Epilogue If It’s Missing #3
Morrison looks at me. The Look. The specific one — eyebrows level, chin slightly lifted, the expression that says I have been running this station for twenty-three years and I will manage the handoff at my own pace, Florence, and you will accept the help I am offering because it is help and because I said so.
The Look that has ended arguments with dock managers, customs officers, and one memorable Corsairian ambassador.
I close my mouth.
“She’ll be here shortly,” Morrison says. “I would recommend tea.”
“Morrison, I don’t need you to —“
“Weekly reports,” Morrison says. “On the Torek case. On your staffing. On —“ she glances at Petra, who has begun reading the label on the tea canister without actually touching it, a compromise that satisfies no one “— personnel development.”
“I’m not reporting to you. I’m not OOPS anymore. SNAG is an independent —“
The Look. Again. Longer this time. The blue eyes that say: you are independent.
You are your own operation. And you will send me weekly reports because I trained you and I love you and I will not stop managing your safety just because you changed your job title.
The reports are not negotiable. The reports have never been negotiable.
The reports are Morrison’s love language and they will arrive on my desk every Friday or I will come to your office and sit in this chair until they do.
“Fine,” I say. “Weekly reports.”
“On Fridays.”
“On Fridays, Morrison.”
“Before noon.”
“Don’t push it.”
The almost-smile again. She touches Petra’s shoulder one more time — brief, firm — and then she sits.
Not in a client chair. Against the wall, arms folded, the posture of a woman who is staying to watch what happens next.
Because Morrison doesn’t leave before the important part.
And the important part hasn’t arrived yet.
Natalie Torres arrives fifteen minutes later at 1510 and I can tell the fairy lights do not impress her.
I can tell because she looks at them, and then she looks at me, and the expression on her face communicates an entire audit report in a single glance.
She’s tall — five-nine, athletic, the build of someone who trains daily and not for show.
Dark hair in a braid so tight it looks regulation.
Brown skin, sharp jaw, and a scar through her left eyebrow that she wears like a medal.
The Junction One security uniform fits her like it was designed around her specifically, and the insignia — HEAD OF STATION SECURITY — is polished to a shine that could cut glass.
She takes in the room. Two alien males. A woman with a stuffed animal on her knee. A woman with a notebook and a claiming mark. Morrison sitting against the wall like a spectator at an event she orchestrated. Fairy lights. A ceramic figurine named Gerald.
“Ms Knight.” She does not say Flossie. She says Ms Knight the way Morrison says Florence — with the full weight of formality as a tool. “I’m Natalie Torres. Director Morrison asked me to coordinate on a missing persons case originating in Junction One jurisdiction.”
“She did.” I stand. Extend my hand. “Flossie. Please.”
Torres shakes my hand. Firm. Precise. One shake, exactly the right pressure, the kind of handshake they teach at military academies and Morrison’s dispatch school.
“The missing Xarthian. Torek. I’ve pulled the docking records for the relevant timeframe.
Transit logs, security feeds, bay access data — I’ll need a formal coordination request filed before I can release them to a civilian operation. ”
“That seems —“
“Unnecessary,” Tael says from the reinforced chair.
Torres’s eyes snap to him. She hasn’t looked at him until now — she looked at Xor first, because Xor is the largest threat in the room, and then at me, because I’m the person she was sent to coordinate with. Tael was furniture. Tael is no longer furniture.
“Excuse me?”
“A formal coordination request. For docking records. There’s a woman dying because her bonded mate is missing and you want paperwork filed before you’ll share the security feed that might show who took him.
” Tael hasn’t stood. He’s still in the reinforced chair, legs stretched out, tail in its lazy spiral, the posture of a male so confident in his own assessment that sitting down while delivering it is its own kind of provocation.
“How many forms? Just so I can plan my afternoon.”
Torres’s jaw sets. “The protocols exist to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive station infrastructure. They exist because without them, anyone with a convincing story could walk in and —“
“I don’t need a convincing story. I need twelve hours of docking bay footage from ten months ago. You could pull it in thirty seconds.”
“I could. And then I’d be releasing classified security data to an unvetted civilian contractor operating out of a market office decorated with —“ She looks up. The fairy lights blink back at her. “— decorative lights.”
