Chapter 8
EIGHT
Kit
There is an art to building a defensive perimeter. I should know; I’ve spent half my life taping down cables so Alfie doesn't trip over his own ego and the other half putting my body between the lads and the pavement outside rough venues.
Zia wasn't just moving into the bus. She was fortifying it.
I stood in the corridor, leaning against the kitchenette counter, watching her work. She moved with the same economy she used on the mixing board. Precise. Efficient. Deadly serious.
She laid a stripe of white gaffer tape across the floor tile in front of her bunk.
The soundproof curtain Euan had installed was drawn back, revealing the cave she’d constructed.
Blackout fabric pinned tight. A white noise machine hooked into the USB port.
A stack of blankets that looked less like comfort and more like insulation.
She marked a drawer with a piece of blue tape. Z. DO NOT OPEN.
It stung. Proper stung. My instinct was to pad that bunk with the softest duvets money could buy, fill the drawers with snacks, and stand guard until she slept.
Instead, she was building a panic room inside a tour bus.
"Structural integrity looks sound," I said, keeping my voice low, rumbling in my chest so I wouldn't startle her.
She didn't jump, but her shoulders went rigid. She capped her marker and turned. The oversized hoodie she wore swallowed her hands.
"It’s a boundary," she said. "Visual marker. Nobody crosses the tape."
"Understood. Tape is law." I kept my hands visible, gripping the counter edge. "Effective. Punk."
She eyed me warily. "It’s not punk. It’s survival."
She went back to organizing. She was sorting protein bars into a neat row on her little shelf. The cheap, chalky ones she’d had in her go-bag. I’d seen her eating them like penance during load-in.
I reached into the pocket of my cargo pants.
I pulled out three bars. Not the chalk. The good ones.
The ones with actual macronutrients and chocolate that didn't taste like despair. I’d sent a runner three streets over to find the specific brand she’d glanced at in the service station but didn't buy.
I slid them onto the counter. Just inside the neutral zone.
"Re-supply," I said. "If you want ‘em."
She looked at the bars. Then at me. Her scent, that neon citrus and ozone, spiked with suspicion. It hit me like a snare drum to the chest.
"I’m not helpless," she said, voice tight. "I can feed myself. I don't need a caretaker."
The rejection was a physical thing. A slap. My Alpha brain screamed Provide. Protect. Feed.
I shoved my hands into my pockets to keep from reaching out.
"Copy," I said. "Options on offer. You pick. Bin ‘em if you want. Or eat ‘em. Your call."
She stared at the wrappers. Shiny foil under the LED strip lights.
"Why?"
"Because you’re working eighteen-hour days fixing our mess," I said. "And because chalk assumes you don't have taste buds."
She snatched them up. Quick. Like she thought I’d take them back.
"Thanks," she muttered. Then she retreated behind her white tape line and pulled the curtain shut.
"You’re welcome," I whispered to the empty corridor.
Three hours later, we were in the venue. Another cavernous brick boat of a place, smelling of stale lager and dust.
Euan was rewiring the venue’s air system again, he was obsessed, muttering about particulate counts, while Alfie was vibrating on stage, testing sightlines.
I was up on the riser, securing the lighting truss.
One of the house rigs was dodgy; the clamp looked like it had been chewed on by a relentless terrier.
"Zia!" I called down. "Cable drop, stage left. Heads up."
She was down there, tablet in hand, verifying Euan’s airflow modifications. She looked up, nodding, and stepped clear.
"Confirmed," she called back. "Drop it."
I let the coil go. It hit the deck with a heavy slap.
"Proper spiderweb up here," I shouted. "Whoever rigged this used shoelaces and hope."
She stepped in to check the line I’d dropped. "Signal path looks clean. Just don't—"
Above me, a par can groaned.
It wasn't the one I was working on. It was the one next to it. The safety chain had rusted through. I heard the metal ping before I saw the movement.
"Zia! Move!"
I didn't think. I didn't calculate. I launched myself off the riser.
I hit the stage deck and lunged.
My hand caught her arm. Just above the elbow.
I yanked her back, spinning her into my chest as the heavy light fixture smashed into the floor exactly where she’d been standing. Glass exploded. Metal screeched against wood.
But I didn't hear the crash.
I felt the contact.
