I say none of it.
He turns toward the door, pauses, then adds—almost gently: “I will return during next cycle. You will not be alone.”
Then he’s gone.
The moment the door slides shut, I exhale hard, like I’ve been holding my breath for hours.
I drop my head into my hands and sit there, breathing like a marathon just ended at my feet. My hands are shaking. My wholedamn bodyis shaking.
Not because of fear.
Not because of trauma.
Because Iwanted him to stay.
And I don’t understand why.
Not really.
Not yet.
But gods help me—when he stood up, I wanted to reach for him.
Desperately.
CHAPTER 4
TATEK
The summons arrives encoded. Unusual.
No auditory ping. Just a soft pulse in the left wrist node—specific frequency, Level 3 command. I acknowledge it with a thumb press, and the pulse vanishes like it never happened.
Civil Affairs wants to talk.
That is never a neutral request.
I leave the quarantine level in silence. My boots hit the polished flooring with a rhythm trained from years of zero-drift formation work, but even so, the station feels louder than usual. Not chaotic. Not panicked. Just... sharp. Calibrated. Like the edges of everything have been filed down to precision points.
The ventilation system hums louder than it should. A frequency mismatch. Someone recalibrated airflow through secondary zones—likely surveillance-driven. Overhead drones sweep past twice within ten meters. Pattern suggests a localized anomaly sweep.
They're not watching.
They'repreparing.
I move through three security doors without delay. The guards don’t speak. Their eyes flicker toward me, hold, then move on. They know who I am. Or what I am.
What I was.
Sector 3 Civil Affairs is all chrome and hush. Sterile light. No seams in the walls. Furniture designed to be more ornamental than useful. The kind of place that neutralizes you the moment you step in. I’m ushered into a side room—empty except for one table, two chairs, and a recessed node projector on the far wall.
Commander Versall is already waiting. Coalition uniform. Not military. Too clean. Too correct. She wears her compliance like armor, and her eyes are the soft kind of cold that means danger.
“Commander Tatek,” she says, gesturing to the chair across from her. “Thank you for your time.”
“I was summoned.”
She smiles without teeth. “Of course.”