“They’re festive,” Petra offers from the second chair. Nobody asked her. She doesn’t care.
“They are a fire code violation,” Torres says. “Which I will be noting separately.”
“They are not a fire code violation,” I say. “Sprout ran the specifications.”
“I did,” Sprout confirms. “The fairy lights meet all Junction One safety standards. I have documentation. Would you like me to display it?”
“I would like,” Torres says, with the controlled patience of a woman who is going to go home tonight and scream into a pillow, “to coordinate a missing persons case. Not discuss decorative lighting.” She turns back to me.
“Ms Knight. The formal request. I can process it within twenty-four hours.
In the meantime, I can share a preliminary summary of the docking bay data —“
“Or you could let us see the actual footage now and we could start finding him tonight,” Tael says. “While the formal request processes. Simultaneously. Like adults who care about the woman whose husband is missing and whose body is shutting down while we discuss paperwork.”
Torres stares at him.
He stares back. Silver eyes to dark brown.
The smirk is gone — or it’s changed. It’s less performance and more genuine.
The look of a male who has found something he didn’t expect: a woman who doesn’t defer.
Who doesn’t charm. Who stands between him and the thing he wants and holds the line because the line matters to her, and the fact that the line matters to her is doing something to his chest he has not authorized.
“The protocols,” Torres says, slower now, watching him the way he’s watching her, “protect the station’s security infrastructure from compromise.
I enforce them because without enforcement, systems fail.
And when systems fail, people fall through the cracks.
” The scar above her eyebrow catches the light.
“I don’t let people fall through the cracks, Mr Vosk. ”
Something shifts in his face. Barely visible.
The tracker recalculating — not a target, not an obstacle.
A person. A person who cares about the same thing he does, expressed in a language he doesn’t speak.
Rules as care. Protocols as protection. The opposite of his instinct-first approach and arriving at the same destination.
“Neither do I,” he says. Quiet. The gravel-smoke voice without the performance.
Morrison, from her seat against the wall, is watching the two of them with an expression I know.
I know it because she wore it when she watched me and Xor in this same office three weeks ago.
The expression of a woman who sees the beginning of something neither participant has identified yet and is already calculating the operational implications.
“Morrison,” I say. “Did you time this?”
“I time everything, Florence. It’s called logistics.”
Torres breaks the eye contact first. Professional.
Controlled. She pulls up a data pad. “I’ll share a preliminary data summary now.
The formal request can process concurrently.
Mr Vosk will need to be present for the footage review — my office, 0900 tomorrow — to maintain chain of custody on the evidence. ”
“Your office,” Tael says. “0900.”
“0900. Don’t be late. I don’t repeat briefings.”
“I’ve never been late for anything in my life.”
“Your SRS performance file suggests otherwise. I requested it.”
The smirk — the real one, not the performance, the one that means he’s met someone who did her homework — returns. “You requested my file.”
“I request files on everyone who operates on my station without filing movement reports. You have fourteen violations in three weeks, Mr Vosk. We’ll discuss those at 0900 as well.”
“I look forward to it.”
“You shouldn’t.” She turns to me. “Ms Knight. Flossie. Morrison speaks highly of you. I’ll have the preliminary data sent to your systems within the hour.” She nods at Morrison — crisp, professional, the acknowledgment of a director’s authority — and walks to the door.
Tael’s tail, curled in its lazy spiral behind the reinforced chair, shifts.
Not a reach. Not a lean. Something smaller — the tip lifting, the curl loosening by an inch, the prehensile muscle doing something unconscious and undirected in the direction of the door she’s walking through.
If I weren’t watching for it — if I hadn’t spent three weeks learning tail language from the male whose tail taps my wall every morning — I would miss it entirely.
I don’t miss it.
I don’t say anything. I write it in the notebook. Not words. A question mark. Small. In the margin. The kind of thing nobody would notice unless they read the notebook the way I write it — as a record of things that might matter later.
Torres leaves. The door closes behind her.
“Sprout,” I say. Quiet. “Not a word.”
“I have no idea what you’re referring to,” Sprout says. “I have, however, opened a file. It is currently empty. I anticipate it will not remain so.”