The air between us crackles with everything I'm not saying. He can't feel my emotions through the walls I've spent six years reinforcing. But he can see the tension in my shoulders. The white of my knuckles where my hands are fisted at my sides.
He sees. He always sees.
Zane's marks flare once. A warning or acknowledgment, I can't tell.
"Then we find him," Zane says. "Determine his connection to the Vex. Discover what he knows about the Obsidian Protocol. Bring him in."
"Alive if possible," Dexter adds.
I don't answer. Alive is negotiable.
The flashback hits without warning.
White walls. The smell of antiseptic and the copper ghost of my own blood. Three weeks after extraction.
I surface slowly. My body is a map of damage I haven't catalogued yet. Everything hurts. Some things hurt in ways that suggest they'll never stop.
A debrief officer. Sitting beside the bed with a datapad, asking questions in a voice designed to be soothing.
The mission was successful. You're a hero. Do you have any information about the ambush source?
I had nothing. Nothing but the memory of Dexter's back as he walked away. The set of his shoulders. The way he didn't turn around.
Unable to retrieve.
Three words that followed me into surgery, into recovery, into the mirror where I saw what they'd done to me while I was their guest.
I blink. The intelligence hub comes back. Zane is watching me with something that might be concern if he were capable of it. Talia's grey eyes are softer.
"Venn?"
"I'm functional." I straighten. Check my sidearm without thinking. "What are the orders?"
Zane glances at Dexter. Something passes between them. Brothers communicating in that silent Empri way I'll never access.
"Find Webb," Zane says finally. "This is personal for both of you. That's either an asset or a liability. Don't make me regret trusting you with this."
Personal.
I almost laugh. Would, if I remembered how.
They assign us a workspace.Joint operation. Combined resources. Dexter's contacts from military intelligence. Mycontacts from six years of hunting every ghost that looked like him.
We could delegate. Run this through subordinates. Keep our distance.
I watch him settle into the chair across from mine. His hands move across the holographic display with that Empri grace that used to make me ache. Still does, if I'm honest. Just differently now.
"Webb is mine," I say.
"Webb sold both of us."
"You got to walk away. I didn't."
Silence. His bioluminescence flickers along his temples. Emotion he's trying to suppress.
Good. I want him to feel this.
"The answers are mine too," I continue. "Six years. I've needed to know who. How. Why." I lean forward. "Now I do. And I'm not delegating this to anyone."
