The lounge was louder than Dane expected.

  Not like the mess halls or the training floor, but it was almost like music. Conversations layered over each other, laughter breaking out in bursts, glass clinking against glass in a rhythm that didn't quite match anything else.

  Dane stood just inside the entrance for a moment longer than he should have.

  He wasn't sure what he was supposed to do. Sure, he had drunk in Mara's tavern once or twice, but that had been different. He belonged in Chronowell.

  Abby spotted him first.

  "Hey!" she called out, already halfway out of her seat. "Look who decided to show up."

  A couple of heads turned. Ethan glanced over and gave him a small nod. Travis looked like he had been mid-thought and immediately lost it as his attention snapped to Dane.

  Juliet didn't react at all.

  Dane walked over.

  "You look like someone dragged you here," Abby said as he got close enough.

  "I walked."

  "Yeah, that's not what I meant."

  She slid back into her own seat and kicked a chair out slightly with her foot. "Sit."

  He hesitated, just for a second, then took it.

  A server came by almost immediately.

  "What can I get you?"

  "I'll take a Coke," Dane said.

  Abby raised an eyebrow. "What kind of Coke?"

  "Whatever you got is fine with me."

  Abby had a slight accent, and now he confirmed she must be from backwoods Texas. Not many people knew that every Soda was called a Coke, and if you wanted Coca-Cola, you said that.

  The Barkeep turned and left. Abby looked at him inquisitively. "Are you gonna add whiskey to that?"

  "I don't drink."

  She studied him for a second like she was trying to decide if that was a joke, then shrugged. "Alright. More for me."

  The drinks came quickly. Abby didn't wait, already taking a long pull from hers; it was some bourbon, judging from the smell. Travis picked up his Gin and tonic carefully, as if he were trying to understand it before committing. Ethan leaned back as he grabbed his mug of lager. He relaxed, sinking into his chair, and he draped one arm over Abby. Juliet sipped at her glass of red wine. Dane expected her to swish it around and look for the fingers, but she didn't let it breathe. Amelia had always done that.

  Dane just held his glass. It smelled like a mix of Dr. Pepper and something else. He missed real Soda from before the system, but they were getting close. No doubt someone from those major corporations made it into the tutorial.

  For a while, he listened.

  They talked about nothing.

  Or at least, nothing that mattered in the way he was used to. Bad food from earlier in the week, which gave anyone with a constitution below 1000 food poisoning. Someone in another unit had managed to blow themselves up during a drill. And a story Abby told that didn't seem to have a point, but everyone laughed anyway.

  Dane found himself watching more than anything else.

  The way Abby filled the space without thinking about it. The way Travis would start talking, lose his place halfway through, then reevaluate like he was trying to catch a thought that had already moved on without him. The way Ethan didn't interrupt, but still somehow kept the conversation from drifting too far off course.

  It didn't feel like a unit. It felt like… something else.

  Abby leaned forward suddenly, pointing at a screen across the room. "Oh, you're doing this."

  Dane followed her gaze to the Karaoke machine set up with songs from before the system.

  He frowned. "No. I'll pass."

  Abby turned slowly. "Come on, Juliet will go up with you."

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  "Hey... I... I.. only sing when we are in combat." Juliet said as Ethan, Abby, and Travis gave her puppy-dog eyes.

  "What are you scared of?" Abby said, giving Dane a smirk.

  "I'm not scared."

  "Then prove it."

  Dane looked at Ethan.

  Ethan lifted his glass slightly. "I'm not saving you."

  "That's not..."

  Abby was already standing, grabbing his wrist before he could finish the sentence. "Too late."

  "I didn't agree to this."

  "It'll be fun, and besides, it's a duet."

  She pulled him up anyway.

  The walk to the front felt longer than it should have.

  Dane didn't like the way people looked at him. It wasn't the same as being watched in the colosseum. Those people had all come to see violence, and that was something he excelled at. But here, the people just wanted to laugh at lousy singing and have a good time.

  He took the microphone as if it might jump out of his hand if he held it wrong. The words came on the screen, and it was a song that he was unfamiliar with.

  "Go on, the people are waiting," Abby said.

  He looked to Juliet, and she looked more annoyed than nervous.

  It was bad.

  Not in a subtle way, not in a way that could be brushed off or softened by the room or the noise or the drinks that were already starting to hit everyone else.

  Just… bad. Juliet had killed her parts. She was born a performer, but Dane?

  Dane couldn't hold a tune to save his life. He sang like a child, just making noise through a speaker, as if he were talking instead of letting the song carry him. There was no rhythm to it, no rise or fall, just a flat line of effort that never quite matched what everyone else seemed to understand instinctively.

