The name landed like a physical blow.
Whatever expression crossed my face, Tomasz caught it immediately.
“When did he leave?” I asked.
“Ten minutes ago, maybe. Said he was heading back toward the Village for food.”
I nodded, already recalculating the distance in my head.
Tomasz studied me another second before speaking again. “Do you plan to chase him down?”
The question stopped me because I could not answer without exposing far too much.
Apparently my silence did the job anyway.
His eyebrows arched for a moment. “Well, good luck finding him. The cafeteria’s a disaster around this time.”
“Thank you.”
I left before he could continue the conversation.
The cold outside hit hard. I boarded the Metro, found a place to stand, and braced one hand against the pole as the train pulled out of the station.
It rattled through a tunnel, and I stared at my reflection in the glass, trying to decide what I was going to say when I found him.
The first version sounded too clinical, like something I might say to Mila.
The second came across as too careful, as if I was talking to a coach.
By the time I discarded the third version, my jaw ached from clenching it.
Nothing I came up with sounded right, because I wasn’t searching for the perfect thing to say.
I was looking for Dean.
The simplicity of it stripped away every excuse I’d been hiding behind.
I came to find you.
The words sat there in my head, simple, honest, and terrifying. Because there was no federation-approved version of this conversation, no script, no safe answer.
Only the undeniable fact that I had crossed half of Milan looking for one person.
Dean.
Nothing about it needed refinement.
I moved through the Village without slowing, cutting cleanly through the shifting flow of people. The cafeteria was impossible to miss, and what reached me first was the sound, voices layered over each other, the clatter of trays, the low hum of hundreds of conversations happening at once.
I scanned the room.
I had no idea what happened next.
For once, that wasn’t enough to stop me.
Dean
Nathan was midwaythrough a rant about judges overscoring transitions again, and I was doing a decent impression of listening. I nodded in the right places, made the occasional noise of agreement, even reached on autopilot for the coffee sitting beside my tray.
