(Niko's P.O.V.)

“I think I’ve translated enough misogynistic bullshit this week to have some serious health concerns,” I mutter into my hands.

Jay throws his head back and laughs, giving my shoulder a few hefty slaps. “Bro, I can’t even imagine. I’m just along for the ride at this point. Enjoying the sushi while you do the heavy lifting.”

I scoff, nudging him in the ribs. Jay knows I hate when he downplays how much he works his ass off. Which is exactly why he said it.

“You done for today, though?” He asks.

“Mm.” I half-revert to Japanese. “I’m have done-ました。”

Jay snickers. “Um… What?”

“Shit, fuck. I don’t know. I’m making up my own language at this point. I’m going to bed.”

“Good. And I’m making sure of it.”

We change into our civilian clothes and head to a worn-down, traditional Japanese inn that only takes cash. While Jay uses our tiny private restroom, I lay on the tatami and pull an old photo out of my pocket; it reminds me I have to live long enough to get home.

I prefer this benign type of mission: translating between some old white guys in our Department that we’ve never met and some fake-named Japanese guys, trying to take down an overlap in our countries’ black markets. But by what I’m translating, I’m not sure we’re much better. They’re debating how to secure an injectable substance, but I can tell it’s more than that. They won’t let me hear the details, but Jay and I speculate it’s a bioweapon. One that originated in the US and has been wreaking havoc on other countries, of course, so now we’re mopping our own mess.

I don’t want to think about it, but that’s all my brain can do at night. Especially after six months of high-pressure vocabulary thrown around that I have to ingest both literally and culturally, then try not to make a mess as I shit it back out of my bilingually confused mouth.

Assigning some part-Japanese, dumbass teenager to this mission makes no sense to me, but it’s not my job to question what I’m doing.

We have to get through this to graduate. Jay and I were surprised they didn’t choose a mission requiring us to play our usual, violent, brutish roles. But we know something must be coming at the end of this that’ll require that side of us. Something big enough to warrant our 16-year-old promotion into the actual Department ranks.

Footsteps march down the hall outside our room, so I dive into the open closet. Someone kicks through the door. My lungs stiffen when I see him through the closet slats; the intruder looks a lot like one of my Commanding Officers. Startlingly pale and tight-lipped, he has the same coercive blue eyes I know so well.

But he’s not my Commanding Officer, I have to remind myself. Judging by his rifle, he’s likely a European assassin. Everything in my training tells me to subdue or kill an intruder, but it also tells me to never defy authority… Especially not that Commanding Officer. I’m so startled that I’m frozen for a whole three seconds. Thank god Jay’s still in the bathroom and didn’t have to see me fail after seven years of hardcore combat training.

The millisecond the intruder hears Jay turn on the bathroom sink and aims his automatic weapon at the bathroom door, I shake myself out of it. I’ll never allow Jay to die.

His eyes are off me, so I make my move. Subduing him onto the floor in a single breath, I rip the automatic from the intruder’s beefy hands and strap it over my shoulder.

Jay flings open the bathroom door, dressed in only a towel, and says, “Goodnight!” He clocks the intruder in the jaw with a blur of a fist, knocking the guy out.

I laugh, shaking my head. “Why do you have to say something weird every time? You’re going to be known as the dumbass foreigner kid that thinks he’s in a spy movie. From the ’00s. Formidable, but a dumbass.”

Jay flicks his leftover toothpaste at me from his toothbrush, giving me a foamy smile. “Still formidable, though!” He spits. “You gonna call that in or what?”

I laugh. “You’re ridiculous.”

“You love me, though.”

“Yeah, man. I do.”

Jay gets unusually quiet, but he’ll bounce back in a minute or two. I need him to get off my case before he notices my legs are jelly, straddling this doppelganger of my Commanding Officer, Dr. Sumner.

But I’m not a lucky person in general, so of course, Jay notices.