My hand on her arm. Her back against my chest.
It was like grabbing a live wire.
Zap.
The universe narrowed down to the point of contact. Her pulse hammered under my fingertips. Her scent, citrus, ozone, and lightning, wasn't just air anymore. It was heat. It was skin. It was electric, hot-shiver violence that tore through my nervous system and rewrote my DNA in a millisecond.
Mine.
The word roared through me. Not a thought. A fact. A geological imperative.
My arm tightened around her waist reflexively. I pulled her flush against me. She was small, solid, trembling.
For one second, she didn't fight. She melted back against me, a soft exhale that smelled like rain.
Then the shockwave hit her.
She gasped, a ragged, panicked sound, and scrambled forward.
"Nope. Nope. Nope."
She stumbled out of my grip. She scrambled over the debris of the shattered light, boots skidding on glass.
"Zia—" I reached out. My hand was shaking.
She backed away, eyes wide, pupils blown black. She looked at me like I was the danger. Like I was the falling light.
"Don't," she said. Her voice cracked.
She turned and bolted. Proper sprinted. Straight for the loading dock exit.
I stood there in the wreckage. My palm burned where I’d touched her. My heart was trying to beat its way out of my ribcage.
"Kit?" Alfie was at my side instantly, pink coat bristling. "You alright? Did it hit you?"
"No," I choked out. I stared at my hand. "I touched her."
Alfie went still. "And?"
"And I think I just electrocuted us both."
When I finally got back to the bus it was quiet. Deadly quiet.
Zia was barricaded in her bunk. The Do-Not-Cross tape mocked me from the floor.
We huddled in the lounge. Alfie was pacing, wearing a track into the carpet. He looked like a caged fox, energy snapping off him in waves of burnt sugar.
"She thinks we hate her," Alfie said, running a hand through his hair. "She thinks we’re repulsed. And now you’ve grabbed her and she ran like she was on fire."
"I saved her life," I said, staring at my boots. "The light would have crushed her."
"You touched her," Euan said. He was sitting at the table, staring at his laptop, but he wasn't typing. "We broke the seal."
"She’s analyzing it," Euan continued, voice flat. "We’re giving her meters. We’re building air systems. We’re keeping distance. She is interpreting the data set as disgust. She thinks we are avoiding contamination."
"We are avoiding contamination," I snapped. "Just not hers. Ours."
"She doesn't know that or maybe she just doesn't understand it."
Alfie stopped pacing. He slammed his hand against the wall. "It’s a mess. We’re a mess. We need to, we need to tell her."
"No," I said. "We tell her, she runs for real. She’s got an Exit Card in her pocket, remember? Rowan put it there."
"So what do we do?" Alfie demanded. "Watch her treat us like radioactive waste?"
I looked at my hand again. I could still feel the ghost of her pulse.
"We change the rules," I said. The Manchester accent was thick in my mouth, heavy and grounding. "No more guessing. No more trying to be clever with air vents and protein bars."
I looked up at them.
"We follow her lead. Every step. If she moves back, we move back. If she draws a line, we don't cross it. If we need to touch her to stop her dying, we ask forgiveness after, but otherwise? Hands off. Hands visible."
"Ask," Alfie whispered. He looked at his thumb, at the sharpie.
"Ask, don't assume," I confirmed. "Same rule, but make it more obvious. Absolute baseline."
Cal cleared his throat from the kitchenette. He was leaning against the counter, mug in hand, looking as unruffled as a Sunday morning.
"Shall we log it?" he asked dryly. "On the board? So we don't cock it up later when biology gets loud?"
Rowan was already there. She sat on the sofa, tablet propped on her crossed legs, stylus moving.
"Way ahead of you," she said.
She turned the screen around. A new digital whiteboard file.
BOUNDARIES.
Status: LIVE.
Default Protocol: Do-Nothing unless invited.
"Do-nothing," Alfie repeated, testing the weight of it. "That sounds... impossible."
"It’s punk," I said, standing up. "It’s the punkiest thing we’ve ever done."
I looked down the corridor toward the blackout curtain at the back.
"We wait," I said. "Until she opens the door."
I grabbed a roll of gaffer tape from the table.
"And until then," I muttered, "I’m going to tape down every bloody fixture in this venue so I never have to grab her without asking again."