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Stanley had been lying in the same position, finger resting near the trigger, for nearly forty-eight hours.
He had discovered an important truth during this time: Air vents were a lot tighter than they looked in movies.
His cramped calf had transcended pain and entered a metaphysical state.
He was waiting to eliminate a target scheduled to give a speech soon. Security during the event would be airtight, so naturally, they had put the sniper inside the building two days early.
Stanley listened to Command through the earpiece hanging from one ear. With the other, he listened for footsteps, maintenance crews, anyone asking inconvenient questions like why is there a sniper in the ventilation system?
“Alpha, the target is headed your way.”
“Copy.”
At last, the target was in his scope.
He was a few hundred metres away, behind the stage where the lights were dim.
It didn’t matter.
Stanley could have made the shot even without night-vision goggles.
This measly distance and no wind?
Easy.
He squeezed the trigger.
The man dropped.
There was screaming. A rush for the exits. Security shouted conflicting instructions with absolutely no coordination.
Stanley exhaled.
“Nice work, Alpha. Outstanding execution as always,” Command remarked.
“Give me something that’s more of a challenge next time, why don’t you?” Stanley muttered while expertly dismantling his rifle.
This was his life: one classified mission after another.
They gave him the satisfaction of a job well done.
Occasionally, unlike this time, they even elevated his heart rate. Let him feel alive.
It was usually when something unexpected happened, when plans collapsed and he had to improvise.
Like the Auckland mission.
He’d spent a month in the hospital afterward.
Worth it, though. The private-plane dogfight that led to dismantling a terrorist cell had been objectively awesome.
Little did Stanley know, he was about to become thoroughly acquainted with the proverb: Be careful what you wish for.
Stanley watched the asset’s home through binoculars. The mission, this time, was protective services. Intelligence suggested foreign operatives intended kidnap or eliminate a civilian scientist because of his work’s potential military applications.
What made this mission inconvenient was they had to keep a distance.
The scientist, Xavier Wingfield, had formally declined government protection. As a free citizen, he was legally allowed to make poor decisions.
Command had simply creatively interpreted his refusal.
If he didn’t know he was protected by multiple Spec Ops agents, no harm, no foul.
“Where’s Agent Bony?” Stanley asked.
It wasn’t like her to be late. She was scheduled to infiltrate the asset’s home shortly under deep cover as domestic staff.
She was the crux to this mission.
The rest of them were support.
“We haven’t been able to get in touch with her, Sir!” one of his men answered.
Just then, his secure phone chimed. Stanley read the incoming message.
His heartbeat sure was elevated now.
“She’s out of commission,” Stanley announced. “Pure coincidence. She single-handedly stopped a bank robbery. No civilian casualties.”
The team erupted in cheers.
“But,” Stanley continued, raising a finger, “she also sustained three fractures, mild smoke inhalation, and is currently being interviewed by six news networks. She will not be infiltrating anything for the foreseeable future.”
Silence fell.
“The asset,” Stanley added, “is expecting a highly recommended maid for an interview in approximately twenty minutes.”
“Damn,” Leonard said. “Maya’s away too.”
Their other female teammate was currently competing in the international finals of the Women’s Wrestling World Championship.
Stanley had enough faith in her victory that he’d wagered his entire bonus.
“This opportunity is too valuable to waste,” Stanley observed. “We need a replacement.”
He inspected each team member in turn.
Massive, bulging muscles.
Frames built for intimidation.
And their faces…
He realized belatedly that while he was inspecting them, they were all staring at him. Expectantly.
Stanley groaned. “Oh, fuck me sideways.”
There was only had enough time to give himself a quick once-over before he had to go.
Gloves. Stockings. Headdress. The full maid shebang.
A black and white frilly skirt hugged his slim figure.
His steady hand with eyeliner had paid off.
The purple lipstick he usually wore helped with the disguise as well.
He stepped out of the washroom.
One agent opened his mouth.
Stanley glared at him.
The man immediately mimed zipping his lips, locking them, and throwing away the key.
“Brody’s in charge while I’m undercover,” Stanley ordered, posture flawless, expression lethal. “Protect the asset.”
His team snapped into salutes.
No one laughed.
At least, not while he could still see them.
“Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Wingfield, I’ve been sent by Cleanliness In Action,” Stanley greeted.
His gloved hands rested demurely against the front of his maid dress. He raised his voice an octave. Hopefully enough to pass.
