“Good.” She picks up her mug. Sips. The pause that follows is the most Flossie pause I have ever experienced. It has weight and warmthand the specific quality of a woman who is about to say something she has been saving. “There is an OOPS courier in my corridor. He has been there for forty minutes. SPROUT offered him tea four times. He has declined all four times. He is pretending to read a cargo manifest.” She sets the mug down. “He is not, in fact, reading a cargo manifest.”
My stomach, my entire digestive system. My ribs and my lungs and the bite mark on my collarbone under his shirt — everything flips. Everything turns over at once in a way that is medically inadvisable and emotionally catastrophic.
“You are free to go,” Flossie says. Dry. Warm.
I stand. My legs are not steady.
“Flossie.”
“Mm.”
“Thank you. For seeing me. Even if what you saw wasn’t SNAG.”
She looks at me over the rim of her mug. “Sweetheart. What I saw was extraordinary. It just belongs somewhere else.”
The corridor outside Flossie’s office is not empty.
Jazil is there — of course he is, leaning against the far wall with the datapad — but he is not the only one. Two males near the SNAG entrance. The first is Xor — crimson, tactical, co-founder. I recognize him from the briefing board. He’s reading a datapad and radiating the energy of someone who has seven things to do and is on thing three and does not have time for things four through seven but is going to do them anyway because that is what Xor does.
The second male is—
Okay. The second male is a problem.
Not MY problem. Not a problem I am going to engage with. But a problem in the general sense that he is very tall and very lean and has dark hair and a jaw situation and silver eyes that are currently pointed at me with the unhurried attention of someone who has already decided three things about me before I’ve finished walking through the door.
“Tael Vosk,” he says. Not offering a hand. Just — information. His voice is low and has an edge that says he does not repeat himself. “Tracker. You’re the one who held up against the Vrennak.”
“Held is generous. I talked to it, and then it charged me.”
“You held its gaze with a vocal modulation trick and bought your colleague forty seconds. I’ve read the incident report.” The silver eyes are steady. Not interested in me like that. Interested in me the way someone is interested in a tool they haven’t seen before — what does it do, how does it work. “That’s a rare skill, Vance. Flossie’s loss.”
He knows. Of course, he knows. SPROUT routes everything to Petra, and Petra has no volume control and Tael is a tracker, which apparently means he knows everything that happens on this station before it happens.
“I hear Morrison’s getting you,” Tael continues. Something that is almost approval crosses his face, which I suspect is not a face that does approval often. “Good fit. OOPS could use someone who stays calm when the cargo wakes up.”
Xor looks up from his datapad. His crimson eyes go from me to Tael to the corridor behind me — to Jazil — and the corner of his mouth curves. Small. Knowing. The mouth of a male who has just clocked something he finds quietly entertaining and is choosing not to comment on it.
“Vosk,” Xor says. Dry. “Let the female through. She has places to be.”
Tael steps aside. The movement is smooth and unhurried, and communicates clearly that he is stepping aside because he has chosen to, not because anyone made him, and the distinction matters to him even if it doesn’t matter to anyone else.
Behind both of them, something has changed.
Jazil has not moved from the wall. He has not put down the datapad. He has not said a word. But the casual lean is gone. What has replaced it is the coiled, dark-ridged, slit-pupiled stillness of a male whose body has rearranged itself around a threat he hasn’t consciously identified. His ridges are dark under the gauze. His jaw is set. The tips of his claws have extended into the datapad’s casing without him noticing.
He is not looking at me. He is looking at Tael. The look is the look from the hold. The one that saidnothing gets through.
Tael sees it. Of course he sees it — Tael is a tracker, Tael reads rooms the way I read cargo manifests, quickly and with strong opinions about what’s out of place. The silver eyes flick from me to Jazil, and something in his expression recalibrates. No retreat. Recognition. Brief and professional. One predator clocking another predator’s territory and deciding it’s not his business.
“Good luck, Vance,” Tael says. Already turning back to Xor. Already done with me. Not because I’m not interesting, but because whatever Tael Vosk finds interesting, it isn’t here.
I walk past both of them. Past the crimson male with the knowing mouth and the silver-eyed tracker who has already moved on. Towards the one who matters. Toward the male with the upside-down datapadand the dark ridges and the claws in the casing who has been standing in this corridor for forty minutes because he could be nowhere else.
His eyes meet mine. The tension eases. The claws retract. The pupils widen to the warm, deep blue that I have been looking at since Bay 14.
I take the datapad out of his hands. Turn it right-side up. Hand it back.
“Mother Morrison is hiring,” I say. “Flossie’s making the call. I need to get to Morrison’s office.”
