Things I can see.
Things I can end.
This?
This is different.
Because the danger isn’t in front of me.
It’s sitting at a small table across the room… with her hands wrapped around a piece of plastic no bigger than my thumb.
Lark isn’t building anything.
She’s holding it.
Like it matters.
Like it’s worth all of this.
“Is that another flash drive? What’s on it?” I ask quietly.
She doesn’t answer right away.
Her thumb brushes over the edge of the flash drive, like she’s grounding herself in it.
“Records,” she says finally. “From the NGO archive.”
I frown. “Records don’t start wars.”
“These do.”
That gets my attention.
I step closer, slow, controlled—giving her space, even when every instinct in me says to close it.
“They were supposed to be deleted,” she continues. “Routine purge. Old files, flagged for removal.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.”
She looks up at me now, and there’s no hesitation in her eyes.
“I couldn’t.”
Something in my chest tightens.
“Why?”
A breath.
Because this is the part that costs her.
“Because they weren’t mistakes,” she says. “They were patterns.”
I go still.
“What kind of patterns?”
