4. Field Research
Chapter four
Field Research
Riot
Riot lasted approximately forty-five minutes before he broke.
He’d gone back to his room after breakfast with every intention of staying there.
He was going to lock the door, wedge the chair under the door knob, and stare at the ceiling until his suppressants arrived or he lost his mind, whichever came first. The kid was fed.
The kid had been told to rest. The kid was not Riot’s responsibility.
This was, Riot reflected, an excellent plan.
The kind of plan that sensible people made and then successfully executed.
The kind of plan that did not involve pacing the length of a cramped hotel room like a caged animal, or doing breathing exercises that were about as effective as trying to put out a house fire with a squirt gun, or very deliberately not thinking about hazel eyes and fever-flushed cheeks and the small sound Cass had made when Riot touched his elbow.
Forty-five minutes. That’s how long his self-control lasted. Forty-five minutes of increasingly pathetic negotiation with his own impulses before the sound of a door opening three rooms down demolished whatever remained of his resolve.
He’s not resting. The stubborn little—he’s going right back out there.
Riot was at his own door before he finished the thought, hand on the knob, every rational argument against this course of action dissolving like sugar in water.
This is a bad idea.
He opened the door anyway.
The hallway was empty, but the fading trace of caramel and cinnamon told him which direction Cass had gone.
Riot followed at a distance, telling himself this was surveillance.
Reconnaissance. A tactical assessment of potential threats to a vulnerable civilian who happened to be staying in the same hotel.
Not stalking. Definitely not stalking.
You’re absolutely stalking him. You’ve gone from “I should stay away” to “I’m going to follow him around the marketplace like a very large, very dangerous golden retriever” in less than an hour. This is what rock bottom looks like.
The morning air was cool and damp and the streets were already filled with the usual chaos of refugees shuffling toward work assignments, and people trying to survive another day in the cracks between corporate territories.
Riot spotted Cass half a block ahead, those distinctive robes making him easy to track even in a crowd. From an operative standpoint, the kid was a surveillance nightmare—he might as well have been wearing a tracking beacon and a sign that said “please notice me.”
Cass moved like he was underwater. Slower than Riot had seen before, his shoulders already carrying the weight of anticipated failure. Even from this distance, Riot could see the flush still visible on his cheekbones, the careful way he held himself like sudden movements might shatter something.
I told him to rest. I bought him breakfast and told him to rest and he walked right back out into this.
The frustration that surged through him was disproportionate and he knew it.
Cass didn’t owe him obedience. They’d shared one meal and a handful of conversations—that didn’t give Riot any claim on the kid’s choices.
But watching Cass push through the crowd while obviously still unwell made something in Riot’s chest twist uncomfortably.
It’s just the suppressant shortage messing with your head, he told himself. Amplifying normal responses into something that feels almost feral.
The explanation was technically accurate and completely useless, like being told that drowning was just “an excess of water in the respiratory system.” Knowing why he felt this way didn’t make him feel it any less.
Not your job. Not your problem. You’re just making sure he doesn’t die.
The marketplace was typical Neutral Zone chaos—stalls crammed together with no apparent logic, selling everything from synthetic protein to salvaged tech to drugs that were probably sixty percent industrial solvent.
The air hung thick with competing smells: cooking grease fighting a losing battle against chemical fumes, bodies adding their own commentary, and underneath it all, the particular desperation-tinged ozone that seemed to permeate every public space out here.
Riot found a position near a textile vendor that gave him good sightlines while keeping him mostly hidden from Cass’s view.
His old operative instincts assessed the space automatically: three viable exits, a cluster of what looked like off-duty SVI security running a card game near the food stalls, two obvious pickpocket teams working the crowd in rotating patterns.
People avoided Cass, giving his Elysian robes a wide berth.
Some made warding gestures when they thought he wasn’t looking—a hand sign Riot recognized from the outer territories, meant to ward off corporate influence.
Others just watched with suspicious eyes, their hands moving to protect wallets or children.
Cass didn’t seem to notice. Or maybe he’d just gotten used to it.
The thought made Riot’s vision haze gold.