“That guy looks a lot like Sumner, doesn’t he? Kinda freaky.” He laughs, standing over the intruder’s head. We sit in silence for a whole minute. Jay’s depthful brown eyes tell me he doesn’t need to ask to understand where I’m at. “So… You need help getting up?”

I try to wave Jay off, but he grabs my wrist, pulling me to my feet. My knuckles brush past his bare stomach on the way up, and my mind is definitely distracted now, although confused. I thought I was straight, but the more time I spend with Jay as we’ve grown older, the more I don’t understand myself.

He grabs a hold of my head. Friendly, but showing off his exposed, flexing arms a little too much for me to speak. “Hey, what’s going on, Ni? Something’s… off.”

“I… I don’t feel too good,” I whisper.

“Alright, let’s get the danger stick off your back, first.” Jay frees me of the rifle, strapping it onto his own back. Once we confiscate something as serious as an automatic, we keep it on ourselves so no one has a chance to use it against us. Still, it feels wrong, seeing Jay like this. Out of everyone I know, he hates rifles the most.

“Sorry,” I whisper.

“Dude, stop. What kind of useless partner would I be if I couldn’t take over for you now and then? You’ve been working your ass off. And you look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

Jay laughs, pushing me onto the bed. “You’re welcome. Now go the fuck to sleep, princess.”

I throw my shirt off at his face, expecting him to laugh and seek revenge. But when he removes the faded black fabric draped over his head, his warm skin blushes an even darker bronze.

Something has shifted between us during this tour, and it makes me nervous. Especially because no one knows about my “classified” job after work, back at home. Even at our current relationship’s strength, our closeness could risk Jay’s life.

“S-sorry, I shouldn’t distract you.” I reach for my shirt.

Jay’s his regular self again, whipping the shirt out of my reach. “No takebacks.”

He ties the intruder like a packed sausage, then relays the situation to the Departments using our disposable work phone. The operator transfers us to the right stranger: someone who “cleans up.”

Within an hour, the intruder is gone. The air feels breathable again. We move to a different room—one with its front door still intact—and go to sleep.

Men in full tactical gear barge in this time, thankfully from our own Department. Jay and I hardly slept, but we’re awake now. The “deal” is unexpectedly closing, and so is our tour. Our final task is to betray the deal, capture our subjects, and steal their goods, removing their supply from the black market.

It’s easy enough to breach the 50-story skyscraper after six months of rapport with the pharmaceutical company. We stride in with bulletproof vests beneath our plain clothes, guns, knives, and explosives packed flat into our inner jacket pockets.

But as soon as we step into the elevator, we’re instructed to remove our trackers. Either someone caught wind of our heist, or their technology makes ours look outdated and can easily steal our chip data. And we don’t want to be tracked by the wrong people. That’s why the DoTD uses disposable chips to monitor our health and location instead of smartphones.

Jay whips out his knife, giving me a smug grin. “You wanna do each other or watch each other do ourselves?”

“Oh, fuck off.” I laugh.

We dig into our arms, wedging the knife beneath the tracker implanted under a shallow skin flap. Then we pry it up enough to jab the blade’s tip through an indent in the chip’s center and pluck it out. This could leave a mess of blood in the elevator, but Jay and I have done this enough times to know how to keep the bleeding under control and bandage ourselves in seconds.

But then we’re ordered to give ourselves epinephrine shots. This is a daunting change in plans, signaling there’s no more “capturing” involved.

I give Jay a quick look, but he can’t stand to face me. We figured out early on that the shots aren’t only epinephrine, and whatever else is in there makes us rabid. Neither of us likes how things go when they want us to go berserk. We’re trying our best to subdue or capture instead of kill anymore, and I think the Department is onto us. They want us to shut up and do as we’re told.

And they want to watch.

That means I’ll be forced to kill other Japanese people, and I know that’s why they want us to do this job—the only high-ranking people of color in DoTD training. To show us what can be made of us if we disobey the United States of White America.

After seven years of loyalty-ensuring torture, this is their final test? Hazing us?