“Mara is not a threat,” Vi says. Each word separated. Deliberate. “She’s a twenty-six-year-old woman who risked her life to find me. She didn’t come here with a plan or weapon or an agenda. She came because I disappeared and she couldn’t live thinking something bad had happened to me.”
“People’s intentions don’t determine their impact,” I say. “She can be harmless and still cause harm. Those aren’t contradictions.”
“And she can be a real person with real loyalty who did a brave, stupid thing because she cares about me.”
Armen steps in. Not physically—he doesn’t move from where he’s standing. But his voice enters the space between us with that measured quality he uses when a conversation is about to implode.
“Both of you. Slow down.”
Vi turns to him. “Armen, if you’re going to tell me to be reasonable?—”
“I’m going to tell you that we’ve already discussed this,” he says. “And that we’ve reached an option that includes your friend staying alive and staying close. But Sting has terms. And you’re going to listen to them before you fight about them.”
That stops her. Not because she agrees, but because the wordalivedid its work. I watch her register it. The brief recalculation behind her eyes as she processes that the worst outcome is off the table.
“You’re letting her stay?” Vi says.
“We’re containing a security risk,” I correct. “The method happens to include her staying. Don’t confuse the two.”
Vi stares at me. I hold it. Three seconds. Five.
Then she says the thing that knocks the ground out from under me. “She’s the only person from my life who came looking for me.”
The words hit before I can brace for them.From my life.Not from the Rot. Not from this world. From the one Vi had before we caught her and told her this was permanent. Mara belongs to that life. We don’t. We never will.
And Mara did something none of us ever did. She went looking. Not hunting, catching, or claiming a woman because we decided she was worth the cost. She just looked.
She chose to cross a wasteland because she wanted Vi back.
Vi didn’t mean to compare Mara’s looking to what we guys have done for her, I know that. Hell, her face tells me she realized what she’d said a second after it passed her lips. But thedamage is done. It’s in the room now, and Armen and Rogue register it, and Vi’s own expression flinches under the weight of it.
I absorb it and move on.
That’s what I do. That’s what I’m built for. Take the hit, catalog it, return to reality. Feelings don’t factor. Feelings are noise. Feelings are Vi’s territory, the place where she fights and wins because she knows rules that I don’t.
I’m losing this argument. Not on logic but on something I can’t quantify or outmaneuver. Vi has moved the battlefield to ground I don’t relate to, and every response I give, reasonable, precise, or correct, sounds hollow against the simple fact that a woman crossed a wasteland for her friend.
It’s friendship. Uncontained, unsecured, operationally reckless friendship.
Rogue is leaning against the wall, staying exactly where he’s been since the discussion started. Arms crossed. Face neutral. He hasn’t said a word since his question from the corner. He’s doing what Rogue does best, watching both sides work, tracking who’s winning, saving his move for the moment it matters most.
Right now, he’s letting me take the punches.
I look at Vi. She’s standing three feet from me with her hands open at her sides, palms out, fingers loose. Not a fighting posture anymore, but an asking one. And somewhere between her crossing the room and this moment, the argument changed from a confrontation into a negotiation, as if she’s already won and is just waiting for me to accept it.
“Fine,” I say. “Your friend listens to our terms, and then I speak. Not you.”
Vi holds my gaze for one more beat, then nods. “Okay.”
She turns and walks back to the mattress, sits beside Mara, and takes her hand.
I don’t move until my pulse settles—and it takes too long.
6
STING
I pulla chair from the corner and set it facing the mattress. Close enough to be heard clearly. Far enough to establish that this isn’t a conversation between equals.
