For a second, I just stand there, palm still pressed to the metal, listening to the sudden absence of noise. No monitors. No boots passing in the hall. No voices just beyond a curtain. Just the low hum of the ventilation system and the weight of being alone again. The silence feels different here than it did in the cell. Cleaner. Safer. And somehow no less sharp.
This is the part they don’t warn you about.
Not the pain. Not the nightmares. Not the way people look at you after, all careful hands and measured voices, like you might shatter if they breathe too hard in your direction. No one tells you about the moment you’re finally alone again and realize you don’t quite fit inside your own skin the way you used to.
I force myself to move, to cross the small space and flick on the overhead light, because standing still makes my chest tighten and my thoughts get loud. The room looks the same at first glance—bed neatly made, desk chair tucked in, boots lined up where I left them—but something feels off, like a picture hunga fraction too crooked. Like the space remembers me, but not exactly right.
I start noticing it in pieces.
The top drawer of my desk is cracked open when I know I always close it. My spare comm unit is gone. The thin folder I kept tucked under my mattress—the one with my notes, half-formed theories, patterns I never quite finished tracing—is missing. Even my jacket is gone, the one with the frayed cuff I refused to replace because it was broken in just right and smelled like outside and gunpowder and me.
They cleaned me out.
Not maliciously. Not like the Russians did. This is surgical. Administrative. Someone decided what I’m allowed to have now and took the rest without asking. Sanitized the room. Trimmed the edges. Made it safe in the way people do when they’ve already decided your judgment can’t be trusted.
I laugh under my breath, sharp and humorless, because of course they did. Of course the second I make it back alive, everyone starts managing me like I’m a hazard in my own life.
My pulse starts to climb, that familiar edge creeping in, and I grab onto the anger before the fear can swallow it whole. Anger is easier. Anger keeps me upright. Anger gives me somewhere to aim this energy instead of letting it eat me alive.
Jon.
The thought lands fully formed and immovable.
I don’t grab a weapon. I don’t change. I just turn and walk back out into the corridor like I belong there, like I’m not still counting exits and shadows and the distance between every door. Every step echoes too loud in my ears as I head toward operations, toward his office, toward the place where decisions about my life are apparently being made without me.
The meeting room door is open when I get there.
Jon’s voice carries first—low, controlled, clipped in that way that means he’s deep in command mode, the version of him built from steel and silence and bad decisions dressed up as leadership. Larkin is standing across from him, arms crossed, posture tight. The table between them is covered in papers.
My papers.
Mission reports. Sketches. Coordinates I recognize instantly, even upside down. The patterns I built without realizing I was building them, spread out like a puzzle I never got to finish. Pages with my handwriting in the margins. My thoughts. My instincts. My work.
Something hot and furious blooms in my chest.
I step inside.
“What the hell is this?”
Jon’s head snaps up, eyes locking onto me instantly, and for half a second something raw flashes there—relief, concern, something else he buries too fast for me to name without making myself sick. Larkin turns, surprise flickering across her face before she smooths it flat.
“Delilah,” Jon says sharply. “You shouldn’t—”
“I shouldn’t what?” I cut in, voice steady even as my hands curl into fists. “See my own work laid out like evidence? Walk into a room where you’re discussing my kidnapping without me?”
Larkin opens her mouth. I don’t look at her.
Jon exhales slowly, the way he does when he’s choosing his words carefully, like he’s already decided I’m a problem to be handled, not a person to be heard. “This isn’t a conversation for you right now.”
I laugh again, softer this time, but there’s nothing amused about it. “Funny. Because I was there when all of this started. I was there when it went wrong. And I was there when it almost got us all killed.”
“You were compromised,” he says flatly.
“And I survived,” I shoot back. “I figured this out before anyone else did. Those papers you’re staring at?” I gesture sharply at the table. “That’s me. That’s my brain. You don’t get to bench me from my own damn head.”
Silence stretches tight between us, tense enough to hum.
Jon’s jaw clenches, a muscle ticking near his temple. When he speaks again, his voice is colder, all command and no softness. The version of him that hides behind rank because it’s easier than honesty. “You’re not cleared for active operations.”
