“Why.”
“Hands are where weapons live,” she says. “Eyes tell you if they’ve already decided to do something violent. Gait tells you if they’re trying to look harmless.”
I stop walking.
“Where did you learn that.”
She glances back at me.
“I ran a restaurant on Novaria,” she says. “You learn to read men with bad intentions real fast.”
The jalshagar stirs faintly behind my ribs, not sharp, not feral, just… aware.
“Again,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.
We drill exit scanning next.
I make her stand at random points in the corridor network and identify every viable escape route in under five seconds.
She gets it wrong at first.
She favors doors over ventilation shafts.
She misses one maintenance ladder because it’s painted the same color as the wall.
She underestimates how far she can drop without breaking her ankle.
I correct her.
She adjusts.
She starts seeing things.
By the third run-through, she’s memorizing patrol rhythms of the security drones that skim the upper access tunnels like lazy sharks.
“Two-minute loop,” she murmurs, watching one pass overhead through a grated ceiling. “Seventeen seconds of blind time if you move when it hits that corner.”
“How do you know,” I ask.
She doesn’t look at me.
“Because I counted.”
The jalshagar hums.
Low.
Warm.
Steady.
It feels… wrong.
In a way that makes my throat tight.
She adapts frighteningly fast.
Not just intellectually.