If they discovered he was an undercover government operative disguised as a maid, the mission would fail.
If they discovered he was a grown man wearing a frilly maid outfit… he would die of humiliation right there on their doorstep.
He assessed the couple at the door.
Middle-aged. Civilian posture. No visible weapons.
The man wore spectacles and displayed early signs of surrender to male-pattern baldness. The woman smiled warmly, wrapped in a well-worn knit cardigan.
“I understand you were expecting Miss Bony, but she is currently unavailable,” Stanley continued smoothly, “Rest assured, I am just as qualified professionally for this role. You can check with the agency if you would like.”
“Miss Snyder, was it? Please come in.”
Xavier and his wife Wilma were far friendlier than Stanley expected.
Stanley though Xavier would be a taciturn man, some kind of paranoid recluse, given he had turned down state protection.
Instead, he was unfailingly polite.
They gave him a full tour of the large home.
Then they sat him down and fed him cookies.
From the remarkable hourly rate to provision of health insurance, the gig sounded too good to be true. His instincts, honed through countless spec ops missions, told him something was off.
They were selling the job too hard.
They had barely asked him for any qualifications.
He waited for the next words out of their mouths to be an invite to a pyramid scheme or a cult. Possibly both.
“What exactly do you require me for?” he checked, just to be sure.
“Oh, some light cleaning around the house,” Wilma said. “Some cooking while we’re busy at work.” She took a breath. “And we have an eleven-year-old son. We’d love it if you could help keep an eye on him.” She dabbed her forehead with a white handkerchief.
Stanley wondered if she was getting a heat flash given how much she was sweating despite the mild temperature inside the house.
“Xeno is such a sweet child. Isn’t he, dear?” She elbowed her husband in the ribs.
Xavier’s face bore an uncanny resemblance to ones Stanley had seen on people undergoing a hostile interrogation. “Hm, oh yes, the sweetest! Absolutely.” He shoved a contract toward Stanley with suspicious urgency. “If you’d just sign here—contract starts on Monday.”
Wow, that was easy, Stanley thought, signing his name. Good thing they were sending someone undercover. Otherwise, it would have been just as easy for the enemy to infiltrate.
They heard the front door open with a click.
“Xeno! The new maid is here. Come meet her!” Wilma called.
A moment later, a boy with a head of white popped into the room.
There were round green goggles over a wide forehead. A lab coat several sizes too large hung from his small frame, making it look like he’d escaped from a miniature research facility.
“Say hi to Miss Snyder,” Xavier introduced.
The boy tilted his head upward, staring at Stanley with enormous dark eyes.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Snyder. I’m Xeno Houston Wingfield—a scientist!”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, too,” Stanley replied in his carefully calibrated falsetto.
They shook hands, Xeno's small but firm in Stanley's.
He had expected Xeno to be rude or difficult, given how his parents had discussed him like they were walking on eggshells. Instead, he was quite the opposite.
The child appeared polite, intelligent, and frankly angelic.
Only later would Stanley reflect that he urgently needed his eyes examined.
How could he have missed the tiny horns and the flicking little pointed tail attached to that deceptive ball of white?
Within the first week, Stanley had solved the enigma that was the Wingfield family.
Why they had refused state protection.
Why they were so desperate for him to be their maid.
It all came down to Xeno.
The boy was as reckless as he was polite; as dangerous as he was intelligent.
He had annexed both the basement and garage (places that the Wingfields had casually avoided showing Stanley during the interview), converting them to his personal laboratories.
There were materials in there that Stanley would have been required to report if he were present officially as a federal agent, rather than undercover as a maid.
Stanley had already saved both their lives more than once before he’d even gotten his first paycheck.
If maids were routinely expected to survive this level of occupational hazard, they needed to setup a recruitment program for this talent pool ASAP.
A little digging from his coworkers and interviews with past Wingfield employees, revealed the truth.
The Wingfields churned through maids like butter.
Every previous hire had departed in varying stages of psychological distress. One had fainted after encountering Xeno’s biological specimens in the minifridge. Another had narrowly survived one of his more… energetic experiments.
The household had been blacklisted by all local maid agencies, except for their fake one.
“I’m sorry for that… unfortunate localized detonation incident, Miss Snyder,” Xeno apologized, his voice far too cheerful, “but we can’t let a little experimental variance stop scientific progress, am I right?”
Stanley blinked.
The fire extinguisher hovered in his hand.
Smoke drifted lazily past his face.
