Chapter 3
Astra
Except the Vex operative Dexter flagged yesterday has Webb's biometrics. His retinal scan. His fucking gait pattern, analyzed from three different surveillance angles.
The dead man is walking. Has been for six years.
My coffee goes cold in my hand.
The intelligence hub smells like ozone and the burnt-metal ghost of overworked processors. Zane's already there when I arrive, Talia at his elbow like she's grown roots beside him. His bioluminescence pulses steady along his forearms. Calm. Controlled.
Mine would be flickering like a dying star if I had any.
"Venn." He doesn't look up from the datastream. "You've read the file."
"Every word."
"Conclusions?"
I set my cold coffee on the table hard enough that Talia flinches. Zane doesn't. He's learned not to.
"Webb sold us. Sigma-9. The ambush wasn't random. Someone gave our coordinates, our assets, our extraction window. He had access to all of it."
Dexter's voice comes from behind me. I didn't hear him enter. I should have.
"We don't know that for certain."
I turn. He's standing in the doorway, turquoise skin catching the blue-tinted light, electric eyes steady on mine. His bioluminescence is dim. Controlled. Like he thinks keeping himself muted will make this easier.
"Yes. We do." My voice is flat. Professional. Dead. "You know we do."
The air between us crackles with everything I'm not saying. He can't feel my emotions through the walls I've spent six years reinforcing. But he can see the tension in my shoulders. The white of my knuckles where my hands are fisted at my sides.
He sees. He always sees.
Zane's marks flare once. A warning or acknowledgment, I can't tell.
"Then we find him," Zane says. "Determine his connection to the Vex. Discover what he knows about the Obsidian Protocol. Bring him in."
"Alive if possible," Dexter adds.
I don't answer. Alive is negotiable.
The flashback hits without warning.
White walls. The smell of antiseptic and the copper ghost of my own blood. Three weeks after extraction.
I surface slowly. My body is a map of damage I haven't catalogued yet. Everything hurts. Some things hurt in ways that suggest they'll never stop.
A debrief officer. Sitting beside the bed with a datapad, asking questions in a voice designed to be soothing.
The mission was successful. You're a hero. Do you have any information about the ambush source?
I had nothing. Nothing but the memory of Dexter's back as he walked away. The set of his shoulders. The way he didn't turn around.
Unable to retrieve.
Three words that followed me into surgery, into recovery, into the mirror where I saw what they'd done to me while I was their guest.
I blink. The intelligence hub comes back. Zane is watching me with something that might be concern if he were capable of it. Talia's grey eyes are softer.
"Venn?"
"I'm functional." I straighten. Check my sidearm without thinking. "What are the orders?"
Zane glances at Dexter. Something passes between them. Brothers communicating in that silent Empri way I'll never access.
"Find Webb," Zane says finally. "This is personal for both of you. That's either an asset or a liability. Don't make me regret trusting you with this."
Personal.
I almost laugh. Would, if I remembered how.
They assign us a workspace. Joint operation. Combined resources. Dexter's contacts from military intelligence. My contacts from six years of hunting every ghost that looked like him.
We could delegate. Run this through subordinates. Keep our distance.
I watch him settle into the chair across from mine. His hands move across the holographic display with that Empri grace that used to make me ache. Still does, if I'm honest. Just differently now.
"Webb is mine," I say.
"Webb sold both of us."
"You got to walk away. I didn't."
Silence. His bioluminescence flickers along his temples. Emotion he's trying to suppress.
Good. I want him to feel this.
"The answers are mine too," I continue. "Six years. I've needed to know who. How. Why." I lean forward. "Now I do. And I'm not delegating this to anyone."
"I wasn't suggesting you should."
"Then why are you still sitting there?"
His mouth quirks. Not quite a smile. "Because you're going to need someone who knows how Webb thinks. His patterns. His methods." A pause. "And because I owe you this. The answers. The closure." Another pause. "The chance to put a bullet in him yourself, if that's what you need."
I should tell him to leave. Should handle this alone.
Instead I pull up Webb's file. Start working.
After a moment, he does the same.
Talia finds me in the corridor outside. I'm taking a break. Need air that doesn't smell like Dexter's presence.
She leans against the wall beside me. Doesn't speak immediately. Smart woman.
