1. The 0900 #2
He’s tracing the departure vector on the display, finger following the ship’s path through the commercial lane, and his sleeves are pushed to his elbows and the rosette markings travel down the inside of his forearms to his wrists, charcoal skin patterned in dark whorls that shift under the fluorescent light, and a thought arrives which has nothing to do with departure vectors.
The display. The trajectory. The data.
My hand finds the desk’s edge and grips it. Two seconds. Three. The tendons go taut against the composite, and the thing the hand wants to reach for is inappropriate and attached to a civilian contractor with a termination file I’m still reading.
I let go. Breathe. Study the display.
SENTRY says nothing in my earpiece. SENTRY is programmed to flag biometric anomalies that indicate a security threat, and my grip strength spiking while looking at a Draelith’s wrists apparently fails to meet that threshold. The AI and I are going to have a conversation about its alert parameters.
His tail shifts behind the chair. When he sat down, it was coiled in a controlled spiral. Tight. Deliberate.
It’s not tight now.
The coil has loosened. The ridged underside is visible where it rests against the chair leg; the muscle unwound in a way that looks involuntary.
The ridges catch the light. Textured. An irrational thought arrives. What would it feel like under my fingers? My hand presses flat against the desk to keep it where it belongs.
Through his comm, unmuted, which is an oversight or a choice I haven’t decided whether to punish, comes a voice. Higher-pitched, synthetic, vibrating with the focused enthusiasm of an AI that has never encountered a boundary it considered relevant.
“Her security architecture is exceptional. Organized by date, cross-referenced by threat category, with a tertiary index I have not seen outside of military intelligence databases. I am reluctantly impressed.”
SENTRY, in my ear, with the precisely controlled fury of an AI that has discovered someone going through its things: “The Draelith’s AI is accessing my system architecture without authorization.”
“Vosk. Your AI is in my system.”
“JINX is networking. It’s what he does.”
“Networking without authorization is a security breach.”
“Networking with authorization is a meeting.” He tips his chin. “We’re having a meeting.”
SENTRY: “The Draelith AI has left a data packet in my inbox labeled ‘PROFESSIONAL COURTESY.’ Shall I quarantine it?”
“What’s in it?”
“…I am not comfortable sharing that information in the current context.”
JINX, through Vosk’s comm, cheerful and entirely unrepentant: “It’s his punctuality statistics. I thought you’d want them. For your records.”
Vosk’s jaw tightens by a degree which would be invisible to anyone who hadn’t spent their career reading faces across interrogation desks. “He sent you my punctuality stats.”
“Why.”
“Because JINX believes data is a love language, and he’s trying to make friends with your filing cabinet.”
“SENTRY is not a filing cabinet.”
“SENTRY logged three compliance reports during a conversation about a dying woman’s missing husband. That’s filing cabinet behavior.”
“Compliance doesn’t pause for tragedy. That’s the point of compliance.”
“Is that the point? I’ve lost track.”
I don’t smile. The wanting-to-smile spreads warm below my sternum, and I push it down next to the forearm problem and the scent problem and the way his voice changes when he drops the performance.
There is no dignified way to process the fact that a male I met yesterday has generated more involuntary physical responses in eighteen hours than the entire Junction One personnel roster has managed since I took the post.
“The diagnostic gap.” The case is solid ground. “The next cycle runs at 1400. Draelith tracking requires on-site scent work, which means you’ll need physical access to Bay 7.”
“Was going to mention that.” He was absolutely not going to mention it and was going to walk into a restricted area without asking, because that is what he does, because fifteen movement violations don’t happen by accident.
“I’m coming with you.”
The smirk flickers. Not at the statement; at the speed of it. I’ve volunteered to spend the afternoon in an enclosed docking bay with a male scent still doing something to my insides, and I said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.
“It’s my jurisdiction,” I add, steadier than the speed of the offer warranted. “My bay. My gap. I’m not sending a civilian into a restricted area without escort.”
“Naturally.” The smirk settles into something smaller, warmer, less theatrical. “Protocol.”
“1400. Don’t be late.”
“You have my punctuality statistics.”
“I have your punctuality statistics, your movement violations, and your termination file from SRS. I’m thorough.”
“I know.” He stands. The chair releases him, and his full height reconfigures the room.
Six-five of lean muscle and shifting rosette markings and he knows exactly the effect he has and deploys it like ordnance.
His silver eyes hold mine for one beat longer than necessary, and the smirk is back, but thinner now, the cracks showing through the performance like light through a closed fist. “That’s the problem. ”
He leaves. The door closes. His tail, passing through the door frame, maintains its loosened curl. Unwound. Unhurried.
My fingers are still pressed flat against the desk.
The ventilation cycles. The warm-wood-and-spice thins, replaced by standard recycled atmosphere, and the room that was mine before he walked in is mine again.
Mostly.
“SENTRY.”
“Yes.”
“The data packet from the Draelith AI. The one labeled ‘professional courtesy.’”
“Yes.”
“…Don’t quarantine it.”
A pause. Processing delay where none should exist; SENTRY’s version of a raised eyebrow. “Noted. I will process the contents.”
“Add them to the coordination materials.”
“The contents are punctuality statistics, Torres. They are not coordination materials.”
“They are now.”
“…Noted.”
I pull up the Bay 7 diagnostic schedule. 1400. Four hours and eleven minutes. Three forms, two clearance authorizations, and a civilian escort assignment that needs a name.
Ardent could do it, and would, with the same unflappable competence he brings to everything, while I reviewed the shell company data from the safety of twenty-three monitors and air that doesn’t smell like anything.
I enter my name on the escort assignment because nobody else has the reasons to be angry about the dark spots.
That’s the reason. The bay. The dark spots. The four years.
That is unquestionably the reason.
“SENTRY. Add a note to the SNAG coordination file.”
“Ready.”
“Operative Vosk demonstrates adequate analytical capability. His knowledge of SRS extraction methodology may prove useful to the Torek investigation.” A breath. “His AI requires access restrictions.”
“Noted. Anything else?”
The tail with the loosened curl and the ridges under the light. The flat of my hand against the desk.
“No. That’s all.”
Four hours until I walk into Bay 7 with him. Four hours to remember that I am the security chief of a three-hundred-and-forty-thousand-person station, and that what happens in a docking bay when a Draelith tracker works a scent trail in the dark is an operational question, not a personal one.
The part of me that straightened the pen holder nine times is not convinced.