Several strands of his cowlick no longer existed, having met their fiery end moments earlier.
“You’re an odd one,” he finally said.
Xeno burst out laughing, like Stanley had told the funniest joke he’d ever heard.
Stanley tried his utmost to be a good maid.
It was a Tuesday, roughly one month into the job, when he realized that he had somehow managed to do far too much and not enough at the same time.
Xavier and Wilma were both still at work. They were both so profoundly grateful for his continued employment that they had given him a bonus generous enough to make him briefly wonder if he’d chosen the wrong profession.
Stanley currently sat next to Xeno, assisting him with his latest experiment in the basement.
“Ah, it sure would be nice if I had some Uranium-235,” Xeno lamented, puffing out his cheeks in a dramatic pout. He said it as casually as other kids might complain about not getting ice cream.
He turned his goggled gaze toward Stanley.
“Can you get me some, Miss Snyder? Please?”
“Excuse me?” Stanley asked, thinking he must have misheard. “Whyever would I have access to something like that? I’m just your average maid!”
Xeno burst into laughter, dropping the rocket component he’d been adjusting.
“You’re not fooling me, Miss Snyder! You’re a secret agent, aren’t you?”
He pushed his goggles up, eyes locking onto Stanley’s amber ones.
Stanley’s entire body tensed.
You’ve got to be kidding me.
Was his cover really about to be blown by an eleven-year-old? One that was smart enough to be attending university remotely, but still.
“What an overactive imagination you have,” he said, doubling down.
Xeno hopped off his lab bench and stood in front of Stanley. He crossed his fingers in his signature thinking pose. “There’s no imagination involved at all. Only observation.”
He began listing evidence with the enthusiasm of someone presenting a peer-reviewed paper.
“You aren’t very good at cleaning. You’ve never dusted the baseboards.”
Stanley paused.
He was supposed to do that?
“Or cooking. I’ve found eggshells in my dinner on multiple occasions.”
Ouch. Stanley grimaced. He’d thought those would just… disappear into the rest of the dish.
“And you keep using the wrong cutlery for different courses,” Xeno continued. “You used the soup spoon for the salad and the dessert fork for the fish.”
One size of cutlery is plenty, Stanley thought defensively.
“What can I say? I’m a horrible maid,” Stanley said.
Xeno shook his head vigorously.
“No! Miss Snyder, you’re the best maid I’ve ever had!”
Stanley stared at him. “What?”
Xeno’s words shot out at a mile a minute. “You possess nearly superhuman reaction speed, exceptional strength, and remarkable situational awareness. You respond instantly to danger. You’ve successfully completed every task I’ve assigned you—even the ones specifically designed to test your limits!”
Ah, Stanley thought grimly. So that’s what those were.
He desperately craved a cigarette.
“Last but not least,” Xeno said, “your hands have calluses consistent with repeated firearms use and I’m pretty sure that’s a Smith & Wesson Bodyguard you got strapped to your thigh.”
Stanley’s jaw dropped. “You looked up my skirt?”
A blush dusted Xeno’s cheeks, yet he looked entirely unrepentant.
“I wasn’t trying to, Miss Snyder, but you um… don’t really cross your legs.”
Stanley opened his mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
Nothing came out.
“Don’t worry, I’m more than happy to keep your secret,” Xeno said brightly, sitting down next to him. “I just need a little quid pro quo.”
Stanley swallowed. “What do you mean?”
Xeno silently mouthed the words.
U-RA-NI-UM-2-3-5.
Stanley’s eye twitched.
Was Xavier Wingfield truly the national security concern here? Because his son appeared fully capable of starting World War III before puberty.
“Oh,” Stanley said slowly, realization dawning. “Have you been publishing papers under your father’s name? Nuclear fusion. Helium-3?”
Xeno shrugged innocently. Far too innocently.
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who could say?”
Stanley grabbed his shoulders, expression serious.
“Listen carefully, Xeno. I’m here to protect you and your family. If you reveal my identity, I can’t do that anymore. And I absolutely cannot provide a civilian U-235.”
A pause.
“…Is there anything else you’d accept?”
Xeno lit up instantly.
“Of course! I have many experiments that would benefit from someone with your specific skillset!”
That was far from reassuring.
Stanley could practically see sparkles around the mini mad scientist.
Xeno slipped off his gloves and put his warm hands on Stanley’s cheeks.
“Let me show you,” he said reverently, “the beautiful light of science.”
