Ruby pulled me out of the connection the moment my levels crossed the threshold we'd agreed on, and the world crashed back in around me all at once, too loud, too bright, Jaxen's hands gripping my shoulders hard enough to bruise as he half caught me sliding out of the chair."That's enough," he said, voice raw. "That's enough, Mateo, you're done for tonight."I didn't argue. I couldn't have if I wanted to, every part of me still ringing with the echo of her voice, warm and wrong in equal measure, the particular horror of hearing someone you loved speaking from somewhere no longer entirely human.We thought that was the end of it. We were wrong.I spent those two hours in a kind of numb, exhausted daze, Jaxen never leaving my side, Ruby quietly monitoring my readings from across the room without saying much of anything, all three of us waiting for something none of us could name, some aftershock we all somehow knew was coming even without evidence to point

I found Jaxen in the workshop two days later, not working on anything in particular, just sitting on an overturned crate with a rifle he wasn't cleaning resting across his knees. He'd been quieter than usual since the radio call, present but distant in a way that worried me more than any argument would have.I'd noticed it building over those two days, small things at first, a beat too long before he answered a question, his eyes drifting somewhere past my shoulder during conversations that used to hold his full attention without effort. I'd told myself it was exhaustion, the ordinary weight of everything the fortress had survived recently, but by the second night I couldn't pretend that explanation covered it anymore."Hey," I said, easing the door shut behind me."Hey." He didn't look up right away, his thumb running absently along the rifle's stock.I crossed the room and sat down across from him, close enough that our knees nearly touched. "You've bee

The leadership convened within the hour, everyone crowded around the same table that had split evenly down the middle only days ago over a completely different impossible decision. This time nobody argued for shouting each other down. This time the weight of the choice seemed to have pressed everyone into something quieter, more careful, the particular exhaustion of people who had run out of easy positions to retreat into.I looked around the room before speaking, cataloguing every face present, Reyes with her arms crossed tight, Ruby with her tablet already open, Wren's delegation standing near the door with the same careful neutrality they'd brought to every negotiation so far. Nobody looked eager for this conversation. Everybody looked ready for it anyway, which felt like the only version of readiness any of us had left."We need to be honest about what we're actually weighing," I said, standing at the head of the table where Jaxen usually stood. "This isn't about f

Rourke arrived with the second wave of Red Sun reinforcements, and the moment I recognized him standing near the gate, every old memory of our first encounter came flooding back at once, the cold efficiency of the man, the particular menace he'd carried the day he'd stood across from us as an enemy rather than an ally.I hadn't expected to see him again, not after everything that had happened since, and some part of me tensed instinctively at the sight of him, old wariness rising fast even though I knew the ceasefire made him something closer to an ally now than a threat."Didn't expect to see you here," I said, approaching carefully, unsure whether the ceasefire extended to anything resembling civility between us specifically."Didn't expect to be here," Rourke said, his voice as flat and controlled as I remembered, though something in his posture had shifted since that first meeting, some of the hard edges worn thinner by whatever had happened out at Red Sun's

It started as a low, constant hum beneath my skin, the kind of sensation I'd almost gotten used to since Anna's presence first announced itself, but by the third day after the probing attack, that hum had sharpened into something closer to a persistent ache, pressure building behind my eyes no matter how much I tried to ignore it.I hadn't told anyone at first, hoping it might fade on its own the way smaller fluctuations sometimes did, but by the second morning it had become obvious enough that Ruby noticed the moment I walked into the command post, her eyes narrowing with the particular scrutiny she reserved for anything that didn't match her expectations."Your readings have been climbing steadily since the skirmish," Ruby told me during a routine check, her tablet displaying a graph that had been trending upward in a way none of us liked. "Not spikes. A steady climb. Forty four percent this morning, up from thirty eight yesterday.""I haven't been in combat,"