“When I’m ready,” she says, “I want in.”
“You’ll be in.”
“Not at the edges. Not getting updates on someone’s tablet. I want to be in the room when you plan it. I want to see the locations. I was inside that system, Celeste. I know what it looks like from the floor.” She picks up the pen again. “I’ve started writing down everything I remember. Layout. Schedules. Guard rotations. The sounds the equipment made, because different machines have different sounds and I can match them to functions now that I know what I was hearing.”
She flips the pad to show me the back section. The pages are dense. Tight handwriting, diagrams, arrows connecting boxes to boxes. A floor plan drawn from memory, with question marks in the rooms she couldn’t access.
“When you’re ready,” I say, “Julian’s going to want every page of that.”
“Julian can have a copy.” She flips the pad closed. “I’m keeping the original.”
I leave her room and take the corridor toward the east garden.
The compound is quiet. Everyone moving with purpose, and the guards at each junction nod me through.
Julian is at his console when I pass. He glances up from the screen.
"Found something in the historical records," he says. "Nothing urgent. I'll have it written up when you're back."
"Thanks."
"Safe travels."
Mira is sitting on the ground near the oaks in the east garden, her back against one of the trunks, hands in her lap.
I sit down across from her. The grass is damp beneath me, real and cool.
“You’re clenching your fists,” I say.
Her chin drops. She uncurls them. The nail marks on her palms are half-moons, deep enough to leave white indentations.
“He’s my grandfather.” She says it to her palms. “I didn’t even know I had a grandfather. And tomorrow I’m just supposed to walk in and meet him.”
“Then you walk in and meet him.”
She almost smiles. Doesn’t make it.
“Have you ever walked into a fight you weren’t sure you’d win?”
“Every single one.”
“What did you do?”
“Walked in anyway. Made sure my hands were open.” I nod at her fists, which have clenched again. “Open hands can catch things. Closed fists can only swing.”
She looks down. Opens them. Lays them flat on the grass, fingers spread, pressing into the dirt. Her shoulders drop.
“Thank you,” she says.
“No thanks needed.”
The western edge is where the compound ends and the tree line takes over. The canopy here blocks most of the floodlights.The grass grows longer. Seraphina’s reinforcements run deep in the soil, and the ground hums with a low frequency that travels up through the soles of my boots.
Atlanta glows on the horizon. The sky out here has more stars than I’ve seen since Iron Claw territory.
Maximus is already at the tree line.
He turns when I reach him.