"You don't have to forgive him to work with him," she says finally.
"I know."
"You just have to decide what matters more. Your anger or your answers."
I look at her. The human woman who went from cargo to queen in six weeks. Who killed to protect the monster who owned her. Who looks at me like she recognizes something.
"What if they're the same thing?" I ask.
Her smile is sharp. All edges. "Then you'll fit right in around here."
She walks away before I can respond. Before I can ask what she sees in me that makes her think I need the reassurance.
Before I can admit she's right.
Late that night. My quarters. Alone.
I pull out the box.
I keep it in the back of my closet, behind the tactical gear I hope I'll never need again and the body armor that's saved my life twice. Small. Unmarked. The kind of container designed to be forgotten.
Inside: mission patches from the units I served with. A cracked comm unit from the Sigma-9 extraction, still stained with blood that might be mine or might be Holt's. Three medals I never picked up because walking into a ceremony meant looking at people who knew what happened.
And underneath it all: a photograph.
The unit. All of us. Before.
Sergeant Holt is grinning, arm around Vasquez. They're both dead now. Died in the first thirty seconds of the ambush, before they knew what was happening.
Webb is there. Smiling. Friendly. The intelligence officer everyone trusted.
And Dexter. Younger. His turquoise skin catching the sunlight of whatever moon we were training on. His electric eyes clear. Happy.
His hand is on my shoulder.
I remember the moment. Remember who took the photo. Remember being happy in a way I'd forgotten was possible until I saw this again.
I trace the edge of the photograph. Don't touch his face. Can't.
The door chimes.
I know who it is before I check the camera feed. Know it in the way my spine straightens, the way my pulse kicks up despite six years of training it not to.
He's standing in the corridor. Alone. Past midnight. Looking at the camera like he can see through it to where I'm sitting with evidence of what we were.
I should tell him to leave. Should delete the message. Should bury the box again and pretend I never looked.
Instead I walk to the door.
Stand there with my hand on the panel.
He's a monster. He left me. He'd do it again.
He's also the only person who knows what that photograph meant. The only other survivor of the unit that died on Sigma-9.
The only man I ever loved, even when I was killing strangers who reminded me of him.
I open the door.
He's there. Blue skin and electric eyes and six years of distance that evaporates the moment we're in the same air.
"Astra."
My name in his mouth, the way he shapes the syllables, the resonance in his chest that makes it sound like a question and a claim at once.
I'd forgotten the exact timbre of his voice when he's being honest instead of tactical.
Forgotten how that single word could feel like a hand against my spine, familiar and dangerous in equal measure.
"You shouldn't be here." The words come out harder than I intend. Military clip. The voice I use on subordinates who've fucked up.
"I know." He doesn't move. Doesn't defend. Just stands there letting me look at him—six years older, harder, new scars I don't recognize mapping a history I wasn't part of.
"It's past midnight." I'm stalling. We both know it. "Past any reasonable hour for a courtesy call."
"I know." Still that same steady tone. The man who calculated my life in ninety seconds, now standing in my doorway like he has all the time in the universe.
"I could kill you right now." My hand moves to the knife at my hip before I decide to reach for it. Old reflex. Combat instinct. "Tell Zane you attacked me. He'd believe it. Hell, he'd probably expect it."
"I know." His bioluminescence pulses once, soft, muted, the patterns along his temples glowing faint blue in the dim corridor light. The color looks sad, if light can look like emotion. Maybe it can when it's an Empri's marks betraying what they're feeling. "But you won't."
The certainty in those two words makes me want to prove him wrong. Makes me want to draw that blade, test whether he's right about what I'm capable of now.
"Why not?" My voice drops lower. Quieter. The tone I use right before violence. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't put a knife between your ribs and watch you bleed blue all over my nice clean floor."
"Because you need answers more than you need revenge." He takes a step forward. Not quite inside. Not quite leaving. "And because you want to know if I'd leave you again."
The words land like a blade between ribs.
I step back. Let him in.
The door closes behind him with a sound like a cage locking.
We're alone. Finally. With six years of damage and the photograph still open on my table and the memory of what we were before everything broke.
This is either closure or the beginning of something worse.
I can't decide which I want more.