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"You've known me for two weeks."

"Longest two weeks of my life."

Nykos threw another pen at him.

Ashter trotted out the front door ahead of us with Alex's sock still clamped in his jaws, radiating the particular innocence of a creature who had definitely done nothing wrong.

Alex showed me another use for his ability approximately thirty seconds after we stepped outside.

I had reached for one of the sealed research crates when it lifted cleanly off the ground before my fingers touched it.

I stopped.

The second crate rose beside it.

Then my smaller equipment case.

Alex walked past me with his own pack over one shoulder, one hand moving lazily through the air as the crates floated after him.

I stared.

He glanced back. "What?"

"You can do that?"

The floating crates followed us across Residential and toward the Citadel, bobbing occasionally whenever Alex became distracted by talking. Corian warned him twice not to knock one into a wall, while Nykos made it very clear he would not be helping if Alex dropped several hundred crowns' worth of research equipment before we even reached the portal.

I barely listened.

We were leaving.

Actually leaving.

Not the Citadel grounds for an afternoon in Gledhi. Not walking through Residential because Corian had finally convinced me I didn't require written authorization to use a road.

My first deployment.

I had spent years training for exactly this while repeatedly being told I wasn't permitted to do it yet. Every Rift ecology lesson, every weapons session, every emergency treatment assessment and all those hours spent learning how to stay alive in environments that actively objected to people existing inside them.

I was smiling. Alex noticed first.

"That's unsettling."

I looked toward him. "What?"

"You're happy."

"I've been happy before."

"Have you?"

I considered throwing a knife at him.

Corian saved him by opening the Menagerie doors.

The familiar mixture of damp earth, animal musk, heat and several smells I had never found suitable names for hit me immediately. The Menagerie was already active despite the early hour, handlers moving along the main routes while creatures called, scratched or growled behind reinforced barriers farther inside.

Our research team waited near the portal chamber at the rear.