“It has to be.”
I laugh, and it breaks something loose in my chest. “They called me an assassin, Roja. Do you know what that word means in their language?”
He’s quiet.
“It means tool. Used and discarded. No face. No will.”
“Then they’re wrong.”
“Are they?” My voice climbs. I hate it, but I can’t stop. “They’re saying I used you. That I turned you. That I seduced you and planted everything.”
“I know what you did.”
“Do you?”
He steps in close, eyes dark. “Yeah. I do.”
And just like that, I’m quiet again. My throat closes. There’s nothing else to say, because I know he means it. But the rest of me—whatever’s left of me—can’t accept that so easy.
I turn away, staring at the wall, fingers curling into fists.
“I’m not a Companion anymore,” I murmur. “I’m not a rebel. I’m not a ghost. I’m not anything.”
Roja doesn’t speak. Just steps behind me, close enough I can feel his heat in the cold.
“You’re Kelsea,” he says finally. “And they’re terrified of what that means.”
I shut my eyes. Try to hold onto that.
Try to believe it matters.
Roja tells me we’ve got maybe a day.
“Maybe less,” he mutters, spoon halfway to his mouth, not looking up from the data he’s scrolling through with his other hand. His voice is low, almost flat, but the undertone—the tight edge in his throat—gives it away. He’s not guessing. He’s planning for the worst. He always is.
The food is tasteless. Dry ration paste, barely rehydrated, clings to the roof of my mouth like chalk and regret. I chew slowly, forcing it down, more out of discipline than hunger. Neither of us has much of an appetite, but we eat because we have to. Because not eating is another way to give up, and we’re not there yet. Not quite.
The silence between us stretches. Not cold. Just full. Full of what we’ve seen, what we know, what’s coming.
I want to say something that matters. Something big. Something that’ll cut through the fog and stick in the air between us like a flag we can hold onto when everything goes to shit.
But I don’t.
Instead, I move. Quiet. Smooth. I cross the cracked warehouse floor and sit beside him. Shoulder to shoulder.
Roja doesn’t shift. Doesn’t flinch. He just lets the screen light flicker across both our faces. The vid feed still runs, sputtering through the news cycles like they’re trying to fill every second with noise so no one has to think too long.
The cleric’s face flashes on screen—gray and sweaty, defiant under pressure. Denying. Evading. Failing.
Then the footage flips to another angle. Protesters flooding the outer zones. Alliance officials making tight-lipped statements. Coalition press trying to spin it all like it’s a one-off breach instead of a systemic rot.
And me.
Always me.
My face, my name, my voice stripped into a soundbite, a symbol. They don’t care who I am. Just what I represent.
The screen buzzes faintly. Hums like a dying breath. I can feel the tension in Roja’s body beside me—coiled like a spring, waiting for something to snap.
