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"Working on it. The command and control server bounces through multiple proxies." I pulled up the network map. "Russia, Romania, Netherlands. Standard obfuscation technique. But everyone makes mistakes eventually."

"How long will that take?"

"However long it takes."

She watched me work for several minutes. I was hyperaware of her presence. The way she breathed, slow and even. The small shift of her weight when she leaned closer to see something on the screen. The heat radiating from her body.

Normally, I could tune out everything when I was deep in code. In Afghanistan, I could tune out mortars falling outside the wire. I'd just kept working. Forward operating bases with generators failing, I'd kept working. But Katherine was different. She pulled at my attention like gravity.

"I should go," she said finally. "Let you work."

The words escaped before I could analyze them. "Or you could stay."

Her eyes widened slightly. "Stay?"

"If you want." I rubbed the back of my neck, suddenly uncertain in a way I hadn't been since before West Point. "I set up the PlayStation in the break room this morning. Figured the twins would want to play again. I downloaded Quantum Strike. Thought I'd practice before they destroyed me completely."

"You want to play with me?"

The question confused me. Why wouldn't I? "Yeah."

Something flickered across her face. Surprise, maybe. Or something deeper I couldn't identify.

"Okay."

We moved to the break room. The couch had seen better days, probably older than Jase's twins. But the PlayStation was hooked up properly, and I'd spent thirty minutes this morning on YouTube learning the basic controls.

The game was absurd. Physics that made no sense, impossible acrobatics, time manipulation that violated every law of relativity. But watching Katherine play with Amber and Lachlan, seeing genuine joy on her face, something in me wanted to understand it.

I handed her a controller and sat beside her on the couch. Close enough to feel her warmth, but not touching.

Not yet.

"Fair warning," she said. "I'm pretty good at this."

"I watched you with the kids. I know."

The game loaded. She selected her character without hesitation. Natasha Blade, the one from the movies. Made sense.

"You always pick her?" I asked.

"She's familiar. I know her moves, her weaknesses."

I nodded, understanding completely. I selected a character armed with the same rifle I'd carried in Afghanistan. I knew exactly how it handled, and could compensate for the sight being off at long range. Familiar weapons kept you alive.

We started on an easy map. I played carefully, methodically. Clear the area, establish fields of fire, maintain cover. Twenty years of training drove every decision.

Katherine phase-shifted through a wall and eliminated two enemies I hadn't even registered as threats.

"You're thinking like a soldier," she said.

"What should I be thinking like?"

"Natasha Blade. She doesn't care about tactical advantages. She trusts physics to figure itself out."

I died in an explosion that I should have seen coming. In a real firefight, that mistake would have been fatal too.

"See?" She demonstrated by jumping off the highest point on the map and ground-pounding my respawn location. "The game rewards chaos."