Where the fuck have you been?
The thought comes from nowhere, aimed at no one, and it doesn’t make any sense. I don’t know this person. I don’t know anything about them. But something in my chest isfurious—two years, two fucking years of waiting and fighting and carrying this space that was supposed to be filled,and now a message, now a notification, nowintake processing completelike they’ve been sitting in some office somewhere while we—
I breathe. Force my hands flat on my thighs.
The common room has gone quiet. I look up and find four sets of eyes on me, because of course they noticed. Of course they felt the shift before I said anything. That’s how it’s always been with us—this awareness that isn’t quite finalized, this almost-connection that the system has never been able to classify or complete.
“What?” Vaelor says.
I turn the phone around. Let them read it.
Silence.
Rane is the first to speak. “Missing element identified.”
“That’s what it says.”
“So there’s—” He stops. Starts again. “Someone’s coming.”
“Someone’s already here.” Kyron’s voice is flat, but I can see him leaning forward slightly, that restless attention finally finding a target. “Intake processing complete. That means they’ve been in the system for at least a few days. Identified, located, processed. They were just waiting to notify us.”
“Or waiting to make sure,” Beckett says quietly. He’s set his book down. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him set a book down in the middle of a chapter before.
“Make sure of what?”
“That they had the right one.”
The room settles into something that isn’t quite silence.
Vaelor’s still standing in the kitchen doorway, like he can’t decide whether to come closer or give us space. The rest of them are just… waiting.
All of them looking at me.
And someone is about to walk into our lives and become part of whatever this nightmare is.
Two years.
And now a message that barely says anything. No name. No timeframe. Nothing usable.
You’re not incomplete anymore.
“So,” Rane says finally.
“So.” I set my phone down. My knuckles are throbbing where the cuts are already starting to scab over. “They’re late.”
No one argues.
I stand up and the room shifts with me.
“I need air.”
No one stops me.
The courtyard is empty this time of evening. The lights are starting to come on, artificial and too bright, casting everything in that flat institutional glow that makes shadows look wrong. I find a bench and sit and stare at nothing until the anger settles into something quieter.
Not gone. Never gone.
Just… waiting.
