Page 148 of Reaper Said Mine

“Gnash, this room is basically a gossip engine with shoes.”

“She threatened you.”

“She tested me. There’s a difference.”

“I dislike both.”

“Excellent. Put that energy into walking calmly to a secure room.”

For one second, I think he might argue. Then he nods once, sharp and controlled. “Skahar.”

“I will remain here and grow older in public,” Skahar says. “It unsettles the young.”

Vakka’s voice murmurs in my ear. “Route to side corridor three. I am clearing cameras without making it obvious.”

I touch my comm bud. “Thank you.”

Gnash offers me his arm.

I look at it, then at him. “That is not exactly subtle.”

“No.”

“You understand we just discussed optics.”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I am done letting optics decide whether I touch you.”

The words land in the middle of my chest.

The room watches.

Theryki watches.

Dawson, somewhere far across the galaxy, would probably burst into flames if he had the footage.

I take Gnash’s arm.

Not because it is good strategy, though maybe it is. Not because the bond pulls me, though it does. I take it because I am tired of people turning every honest thing in my life into something they can price, frame, or weaponize. If they are going to call me compromised for standing beside him, I might as well stand there on purpose.

We leave the gallery together.

The side corridor is dimmer, cooler, and empty except for two of Vakka’s plain-clothes guards pretending to inspect a wall seam. Once the gallery doors seal behind us, the music becomes a muffled vibration through the metal, and the station’s true sounds return: distant engines, coolant flow, the rhythmic clank of an old lift, a faint voice over maintenance comms swearing about pressure valves.

Gnash leads me into a small secure briefing room no larger than a storage compartment. A single table folds out from the wall. The lighting is harsh.

The door locks behind us.

“Show me,” he says.

I project the file.

His face changes as he reads. Not dramatically. Gnash does not perform shock. His stillness deepens. His eyes move line by line, message fragment by fragment, and the warmth in the room seems to drain into the metal beneath our feet.

I walk him through it before anger fills in the blanks wrong. “The routing is ugly, but the fragments line up with the financial evidence. Halcyon transfers, the Atrament Star, Vara Vell’s debt marker, the assassin component suppliers, and now these communications. The Coalition and Combine are not acting as one conspiracy, at least not directly. Their agendas diverge.”