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There was no screaming. No alarms. No pounding boots behind me.

I simply walked fast enough that my breathing came too hard and kept my head down every time I passed a warrior.

Which, on Zuna, was often.

The first transport junction was already crowded when I reached it. Workers moved between platforms carrying tools and supply crates. A family stood near one of the departure boards, two gray-skinned children darting around their mother's legs while she tried to keep them from climbing the railing. Three warriors in uniform crossed in front of me without so much as glancing in my direction.

I almost stopped.

That was the problem with fear.

Once it took hold, everything started looking like proof.

Every warrior became someone sent to collect me. Every security panel looked like it had already scanned my face. Every pause in conversation made me wonder whether someone had just recognized me.

I tightened my grip on my bag.

Keep moving.

I passed the food stall where I usually stopped after late shifts.

The woman behind the counter saw me and lifted one hand in greeting.

For one stupid second, habit almost made me stop.

I could already imagine the exchange. She would ask whether I wanted the same thing. I would complain that whatever fried root she kept insisting tasted like potatoes still did not taste like potatoes. She would tell me humans complained too much.

Ordinary. Familiar.

Safe enough that I had stopped appreciating it.

I kept walking.

I passed the market stall where the vendor sometimes saved the sweeter red fruit for me and kept my eyes forward. Looking would only start a list of things I was leaving, and I didn’t know yet whether it was for a day or forever. I’d acknowledged the administrative notice, so the system thought I was on my way to Central Review. That bought me ten minutes, maybe twenty. After that, I had no plan. I didn’t even know where I was going.

I stopped beneath one of the transport boards, pretending to study the departures. Most routes stayed within the central settlement—residential district, medical complex, market sector, government corridor. Absolutely not. I needed distance.

Not necessarily off-world. I wasn’t naïve enough to think I could stroll into a spaceport, buy a ticket, and vanish when half my existence was tied to a registration number. But Zunator was bigger than the part I’d been assigned to. There were outer manufacturing sectors, agricultural settlements, expansion depots, military supply routes, trading stations—places where a human woman would stand out. Excellent.

The outer settlements had once been my plan. Before Sera’n. Before the lab.

Back when I was still sitting in reassignment limbo and every conversation about my future eventually circled back to another possible warrior, I had started collecting rumors.

Humans farther from the central colony.

Trading settlements where registration mattered less.

Places where people cared more about whether you could work than who you had been matched to.

I had no idea how much of it was true.

Most rumors became more attractive the less information you had about them.

But I had asked enough questions that one administrator finally warned me the outer settlements were “not appropriate placement for an unbonded human female.”

Which, naturally, had only made them more interesting.

Then Sera’n found my lab experience.