Stanley wondered if he’d ended up in some kind of cult after all.
Xeno’s antics only escalated from there.
Stanley did his best to assist him and steer him away from the more illegal endeavours.
A part of him even… enjoyed it. Despite the age gap, it began to feel less like supervision and more like friendship.
After a successful railgun test out on an abandoned stretch of farmland, Xeno had been so ecstatic he presented Stanley with a miniature doll made in his own likeness.
Stanley kept it.
…After removing the miniature GPS tracker hidden inside and thoroughly scolding Xeno for installing it in the first place.
Somewhere along the way, Stanley realized he had come to genuinely care for the boy.
That was precisely why he grew worried.
Xeno was growing more fearless every day in his experiment designs, firm in his belief that Stanley would always be there to intervene before anything truly bad happened.
And he could.
For now.
But one day this mission would end.
“Miss Snyder” would vanish like she had never existed.
Xeno would remain with a false sense of safety.
What if he hurt himself in the future, when Stanley was not there to protect him?
It was for this reason that he came up with a plan to teach Xeno a lesson.
During yet another experiment, he deliberately slowed his reaction time by a fraction of a second. Just enough.
He still shielded Xeno from danger—of course—but allowed the edge of flying debris to slice across his own shoulder.
The cut looked ugly. Blood welled immediately, flowing down his arm.
He had endured far worse injuries without so much as an extra blink.
This time, he forced his face to twist in pain.
Stanley patted himself on the back for his acting skills as Xeno grabbed a nearby first-aid kit and began treating his injury.
Xeno didn’t speak. He simply worked, hands steady as he cleaned and bandaged the wound.
Stanley hoped Xeno had learned his lesson.
He wasn’t expecting to feel something warm and wet on his forearm.
One drop.
Then another.
Stanley frowned. He reached out and gently lifted Xeno’s chin, checking to see what was wrong.
Black eyes that were usually bright were now glassy, filled to the brim with tears.
“I-I’m sorry,” Xeno choked. “I miscalculated… and you got hurt…”
The words broke apart into quiet sobs.
Stanley hadn’t felt so guilty, not even when he’d volunteered Brody to go in his stead to Maya’s karaoke session… and that had almost ended a multi-year friendship.
“It doesn’t hurt,” Stanley said quickly. “I’m not angry. Just… be more careful next time.”
After a brief hesitation, he reached out and awkwardly patted Xeno’s head.
Xeno hid his face in his sleeves, still crying.
Stanley had made grown men break while barely batting an eye. But seeing Xeno like this? It was worse than kicking a puppy.
He remembered what his mother used to do when he cried.
He gently wrapped his arms around Xeno in a hug until the boy’s sobs gradually quieted. Xeno held on tightly in return, as though if he let go, Stanley would disappear.
It went to show how close he’d grown to the Wingfield family that when Xavier won a cruise in a lucky draw, he invited Stanley as well. Not only would all expenses be paid, but Stanley would be compensated for his time.
“I’d be happy to,” Stanley replied. It would be easier for him to protect them if he could stay close.
He would arrange for the team to secretly follow.
Only later, while flipping through the cruise itinerary, did he discover the words: Masquerade Dance.
That was how Stanley found himself standing in the Masquerade Hall, wearing a black gown and matching fingerless gloves. Thin black straps formed a collar around his neck, cascading over his shoulders to secure the bodice. The open overskirt allowed him to hide a few more “accessories” than the maid uniform. Beneath it, the inner skirt fell to just above his knee, meeting the brim of his matte black boots.
To complete the look, a golden mask covered the upper half of his face.
He’d warned the team that anyone who took photos would get their wrists broken. Still, he suspected they considered that a decent risk-reward for such quality blackmail material.
Beside him, the Wingfields looked perfectly elegant.
Xavier and Wilma reminisced about their high-school dances.
Xeno looked adorably handsome in his navy suit accented with a red bowtie. His white hair was slicked back into a pompadour, and he wore a mask with a black X in the middle.
He looked at Stanley like a computer encountering an unexpected error.
“Cat got your tongue?” Stanley teased, surprised the little scientist wasn’t eagerly sharing a dozen theorems or experiment plans for once.
Before Xeno could respond, a stranger interrupted.
“Excuse me, miss,” he said, “May I have this dance?”
Stanley blinked. It took a moment for him to register that he was the one being asked.
“Hey, I saw her first,” another man stepped in. “I’d love to get your number, mademoiselle! I’m quite a successful businessman. You might’ve heard of my company.”
