Before committing to the northeast sector, I went to find Sera Mackin one more time, partly to confirm the dead drop's behavior since the trace, partly because Dorian's confession on the rooftop had left me wanting to talk to someone who wasn't tangled up in whatever history that name represented.I found her at the Vantage Combine's claimed territory, her people running drills in the lobby with a discipline that had only sharpened since our first meeting."The cache went dark after your question," she said, without preamble. "Three days now." She studied me. "Whatever you're planning, I want in. I've spent forty days being someone's calibration tool. I'd rather spend the next forty being something else.""That's a shift," I said. "You were skeptical of me two weeks ago.""I'm not skeptical of you." She crossed her arms. "I'm skeptical of being controlled. Not the same thing." A beat, then, half under her breath, almost to herself, "God, that sounded better in my head before I said it

We left at dawn. Myself, Kira, Selene, and Dorian, Adrian on perimeter watch back at the safe house, Viktor running the council in our absence, Sera Mackin's offer of joint reconnaissance declined for now. Whatever waited at those coordinates, I wanted fewer variables walking into it blind, not more.The walk out took most of the morning, the city thinning from familiar rebuilt streets into territory none of us had any reason to have crossed before, cracked roads giving way to the kind of quiet that felt less like abandonment and more like something deliberately left untouched. Nobody talked much. Kira kept glancing toward the horizon every few minutes, like she was tracking something only her expanded passive could sense, and Selene checked her instruments so often I started to wonder if the habit was less about the readings and more about having something familiar to hold onto in unfamiliar ground.The sector itself confirmed everything the regional map had warned. Three kilometers

I looked at Kira. She held my gaze, and I could see her running the same calculation I was, accelerate now, with allies present, with some warning of the cost, or wait, and face whatever Testament eventually revealed without any control over the timing at all."What do you think," I said."I think," she said slowly, "that whatever's speaking to us has been patient enough to plan four years ahead. That kind of patience doesn't usually offer gifts without wanting something in return, even if the something isn't obvious yet." She paused. "But I also think we're going to face Testament's full reveal eventually no matter what we choose. The only question is whether we face it on our terms or its terms."Dorian stepped forward, his expression carefully composed but his voice betraying something underneath it. "Before you decide," he said, "in my timeline, I encountered something that called itself by a similar pattern of speech. Patient, collecting, predating the System." He met my eyes. "I

I found Sera at the Vantage Combine's tower an hour later, the data pad's full instructions laid out across her operations table, the tower's usual drill schedule paused, her people moving with the tighter, quieter urgency of an organization bracing for something instead of training for it."The cache reactivated the moment you left the northeast sector," she said. "Different tone this time. Less calibration, more direct intelligence. Someone wants the Covenant to move against your building within the week.""Wants them to, or is telling them to.""I can't tell the difference from here," Sera admitted. "But the instructions include specifics only someone with deep access to Covenant operations would know. Troop movements, supply caches, internal command structure." She looked at me. "Whoever's behind the dead drop has eyes inside Prosper Hale's organization."I read through the pages myself, the weight of the day already sitting heavy before this new problem had even fully landed, and

With Sera's people integrated into the defense, six operators, real coordination, gear that matched anything my own people carried, the building's actual combat capacity had nearly doubled overnight compared to where we'd stood only a week before. I spent the fifth day running final preparations, the dead drop's silence since Sera's last update sitting heavier than any active threat would have.The day passed in a blur of small, necessary tasks, checking weapon caches with Adrian, walking the perimeter twice with Selene to confirm every sightline still held, sitting through a final coordination briefing with Viktor and Sera's second in command, a shield class defender named Petra who asked sharper questions than anyone else in the room and seemed satisfied only once every answer had been tested from three different angles.Viktor ran the non-combat drills one final time that afternoon, walking each family through their fallback route to the subbasement with a patience that hadn't been