more puzzle pieces to this mess start to snap into place. "They'll kill him," I say.

It's not a question, but Dax nods anyway. "If the information he was leaking is valuable enough, sadly, yes." He slurps on his Coke and gives a halfhearted shrug. "If so, they may send somebody like Triple to take care of him."

I blink. "What?"

"To take care of him. You know, to kill him. It's kind of sad—"

"No. I mean, what did you just call him?"

"Who? Triple?" Dax looks at me strangely. "You didn't know his name?"

"He said it was Trip."

"Well, yeah. That's the condensed version of the condensed version."

I shake my head, not understanding. "His name is Triple?"

"Triple Threat."

Silence lapses over the room. The only sound comes from the whir of the monitors. The phantom cursor frantically zips around the top screen. The loading bar is reaching 96%.

When I am finally able to speak, my voice is breathless. "That is what they called him? Why?"

"Because he's the best," Dax says with a goofy chuckle and a dart of his eyes, like this should be obvious. "Strong, fast, smart. Out of all of them he excelled the most—in everything."

My head is starting to spin. "What do you mean "all of them"?"

Now Dax hesitates. And I am reminded of how Trip had hesitated on this very same subject—over our coffees at the diner yesterday. "Maybe..." Glasses bites his lips together and glances away. "Maybe I shouldn't be telling you all of this."

It's too late for him to back out now. He's said too much.

"There are other duplicates," I say. Again, I am not asking questions. "Alive. Like Trip."

"I shouldn't have said anything. I really shouldn't—"

"Other weapons they send to kill people who speak out against Government."

Tipping his head side to side like it's on a balance, Dax struggles to say, "Yeah. Sort of. Basically. I mean... They target people who pose the biggest hazard to them." He sighs and pauses to chew the inside of his cheek. "And right now you're dipping your toes into information that could make you a serious hazard. You're already in contact with a top-secret, billion-dollar Government project—a project that just deserted them."

I am stunned into silence.

This is all becoming too real for me. Things I've already known, things I've already thought—if only in the back of my mind—start to bear down on me. Government is hunting me. Trip is a weapon. Government's best weapon. His sole purpose is to kill. And I am stuck between the two. The only thing I can do is choose the lesser of two evils—at least, the one I think is the lesser evil—and hope that somehow I can survive.

Because I can't do this on my own.

Guilt tugging at his expression, Dax watches me try to sort through my spinning thoughts. Behind him, the loading bar has reached 100%. Still, though defeated, the cursor tears across the screen, desperately, pulling up window after window.

"For your safety, Eve," Dax says, quietly, "you really don't want to know any more than you already do."