Mac didn’t move until Willoughby disappeared around the corner.
Then he exhaled.
Baxter looked at Mac and Melvin. His gaze flicked once to the ring, then back up.
“Mindful,” Baxter said simply.
Melvin’s jaw flexed. “Yes, sir.”
Baxter’s eyes held for a moment longer, like he was weighing what he could say and what he couldn’t. Then he nodded once, approval without sentiment.
“Good,” he said. “Now go do the job.”
He walked off like the encounter hadn’t cost him anything.
Mac watched him go, the quiet power of him settling over the gravel like a blanket.
Barnes let out a low whistle. “Well.”
Mac glanced at her. “You good?”
Barnes’s mouth twitched. “I’m great. I love watching a man dig his own grave with policy.”
Melvin huffed a short laugh, tired but real.
Mac didn’t say what he wanted to say, that Baxter had just closed a door Willoughby had been trying to wedge open. That the thin ice was still there, but it had been reinforced in a way that mattered.
Instead, Mac did what he always did.
He checked his surroundings. He looked at Melvin’s posture. He watched for tremor. He watched for pain.
Melvin met his eyes like he could read the whole assessment.
“I’m fine,” Melvin said quietly.
Mac nodded. “I know.”
Then, because it mattered, because it had to be said somewhere that wasn’t a private room, Mac let his gaze drop briefly to Melvin’s hand.
“You keeping it on?” he asked again, softer.
Melvin lifted his hand slightly, letting the ring catch the light without turning it into a flag.
“Yeah,” he said. “Let them see.”
Mac felt something settle in his chest, an old tension easing. Not because the world had become safe, but because they’d stopped negotiating with it.
“Alright,” Mac said. “Then we move.”
That night the compound felt restless.
Not because of rockets or alarms, none came. It was the restless of men packing their lives into tough boxes. The restless of soldiers who’d started to clean weapons with more care, to inventory gear twice, to check calendars like it was a superstition.
Mac sat at his desk in the TOC after hours, finishing the last of the handoff notes. Outside, the generator hum was steady. Inside, the fluorescent lights made everything look paler than it should.
Melvin stepped in quietly, closing the door behind him.
“You’re still here,” Melvin said.
