“I didn’t say it was a good idea,” Ray mutters, biting into the banana. “I said it was predictable.”
Boris taps his screen, barely looking up. “If it’s a girl, she’s learning code. Encryption by age six. Bypassing firewalls by eight.”
“She’s not hacking the Pentagon before puberty,” Ray says flatly.
“Why not?”
“Because that’s how you end up on a list. And I’m trying to stay off lists these days.”
“Good luck with that.”
Dima finishes peeling his orange and sets the sections in a neat pile. “If it’s a girl, I teach her to fight. Properly. No guns until she can throw a man twice her size.”
Lev rolls his eyes. “So she’ll be a tiny Dima. Great. Terrifying.”
“Better than a tiny Lev.”
“Hey—”
“Accurate,” Boris says without looking up.
Ray drops the banana peel on the table, sighs like a man who’s given up on sanity.
“You guys know she’s not even born yet, right? Mary’s still—” He stops himself, glances toward the partition. His voice drops. “She’s still fighting.”
The room goes quiet.
Lev sets the knife down. The apple peel curls on the table like a question mark.
Dima’s jaw tightens. He stares at the orange sections like they offended him personally.
Boris closes the tablet. “She’ll wake up.”
“Yeah,” Lev says, but his voice has lost its edge. “She’s tougher than all of us combined.”
“Stubborn,” Dima adds.
“Reckless,” Boris mutters.
“She shot a man to save your boss,” Ray says quietly. “That’s not reckless. That’s—” He stops, shakes his head. “I don’t even know what that is.”
“Love,” Dima says.
Everyone turns to look at him.
He doesn’t flinch. Just meets their stares, calm as stone. “She loves him. That’s why she did it.”
Lev exhales and picks up the apple again. “Yeah. Well. Now we’ve got two of them to keep alive.”
“Three,” Boris corrects. “Mary, Anton, and the little one.”
Ray rubs his face. “I didn’t sign up for this.”
“You signed up the second you let us walk out of that freight yard,” Lev says. “Welcome to the family, Fed.”
“I’m not family.”
“You’re eating fruit in an underground clinic while discussing baby names,” Boris deadpans. “You’re family.”