A scream cut through the marketplace noise—high, panicked, and young. Riot’s attention snapped toward the sound, his body already shifting into combat readiness, weight balanced, exits mapped, threat assessments running.
But Cass was faster.
There was no hesitation, no calculation—the kid just moved toward the cry like it was magnetic, weaving through the crowd with more speed than his current condition should have allowed.
By the time Riot tracked him to the source, Cass was already kneeling beside a small girl who’d fallen at a food stall, her knee and palm bloody from the rough pavement.
The girl’s parents arrived seconds later, positioning themselves protectively between their daughter and the stranger in strange clothes. The father’s hand went to the child’s shoulder, his expression hard with suspicion. “We don’t need cult help.”
Cass’s face fell and he nodded, like he’d heard this before. He’d probably heard it a hundred times.
“I’m not trying to recruit,” he said. “I just want to provide first aid. She’s bleeding.”
The mother hesitated, looking at her crying daughter, then nodded once. The father stepped back, but kept his eyes fixed on Cass’s hands like he expected them to do something sinister at any moment.
Riot watched as Cass cleaned the wounds, his voice soft and steady as he distracted the girl with questions. What was her favorite color? Did she like the marketplace? Had she ever seen a real butterfly?
The girl’s crying subsided into sniffles, then into actual answers. Purple. Sometimes. Once, in a picture.
Cass smiled at her, and something in Riot’s chest cracked open.
It wasn’t a performance. There was no calculation behind it, no angle being worked. Cass was just... kind. Genuinely, inexplicably kind, in a world that had given him absolutely no reason to be.
How did Elysian not stamp that out of him?
Corporate territories didn’t produce people like this.
Riot had spent enough years inside Gensyn’s systems to know how it worked—the designation hierarchies, the constant competition, the way anything soft or generous got ground down into something more useful.
Kindness was inefficient. Compassion was a liability.
Empathy was to be weaponized or removed from the conscience entirely.
But somehow Cass had come through it with his capacity for genuine care intact.
Or maybe that was the point. Maybe Elysian recognized what they had in him and decided to exploit it rather than eliminate it. Send the sweet, earnest boy out to recruit with his genuine smile and his honest desire to help, and let his sincerity do the work that manipulation couldn’t.
The thought made Riot want to hit something. Preferably something wearing an Elysian logo.
When Cass finished bandaging the girl, the parents’ hostility had softened into confused gratitude. The father offered payment—a small packet of what looked like tea.
“No thank you,” Cass said. “Just helping.”
“Why?” the mother asked, and she sounded genuinely baffled.
Cass tilted his head, clearly not understanding the question. “Because she was hurt?”
The parents exchanged a look, thanked him awkwardly, and hurried away. The girl turned to wave goodbye over her shoulder, and Cass waved back with a smile that made Riot itch to touch those soft lips. He wanted to trace them with his fingers, to bite them swollen and red—
Stop looking at his mouth. Stop thinking about his mouth. Stop—
That smile directed up at Riot, those soft lips parted, the way they’d feel against his own, or against his throat, or wrapped around his—
Fuck.
Riot forced his gaze away, but it took longer than it should have. The fantasy clung, sticky and persistent, refusing to dissolve. He had to physically shake his head to clear it, earning a strange look from a passing civilian who probably thought he was having some kind of episode.
Though this definitely qualified as some kind of episode.
This was what happened when he split his doses too many times—his chemistry went haywire, his impulse control degraded from “questionable” to “nonexistent,” and his brain started treating random attractive Omegas like they were the solution to all his problems. It didn’t mean anything.
It was just biology, just the modifications Gensyn had shoved into him demanding an outlet.
It had never been this intense before, though. Not even when he had his ass kicked in these same alleys seven months ago for approaching a near-feral Omega in heat and an active Gensyn operative. This whole thing was just a perfect storm of inconvenient timing.
Cass had moved on, continuing through the marketplace with his bag of supplies and his recruitment pamphlets. Riot followed, maintaining his distance, watching the pattern repeat itself over and over.
Approach. Rejection. Hurt. Move on. Try again.