Tia
I head to my room to shower and get out of these wet clothes. The shower helps. Mostly.
I stand under the hot water until the steam fills the whole bathroom and I can't see the mirror anymore, which is fine because I don't particularly want to look at myself right now.
I look like a woman developing feelings she has absolutely no business developing, and that's a terrible look on anyone.
I turn the water cold for the last thirty seconds. It doesn't work.
I change into jean shorts and a flowy blouse and sit on the edge of the bed and look at Kevin.
"Don't," I tell him.
He doesn't say anything. He just sits there being a plant, which is honestly the most supportive thing anyone's done for me today.
"I touched his arm," I say. "On purpose. And he put his hand over mine and then walked away like it meant nothing, and now I'm in a biker compound in the middle of some kind of cartel situation talking to a spider plant." I touch one of his leaves. "This is fine. Everything is fine."
Kevin remains nonjudgmental. I appreciate that.
A knock at the door. One of the prospects—young, a little nervous around the eyes. "Prez says you can move to the operations room if you want. Stay where we can see you."
I'm on my feet before he finishes the sentence. I grab Kevin, wanting to show him around.
The operations room smells like coffee and electronics and the same gun oil that seems to coat every surface in this building.
Screens cover the walls. Camera feeds, maps, what looks like shipment logs with a lot of red on them.
Mace is at the long table with three laptops open.
Ghost stands against the far wall in the specific way that means he's watching everything and will continue watching everything until someone tells him to stop or he dies.
Kraken is at the center console with his back to the door.
He doesn't turn around when I walk in, but his shoulders shift slightly. He knows I'm here.
I take a chair without being told. I place Kevin on the small table beside me. Small victories.
"I'll be very quiet," I say to the room. "Ninja levels of quiet."
Ghost glances at me, looks at Kevin and then back at me. His expression doesn't move but something behind his eyes does.
Mace keeps typing.
Kraken still hasn't turned around.
The room hums with low conversation—names, timestamps, a van with no plates, Finn's Miami connection.
I listen and trace small circles on the armrest and try to look like I'm not paying close attention, which I absolutely am.
The camera dropout keeps snagging in my mind.
Eleven minutes. Scheduled. I drew the whole thing out on a napkin and Kraken took it and said I'll have someone look at it in the tone of someone filing a thing in a drawer they never open.
I watch him at the screens. His jaw is set.
His hands move over the console with the efficiency of someone who's been doing this a long time.
He's good at this… the command of it, the way the other men calibrate to his attention without being told to.
He's built something here that actually functions.
I can respect that and also find it extremely irritating when he dismisses me in front of it.
The prospect comes in pale-faced. Movement on the west fence. Camera dropout.
The room snaps to. Kraken's eyes find me first, and then he's moving. "Ghost. Mace. With me." He points at me on his way out. "Stay."
I stay.
For about forty-five seconds.
Then I get up and cross to the main console. “I won't touch anything. Honest. I”ll just look,” I tell Kevin.
He judges me. I don’t blame him.
The feeds cycle through the perimeter cameras across grass, the fence, palm trees, and the dark strip of road beyond the gate. I find the west camera and watch it. Normal. Normal. Normal. Then a flicker—barely a second—and normal again.
I look at the timestamp in the corner.
I spot my napkin on the table. It’s crumpled, but I grab it anyway. I check my calculations against the timestamp.
Eleven minutes. On the dot.
I'm still standing there when boots sound in the hallway and Kraken fills the doorway. His shirt is damp at the collar. There's a tension in him that wasn't there before. His eyes go to me at the console and his expression sharpens.
"I said stay in the chair."
"I didn't touch anything." I hold up the napkin. "Eleven minutes. Again. Just now. I timed it."
He crosses the room and takes it from my hand. Studies it. His jaw works.
Mace comes in behind him, looks at the napkin over his shoulder. Something passes between them.
"She's right," Mace says. "That's not equipment failure."
"I know," Kraken says.
He says it quietly. Not to me. He's already moving back to the console, already shifting gears, and I feel the dismissal of it like a door closing. I watch him pull up the timestamp logs and start cross-referencing and I think: he's not going to say anything. He's just going to use it.
"You're welcome," I say.
The room goes still. Ghost looks at the ceiling. Mace finds something very interesting on his laptop screen. Kevin’s quiet from his spot across the room.
Kraken turns around slowly. His eyes are gray and flat and very, very controlled. "Excuse me?"
My heart is hammering but I keep my voice even. "I said you're welcome. I know you'd prefer I sit quietly in the corner and wait to be rescued, but I handed you something useful twice now and you've taken it both times without acknowledging that I gave it to you. So. You're welcome."
The silence stretches. I can hear the camera feeds cycling.
"You're a civilian," he says. "In a dangerous situation. My job is to keep you alive, not to—"
"Brief me? Trust me? Treat me like a person who can contribute something?" I cross my arms. "I'm not asking to go out there. I'm asking you to stop acting like I handed you a drawing from a child."
Something moves across his face. Not anger exactly. Something more complicated, kind of like I've pushed on a wall he didn't know he'd built.
"Sit down," he says. But it comes out different than before. Less like an order.
"I am sitting down." I pull the chair out and sit in it. "See? Perfect prisoner. But I'm right about the intervals."
"I know you are." He holds my gaze for one long second. Then he turns back to the console.
It's not an apology. It's not even close to an apology. But it's the first time he's said I know instead of I'll have someone look at it, and in this room, with these men, I think that's the closest thing to one I'm going to get.
I uncross my arms and look at the screens. "The interval suggests they're on a timer. Which means whoever's running the camera kills has to execute within a fixed window. If you change your rotation by twelve minutes in either direction—"
"It breaks the pattern," Mace says slowly. He's looking at me now. Actually looking, not the polite-nod-at-the-civilian look. "Forces them to improvise."
"Or tip their hand," Ghost says from the wall.
I shrug. "I'm just good at anomalies."
Nobody laughs at that this time.
Kraken is still facing the screens. But I can see his reflection in the dark monitor on the left—the set of his mouth, the way his eyes have gone somewhere interior. Thinking. Working through it.
He glances at my reflection. Catches me watching him in the glass.
Neither of us looks away for a long, charged moment.
Then he says, to the room, "Change the rotation. Twelve minutes. Starting now." And everyone moves.
I stay in my chair. The compound outside settles into a tighter, quieter kind of vigilance. The camera feeds cycle. I watch them and don't say anything else.
Kraken doesn't look at my reflection again. But before he leaves he sets a cup of coffee on the table next to me. Black. No comment. Just sets it there and walks away.
I look at the coffee.
Kevin would absolutely have something to say about this.
I drink the coffee. It's very good.
Whatever comes next I know one thing for certain. I'm exactly where I shouldn’t be.
And for the first time since I got here, I feel useful.