Chapter 1 #2
"I think it's someone who knew our protocols. Our schedules. Our weaknesses." I look at him. "Someone who sold us to an ambush six years ago and disappeared before anyone could ask why."
The air pressure changes. Subtle. The way it does when an Empri is feeling something strong enough that it leaks into the physical.
"Webb." His voice is flat. The affect he gets when he's calculating odds I don't want to know.
"Webb died six months after Sigma-9." I pull up the death certificate. "Training accident. Very convenient timing."
"Or very deliberate timing." He leans over the desk, studying the captures. Close enough now that I can see the scar on his scalp, the one that goes through his hairline in a darker blue-black streak. New since Sigma-9. New since he left me.
I wonder who gave it to him. I wonder if they meant to kill him. I wonder if I'm glad they failed or furious they didn't finish the job.
"You think he's alive."
"I think convenient deaths are rarely convenient." I close the file. "And I think whoever's operating on my station knows exactly what they're looking for."
"Which is?"
"The same thing everyone's looking for since your father vanished. The anomaly research. The jump gate data. Whatever Malachar found that made him disappear."
Dexter straightens. Steps back. The professional distance reasserting itself, except now I can smell him—antiseptic and violence and something underneath that's just him, the scent that used to mean safety before it meant abandonment.
"Zane wants us working this together."
"I'm aware."
"Can you do that?"
The question sits between us like a live grenade.
I could lie. Say yes, professional, of course I can compartmentalize six years of wanting him dead and needing him alive in the same breath.
I don't.
"I can work with you." I meet his eyes. "I'll even keep you alive if the tactical situation requires it. But don't mistake professional competence for forgiveness."
"I'm not asking for forgiveness."
"Good." I stand. Walk around the desk. Stop close enough that he'd have to work to avoid me. "Because you're not getting it. Not now. Not ever. Clear?"
His marks flare. Bright enough that the blue light spills across my face, and I see myself reflected in his eyes—pale skin, red hair, green eyes that have learned to go flat when I'm deciding whether someone lives or dies.
He's not pushing. I can feel the absence of it, the restraint humming in the space between us. Six years and he still won't touch my mind without permission.
It's the only thing that keeps the knife sheathed.
"Clear." His voice drops lower. That resonance doing something to my spine that I refuse to name. "For what it's worth—"
"It's not worth anything." I step back. "Be in the briefing room in twenty minutes. Bring your tactical assessment files. Don't be late."
I turn my back on him.
It's a test. A dare. An echo of thirty meters of smoke and the distance growing.
He doesn't stop me.
I reach the door, palm the panel, step through.
Behind me, his voice. Quiet enough that I almost miss it.
"I'm not leaving this time."
I don't answer.
Don't turn around.
The door cycles shut, and I'm alone in the corridor, staring at blue blood drying on my palm.
He's not leaving.
That's the problem.
The briefing room is too small.
I knew it would be. Chose it anyway. Let Dexter feel the walls pressing, the confined space, the nowhere to retreat. Strategic psychology. Make him uncomfortable. Make him remember what it's like to be trapped.
Zane arrives first. Pale eyes scan the room, catch on me, assess. "This should be interesting."
"Professional," I correct.
"Of course." He sits. The head of the table, the position his father used to occupy. He wears it differently—less throne, more target. "Talia will be joining us. She's been running debtor intelligence. If Webb is connected to internal networks, she might have data."
Talia St. Laurent. The woman who arrived as cargo and became something else. I've trained with her. Watched her transform from terrified to tactical. We understand each other in the way women do when we've both learned that survival requires becoming something the men around us never expected.
She arrives next. Takes one look at the room, me at the secondary position, Zane at the head, the empty chair that's obviously Dexter's,and her expression shifts. Something knowing.
"Security Chief." She nods. Formal. We're not friends. We're professionals who happen to respect each other's capacity for violence.
"Ms. St. Laurent."
She sits. The mark at her throat pulses blue, in sync with Zane's patterns. The visible claim. The thing that tells everyone who sees her exactly what she is.
I don't have a mark.
I have scars.
Same language. Different alphabet.
The door opens.
Dexter enters, and the temperature drops. Not physically. Emotionally. The weight of history pressing down like atmosphere failure.
