Torres says something low. Astra's mouth quirks. Not quite a smile.
I feel the ghost of her amusement before she locks it down. A flicker of warmth, there and gone, her walls slamming back into place so fast I get psychic whiplash from the shift.
She knows I'm here.
She's deliberately not looking at me.
Fine.
I step into the armory. Torres sees me first, straightens. Astra's shoulders tense fractionally, but she doesn't turn.
"Torres." I nod at the specialist. "Ready?"
"Yes, sir."
"Good. Get some rest. We launch in thirty."
She glances at Astra. Some silent communication passes between them—woman to woman, human to human, the language of people who've learned to trust each other in spaces dominated by those who can read minds.
Torres leaves quietly, the door sealing behind her with the soft hiss of pressurized locks engaging.
The silence that follows is thick enough to drown in.
Astra's shoulders remain tense, not the readiness of combat stance, but the rigidity of someone holding themselves perfectly still through sheer force of will. She's checking another plasma rifle, running through the safety protocols with methodical precision that's just slightly too deliberate to be casual. The movements of someone who needs their hands busy to keep from doing something else entirely.
I can feel the edges of her emotional state, fractured pieces leaking through her walls despite her best efforts. Anger. Always anger, my constant companion from her.And underneath it, threading through like a wire pulled too tight: apprehension. Fear, maybe. Not of me, never of me, not in the way that would make sense.
Fear of this. Of what's between us. Of the conversation we're about to have.
She still hasn't turned around.
The back of her neck is exposed where her copper-red hair is pulled tight, and I can see the ghost of a scar disappearing beneath her collar. One I haven't catalogued yet. One she hasn't shown me.
There are still so many I haven't seen.
"You don't have to do that," I say finally.
My voice comes out rougher than I intend. The resonance in my chest—the thing that marks me as Empri even when everything else could pass—betrays the tightness I'm trying to control.
She goes completely still.
The rifle in her hands stops moving. Her breathing doesn't change, she's too well-trained for that, but I feel the shift anyway. The way her emotional frequency spikes just slightly before she crushes it back down.
"Do what?" Her voice is carefully neutral.
But I heard the fractional pause before she spoke. The moment she took to decide how to respond.
She's calculating. Same as me.
We're so fucking alike it's terrifying.
"Lock down every emotion the second I'm in range." My marks pulse along my temples. I can't help it. Her presence does that to me, always has. "I'm not going to push you. I've told you that."
"Words." She replaces another rifle. Her hands are steady. "I've heard a lot of words. They don't mean much."
Fair.
I step closer. Not crowding—just near enough that I could touch her if I reached out. Near enough that her scent cuts through the armory's gun oil and ozone. Something clean. Antiseptic. The nothing-smell of someone who's learned not to leave traces.