A third appeared.
Then a fourth.
Before long, he was facing an entire queue of hopeful suitors, one of them even holding a rose, looking at him like he was a honey trap and they were ready to be compromised.
He scanned them methodically. No weapons. No threats. Just aggressive heterosexual enthusiasm.
He was searching for a way to turn them all down without violence, when he felt a light tap on his wrist from Xeno.
“I’m not feeling so well,” Xeno said. “Can you take me back to the cabin?”
Xeno’s finger tapped away in a familiar rhythm.
Morse code.
BAIL
Stanley made eye contact with one of his subordinates, who confirmed that they had the adult Wingfields covered.
“Duty calls,” Stanley announced to the crowd, which parted reluctantly.
“Thanks,” Stanley said once they were outside.
“I had no interest in dancing anyway,” Xeno replied, taking off his mask. “This is actually a great opportunity. While there are fewer people around, we can scout for the most optimal location from which to watch the fireworks.”
Stanley smiled softly, taking off his mask as well and following behind.
They walked down mostly empty hallways while Xeno delivered an enthusiastic lecture on the history of fireworks, and its relation to ammunition.
They passed a door marked CREW ONLY with a yellow maintenance sign blocking it.
It may as well have been an open invitation.
“As expected, this deck is completely empty,” Xeno declared, running onto the deck. “We should be able to get an elegant view from here. This is where the lifeboats are stored—”
He stopped.
His face paled as he looked at the damaged lifeboats.
All but one.
If an emergency were to happen now…
The metal door slammed shut behind him with an ominous clang!
Three men surrounded him. They were wearing staff uniforms, but the color was a shade off.
They carried themselves like Stanley did when he thought no one was watching.
“Shit,” one muttered. “A kid wandered in.”
“You idiot, I told you to lock the door.”
“I did! I swear!”
Xeno quietly tucked the lockpick deeper into his pocket.
He inhaled and activated the Innocent Child protocol.
Wide eyes. Small pout.
It always worked on his mom when he was asking for more research budget.
“I’m sorry Misters,” he said sweetly, “but I’m terribly lost. How do I get back to the cabins?”
One of them looked like they were going to tell him and let him go.
Another interrupted.
“You’ve seen those lifeboats, kid. You’re not going anywhere but down with this ship.”
Xeno gulped as he stared into the barrel of a gun.
“Wait,” he said quickly. “There’s something important you’ve missed.”
“What’s that?”
Xeno smiled.
“I have a maid.”
The man dropped like a pile of bricks.
Within the span of a blink, Stanley melted out of the shadows, moving like liquid night. A precise strike, a quiet choke, and then all three were down.
Stanley straightened, calmly adjusting his gloves as if he’d just finished dusting.
Xeno’s face lit up with pure delight.
“How elegant! Was that jujitsu or—”
His world turned upside down.
Stanley threw him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and moved.
Gunfire exploded across the deck, bullets chewing into wood and metal around them.
More enemies.
“Close your eyes!” Stanley ordered.
“No way!” Xeno shouted back over the gunfire. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world!”
“Of course,” Stanley groaned. At least Xeno seemed like he was more likely to poke a dead body excitedly than get traumatized by it.
In one fluid motion, he drew both pistols from where they were hidden under his skirt.
BANG. BANG. BANG!
Three shooters fell, screaming but alive.
Stanley tied them with brutal efficiency and crouched beside one.
“What did you mean by down with this ship?”
“I’d rather die than tell you!” the man spat.
“Bomb in the engine room?” Xeno asked casually.
All of the assassins plus Stanley turned to look at him. He held up a phone he’d acquired from one assassin’s pocket. “Simply texting without any encryption? Not even 2FA? How embarrassingly unprofessional.”
“Nice,” Stanley complimented with a thumb’s up.
He lifted his watch to send a message to Brody.
Static.
Signal jammed.
One assassin laughed weakly. “Too late.”
The fire alarms screamed to life. Even far away, they could hear passengers shouting.
“This is to distract people while they escape,” Xeno explained, finished reading through the messages. “The bomb’s set to go off in twenty minutes.”
Stanley calmly assessed his options.
It would take too long to find his team and then make their way to the engine room, especially in the chaos cause by the fire alarm.
He needed to make it there as soon as humanly possible, ideally with a bomb expert in tow.
He looked down.
Xeno looked back up at him, eyes shining like stars.
