The words hit harder than I expect. Hard enough that for a second I actually feel them land somewhere physical.
“For now,” he adds, as if that makes it better. “You’re on medical leave. Psychological evaluation pending. You’re not stepping back into the field.”
Something inside me snaps.
“So that’s it?” I demand. “You decide I’m broken and suddenly I’m useless?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“It’s exactly what you said,” I fire back, stepping closer to the table. My ribs protest, a sharp reminder of all the ways my body hasn’t caught up with my anger, but I don’t stop. “You don’t get to lock me in a room and call it protection. You don’t get to take my work and tell me I’m too fragile to touch it.”
His eyes darken. “Enough.”
The single word lands like a warning shot. It would have worked once. Maybe it still should. It doesn’t. Not now.
Larkin shifts uncomfortably. “Delilah, we’re not saying you’re out. We’re saying—”
“You’re saying I’m a liability,” I interrupt, finally turning to her. “And that’s fine. Say it. Just don’t dress it up like concern.”
Jon straightens, shoulders squaring, every inch the captain now. Hard lines. Hard mouth. Harder eyes. “This isn’t up for debate.”
My chest rises and falls fast, heart hammering.
“You’re afraid,” I say quietly, the realization sharp and sudden. It comes to me whole. Too whole. “That’s what this is.”
His expression hardens further. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I do,” I whisper. “Because I’m afraid too. The difference is I don’t get to pretend it makes me safer to sit still.”
For a long moment, no one speaks.
Then Jon turns away, breaking eye contact first, and that hurts more than anything he’s said so far. More than the order. More than the evaluation. More than the benching. “This meeting is over.”
The dismissal is clean. Final. A door slamming without the courtesy of noise.
I stand there another second, waiting—hoping—for him to look back, to say something human instead of procedural. Something that sounds like the man who told me to match his breathing in the med bay. Something that sounds like the man who admitted I scared the hell out of him.
He doesn’t.
So I turn and walk out, spine straight, teeth clenched, anger burning hot enough to drown out the fear for now.
If he thinks benching me will keep me safe, he’s wrong.
And if he thinks I’ll let him decide my worth without a fight, he’s forgotten who taught me how to survive in the first place.
I don’t remember deciding to leave.
One second I’m standing outside the meeting room, the door sealed shut behind me like a verdict, and the next I’m walking—no, storming—down the corridor with my boots striking too hard against the polished floor. The base stretches around me in endless right angles and sterile symmetry, every surface blindingly white, every door identical, every light buzzing just a little too loud.
White walls. White ceilings. White floors.
My breath starts coming faster before I realize what’s happening.
I shove my hands into fists, nails biting into my palms, grounding myself in the sting. Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think about the way those walls closed in on me before, about how clean and bright the room was when I woke up half-conscious and watched, about how white looks so much like nothing that it feels like erasure.
Voices echo down the hall—laughter, orders being barked, boots passing behind me—and suddenly it’s all too much. The sounds blur together, a rising hum that crawls under my skin and presses against my ribs. Every fluorescent light feels like an interrogation lamp. Every footstep sounds too close.
I miss color.
