Ian looked at her. Held her gaze for a beat that said he’d heard more than the words she’d spoken. Then he kept walking.
The medical building was next—a dedicated facility, clean and modern, set apart from the operational buildings by a stretch of manicured grass. Ian led them through the entrance into a waiting area that looked like any doctor’s office, except for the security panel beside the inner door.
“Almost every operative here has some sort of specialized need,” Ian said. He stopped and turned to face them. “Physical conditions. Neurological differences. Bodies that require specific management. We have doctors on staff who specialize in exactly that.”
He looked at Fallon again. “Your hEDS would be included. It’s a factor that has to be taken into consideration, and we have people who know how to do that.”
He didn’t soften his voice. He said it as a fact of operations. A variable to be managed, not a weakness to be hidden.
“You have doctors who understand hypermobility conditions?” Her voice came out steadier than she expected.
“If not, we’ll find some. This isn’t a place that ignores what its people are dealing with. It’s a place that accounts for it.”
Isaac’s hand settled against the small of her back. She leaned into his touch.
Every city she’d ever worked in, she’d had to find her own doctors. Explain the condition from scratch. Watch their facesshift from curiosity to concern to the particular expression that meant they were about to tell her to stop doing everything that made her useful.
Here, the doctors would already understand. Here, her condition was expected. Accommodated. Built into the architecture of how this place functioned.
She nodded once, and they moved on.
The training center was a massive building at the southern edge of the compound. Even from outside, the scale was obvious—high ceilings, wide doors, the faint sound of impact through the walls. Ian opened the door, and Fallon watched Isaac transform.
His whole body changed. The observant, measured posture he’d carried through the rest of the tour vanished, replaced by something electric. His shoulders squared. His chin lifted. His eyes moved across the space: mats, climbing walls, a weapons range through a glass partition, a room where two people were sparring with brutal speed.
“Now that,” Isaac said, “is something. It’s even bigger than the main gym in Zodiac’s home office.”
“Yeah…again, we’re accommodating some less traditional operatives. They need a place to train, too,” Ian said. “Figured you’d like this part.”
“Like is an understatement.” Isaac took two steps toward the sparring room and stopped himself. Turned back. “What’s the weapons range running?”
“Full spectrum. Anything you’ve trained on, we’ve got. A few things you haven’t.”
Isaac looked at Fallon. The grin on his face was unguarded and boyish and completely at odds with the controlled professional she’d watched navigate the rest of this tour. This was his element, and the joy of it was written across every line of his body.
“You’re having a moment,” she said.
“I am absolutely having a moment.”
“Don’t let me interrupt.”
“Too late. But I’ll come back.” He said it to Ian as much as to her, and the certainty in his voice carried a weight that went beyond the training equipment. “I don’t think I was upset with not knowing about this place until now. Fuck you for holding out on me, DeRose.”
Ian just smiled.
The tech compound was last and just as impressive as the rest of Rogue Division. Labs. Servers humming behind glass walls. Workstations with multiple monitors, code scrolling across screens, analysts moving between stations in focused silence. The kind of processing power that made everything Cassandra worked with look handmade.
Fallon stopped in the doorway.
“Fallon?” Isaac said.
“Cass needs to see this.” The words came out before she’d finished thinking them. “This is where she belongs. Everything she does from her apartment with consumer hardware and a residential internet connection—this is what it’s supposed to look like.”
Isaac stood beside her and looked at the rows of workstations. “She’d never leave.”
“She’d never want to.”
Ian led them on toward one of the control rooms, and Fallon followed, but her mind was still in the server lab, and the rest of the Rogue compound. Because the truth of what she’d just walked through was settling over her in layers, each one heavier than the last.