Desperate times called for desperate measures.
“You can disarm it, right?” Stanley asked.
Xeno looked up at him, and calmly said, “No.”
“No?!”
Maybe he had expected too much of the kid. He’d been optimistic when they had reached the engine room and Xeno had produced a toolkit out of his suit jacket like a magician producing a rabbit.
Were they all going to die because he had misjudged?
“I’ve disabled the motion sensor,” Xeno said as he continued working, fingers moving with surgical precision. “However, there are at least ten additional anti-tamper mechanisms that I can see. The time it would take for me to disarm exceeds the detonation window.”
He crossed his fingers into an X.
“I have come up with a viable alternative plan. It requires your assistance. First, we need to bring the bomb up to the deck we were just on!”
Stanley did not argue. He grabbed Xeno with one arm and the bomb with the other and ran while the boy spoke over the pounding of his footsteps.
“We must not have the bomb go off in the ocean. Water transmits shock waves far more efficiently than air. The blast could hit the hull and cripple the ship. We must detonate it away from the vessel—in the air!”
They burst onto the deck.
Xeno pointed immediately. “There. The lifeboat crane. Can you operate it?”
“I can,” Stanley responded.
And he did.
Moments later they were inside the crane cab. The bomb hung below them, secured to the release hook, swaying over dark water.
“Build momentum,” Xeno instructed. “Maximum lateral swing.”
Stanley worked the controls with calm precision. The massive crane groaned in protest as the bomb began to swing wider and wider, slicing through the night air.
“Five…” Xeno counted, voice steady. “Four… three…”
Stanley’s grip tightened on the levers.
“Now!”
The hook snapped open.
The bomb flew outward in an arc, soaring away from the ship.
For a heartbeat, there was silence.
Then the sky erupted. A fireball bloomed, heat flashing across the deck like sudden sunrise.
Xeno thrust both fists into the air, laughing with pure, unfiltered glee.
“This is the best vacation ever! That was so much cooler than fireworks!”
Stanley collapsed back into his seat, feeling like his soul had left his body.
“Miss Snyder!” Xeno exclaimed, indignant. “What are you doing? That stick is toxic!”
Stanley didn’t care.
He lit up a cigarette and enjoyed a well-earned smoke.
“The alarm appears to have been triggered by a technical malfunction. Thank you for your cooperation.”
With that announcement, the guests went back to their regularly schedule programming, sighing breaths of relief. With the noise of the alarms and all of them evacuated to the other side of the ship, they had missed the explosion completely.
Stanley and Xeno found Xavier and Wilma among the crowd. Both adults looked visibly relieved when they spotted them.
“We were worried sick,” Wilma said. “We couldn’t find you after the alarm went off.”
“There were just too many people,” Xeno replied smoothly. “We must have missed each other.”
Xavier gave Stanley a look that said he knew better.
He knew chances were high his son had run off to somewhere he shouldn’t have been.
“Thanks for keeping him safe,” Xavier said to Stanley. “You’re doing a great job. I’ve never seen Xeno so attached to any of the other maids before.” He chuckled softly, “I know he doesn’t make your job easy.”
“Dad!” Xeno groaned.
Stanley laughed, “Not at all, Mr. Wingfield. Sometimes, I don’t know what I’d do without him.”
The lifeboat deck had been sealed off by crew and security. After a quiet exchange with Stanley’s team, it had been agreed that the sabotage would remain confidential. Panic helped no one. The assassins were already in custody, and to the passengers, nothing more serious than a false alarm had occurred.
Above them, red, blue, and purple blooms of light unfolded across the night sky. Shimmering cascades of light rained down on the ocean, the light illuminating guests’ faces. Each boom rolled across the water like distant thunder, sometimes followed by the whistles of Saturn missile batteries.
Stanley felt a small tug on his overskirt.
Xeno mouthed, Lift me?
How could he refuse the little hero who had saved all their lives, even if no one else knew it?
Stanley slid an arm beneath him and lifted him easily, holding him steady so he could see over the crowd.
“You were a great help today, Xeno,” Stanley said, close to Xeno’s ear so he could be heard over the quick succession of golden crackles filling the night canvas.
“Then can I have a reward?” Xeno asked in return.
“As long as it’s not U-235,” Stanley shot back, familiar with Xeno’s thought patterns.
Xeno laughed, the sound bright and clear even against the din of the fireworks.
Then, he leaned down and pressed a soft kiss to Stanley’s cheek.