  By the time he finished, there was a pause that stretched just a little too long. The kind of silence was eerie; they had no qualms about letting bad singers have it, but the lack of ribbing told him that he was so bad that it would be sad to make fun of him, not funny.

  Then Abby started clapping.

  "That," she said, already grinning as he stepped back toward the table, "was magnificent."

  Dane set the microphone on its stand and walked back to their table.

  "It wasn't that bad," Juliet said defensively.

  "You were fine, him, though. I can't believe a human made some of those noises."

  Ethan took a swig of his beer, watching him over the rim of the glass before shaking his head slightly. "I've heard worse."

  Abby turned on him immediately. "No, you haven't."

  "My dad went out back and shot the cat making the noise." He paused for a second, then continued. "Maybe you should sit next time out."

  Abby laughed so hard that tears formed in her eyes. The laugh was sharp and loud, cutting through everything else at the table, and Travis followed a second later, his timing just off enough that it made it worse.

  Dane looked between them, not entirely sure if he was being defended or buried.

  "…It couldn't have been that bad."

  "It was," Abby said, still smiling, leaning forward onto her arms now as she had settled in. "But you committed to it."

  He didn't know if that made it better.

  The next round came without anyone really asking for it.

  Then another.

  Dane stayed with his Soda, the glass sweating against his hand as the condensation built.

  Travis had stopped trying to analyze anything.

  The shift had happened so gradually that Dane hadn't noticed when the questions stopped being precise and started drifting, his words looping back on themselves as he tried to hold onto a thought that didn't want to stay still.

  "You know," Travis said, pointing vaguely at nothing, "if pitch is just frequency, then technically what you did wasn't wrong, it was just… misapplied."

  He paused, blinking at his own explanation.

  "…I think."

  Abby snorted. "That's the nicest way anyone's ever called something terrible."

  Juliet had left after her second glass, being the first to leave. After she was gone, almost all of the talk became about how much of a slave driver she was.

  Dane found himself contributing more to the conversation. Not bitching about their boss, he made it a point never to complain; it wasn't good to dwell on negatives, but he did answer more questions.

  Not everything, of course, but some things that he considered harmless.

  "Why are you so durable?" Abby asked at one point, her tone still light but her eyes sharper than the rest of her.

  "I have a high constitution."

  "That doesn't explain why my knife couldn't pierce you."

  Dane hesitated, then shrugged slightly. "Well, I guess you should take it up with your smith."

  She stared at him for a second.

  "Alright, keep your secrets."

  "I answered, though."

  "You did not."

  After one more round, Abby and Travis left.

  Dane and Ethan were the last ones sitting. They didn't sit directly across from each other, and Dane was contemplating leaving for the night like the rest of them.

  "You're not a D rank," Ethan said.

  There was no lead-in to the statement; it came abruptly. Dane didn't look at him.

  "No, I am a B rank."

  "Bullshit. I have served under B ranks before, and you ain't one of them." He paused, looking at the mug. Dane had counted ten beers the size of two pints. But the man before him was as sober as a judge.

  "I've got a skill," he said after a moment. "It classifies people based on their potential in a unit. Those B ranks never broke the scale like you did."

  Dane glanced over, meeting the large man's eyes. He didn't bother denying it.

  For a second, neither of them spoke, the noise of the room filling in the space between them without really touching anything.

  "I'm not here to make you fit into something you're not," Ethan said.

  Dane turned his head slightly, studying him.

  "What do you mean by that?"

  Ethan shrugged, like it wasn't complicated. "I'm sure you have your reasons for hiding your abilities, and I was never a big fan of voluntelling people."

  That answer sat differently than Dane expected.

  "So what," Dane said slowly, "you just let me do whatever I want?"

  "No."

  Ethan's gaze met his evenly.

  "I have come to think of you as part of the team, but I don't need someone who is half in. If you choose to stay a collector, I will have you transferred."

  Dane frowned slightly.

  "What if I tell you a couple of my abilities? I can't tell you everything, but I can tell you a couple of things."

  Ethan didn't answer right away. "I guess that would be the first honest thing you've said."

  That was fair, but it still hurt to hear.

  Dane began to speak, but was cut off.

  "Let's wait until tomorrow, we have some unwanted visitors."

  Dane had been so enwrapped in the conversation that he hadn't noticed some soldiers clearly looking for trouble. One of them stood apart from the rest, a man with a jawline sculpted for its punchability. Derrek the Vangaurd was sneering at him.