Count breath cycles.
Drop heart rate.
Flatten adrenaline spike.
Engage frontal override.
It takes thirty seconds.
It feels like thirty years.
My hands stop shaking.
My vision clears.
The jalshagar coils back down out of my throat, not gone, not docile, but contained.
“Okay,” I whisper hoarsely. “Precision. Not spectacle.”
I turn back to the terminal.
Cold.
Focused.
Surgical.
I pull up pre-Alliance municipal schematics, legacy infrastructure layers, maintenance tunnels that haven’t existed on official maps in fifty years, dead zones in the transit grid that don’t show up because they technically don’t exist anymore.
My implant pings.
There.
A cluster of blind spots three kilometers south of Theta-4, directly beneath Fierson District.
Of course it is.
I overlay Nine chatter timestamps and route fragments.
Maintenance access 3-B.
Bulkhead seal 9-F.
I stitch the fragments together until a subterranean compound takes shape in my mind with horrible, comforting clarity.
“They took her underground,” I whisper. “Close to the node.”
My chest tightens painfully.
They didn’t just grab her.
They took her home.
I open the locked footlocker under my cot and stare down at the Reaper-era gear I haven’t touched since I defected: black composite armor that drinks light, a phase-edge knife that hums faintly when powered on, neural disruptor charges, a stealth cloak folded into a tight rectangle of polymer fabric.
My hands tremble as I lift the armor out.
“I didn’t want to be this again,” I whisper.