He's changed clothes. Station-standard tactical gear now, dark and functional. The blood is gone from his throat, the wound already closed. But I can still see where my blade sat. Can measure the exact depth, the precise pressure.
Not deep enough to kill. Deep enough to mark.
He takes the empty chair. Directly across from me. Of course.
Zane pulls up the holo display. The Vex operative's movement patterns scatter across the projection in red threads. "This started three weeks ago. Small breaches. Testing our detection. Then yesterday—"
He zooms in.
The operative got into a secondary navigation system. Downloaded jump coordinates. Got out clean.
"They know our routes now," Talia says. Her voice is steady, but I can see tension in her shoulders. "Every cargo run. Every patrol pattern. Everything."
"Not everything." I lean forward. Tap the display, isolating the timestamp. "They got the main routes. But we've been rotating secondary paths since the Vex siege. Those aren't in the system they accessed."
"Because you don't trust the system." Dexter's eyes on me. Reading. Always reading.
"I don't trust anything I didn't build myself."
"Smart."
The compliment sits wrong. I don't want his approval. Don't want anything from him except distance and the answers that might let me sleep without checking every shadow.
Zane continues. "The operative's signature matches someone from the Outer Rim conflicts. Someone with military training. Advanced tactics."
"Someone like us." Dexter's attention shifts to his brother. "Someone from the joint operations."
"We're considering that possibility."
"You're considering that Webb is alive."
The name drops into the room like a body.
Talia looks between us. She's smart enough to feel the weight, not smart enough yet to know the full story. "Who's Webb?"
"Our unit's intelligence officer." Dexter's voice is careful. Controlled. "Six years ago."
"The one who—" She stops. Looks at me. At Dexter. Understanding shifts across her face. "The one who sold you."
"We don't know that he sold us," I say. Precise. Professional. "We know someone gave our coordinates to the enemy. We know Webb had access. We know he died six months later in a training accident that was never fully investigated."
"Convenient," Talia says.
"Very."
Zane pulls up another file. A face fills the display.
Marcus Webb. I remember that face. Remember trusting it. He was forty when I knew him, brown hair going grey, eyes that looked tired even when he smiled. The kind of face that said competent veteran instead of traitor.
I memorized every line of it in the hospital. Every angle. Every feature that might help me find him if the death certificate was lying.
It was lying.
"This was taken four days ago." Zane switches the image. Same face. Older. Harder. Different clothes, different station, same tired eyes. "Station Gamma-7. He's using a new identity, but facial recognition flagged him."
My heart is doing something it shouldn't. Racing. The spike of adrenaline that comes before violence or vindication.
Six years.
Six years of not knowing. Of suspecting. Of building files and running searches and finding nothing.
He's alive.
The man who sold us is alive.
"Where is he now?" My voice doesn't shake. Small victories.
"Unknown. He disappeared from Gamma-7 before we could move." Zane looks at me. At Dexter. "But we have his patterns. His contacts. His probable destinations."
"You want us to hunt him." Dexter's already calculating. I can see it in the way his marks pulse, the rhythm that means he's running scenarios. "Bring him in. Find out what he knows."
"I want you to find out why he's operating in Vex territory." Zane's pale eyes are cold. "And who he's working for now. If it's the Vex, we need to know their strategy. If it's someone else—"
"Then we need to know who else wants us dead," I finish.
Talia shifts in her seat. "I can reach out to debtor networks. See if anyone's heard his name. Webb's new identity."
"Do it." Zane stands. "You have forty-eight hours to put together an operations plan. After that, you deploy."
He leaves. Talia follows, but she pauses at the door. Looks back at me.
Her expression says what her mouth doesn't: Are you okay with this?
I nod once.
She goes.
The door closes.
I'm alone with Dexter again.
"We should—" he starts.
"Don't." I stand. Start gathering my files, the physical copies I keep because digital can be hacked and I trust my hands more than any system. "Don't try to talk about it. Don't try to explain. Don't try to make this easier."
"I wasn't going to."
"Good."
I move toward the door. He's faster. Steps into my path. Not blocking. Just... there. Close enough that I can see the exact shade of his eyes, the electric blue that used to mean something before it meant unable to retrieve.
"Astra." My name again. He says it like it matters. "I need you to understand something."
"I don't need to understand anything."