Was put a queen on the board.
And I was done pretending this was a rescue.
This was a hunt.
6
Scout
They didn’t come for hours.
That told me more than any interrogation ever could.
When the door finally opened, it wasn’t with force. No guards. No weapons raised.
Just one man.
Tall. Clean. Unremarkable in the way men who survive by being underestimated always are.
Sentinel.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t threaten. Didn’t even pretend we were equals.
He simply stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
“You touched my system,” he said calmly.
Not a question.
I tilted my head slightly. “Your system?”
A corner of his mouth twitched. Not amusement—recognition.
“You’re smarter than most of the people who’ve sat in this room,” he said. “That’s why you’re still breathing.”
I folded my arms, careful to keep my posture loose. Non-threatening. Observant.
“You took me to make a point,” I said. “Not to extract information.”
“Correct.”
“And you let me settle,” I continued. “Which means you wanted to see how I think under control.”
His eyes sharpened. “And?”
“And you’re disappointed,” I said evenly.
That earned me his full attention.
“Why would you think that?”
“Because if you wanted chaos, you would’ve hurt me already,” I replied. “You wanted noise. I gave you silence.”
Sentinel studied me like a man deciding whether a weapon was worth keeping loaded.
“You were supposed to panic,” he said. “Most do.”
“Most don’t study men like you for a living.”
