The woman nodded, clicked the stylus off, and said, "You will be retained for observation. Further orders will be issued, but you are not to leave Meridian without written clearance." She looked at each of them in turn, then: "Dismissed. You'll be contacted."

Lira and Liane left together, moving in their old, pre-choreographed way, heads bent close as if agreeing on the order of who would be first to drink or sleep. Kale hung back, eyes flicking between Soren and the exit, as if still needing permission to resume having a future.

Seren was the last to leave, and in the silence, she said, "You think it's over?"

Soren looked at the mirror in the corner, knowing it was just one more set of eyes he'd never see the face of. "I think it never started."

She grinned, the expression raw but, for once, real. "Classic Vale," she said, and closed the door behind her.

Soren sat alone for a long time, letting the cold soak in. He traced the lines on the glass table, each scratch a record of someone else's anger, or boredom, or need to leave a mark.

He didn't know if the next assignment would be another corridor, or the inside of a cell, but he knew himself well enough to start planning the escape.

He looked at his hands, still tinged with the blue of the city. They didn't shake.

He was already rehearsing the next move.

The outpost was a converted train depot, all rusted plating and reinforced glass, never meant for comfort. Soren's squad was corralled into a conference room that doubled as a break room and, from the smell of it, probably a janitorial closet on high-traffic days. It was warm, the radiators creaked with the effort of fighting Meridian's perpetual draft, and the overheads were so bright they erased the edge off every shadow, making the bruises on Soren's hands look pink and childish.

He slouched in a chair at the end of the table, the others arrayed along the far side like a jury that had already voted him guilty. Lira and Liane sat shoulder-to-shoulder, arms folded, their blue hair now settled into a kind of truce with gravity and dirt. Kale cradled his wrist, eyes locked on a spot just left of Soren's boot, as if the right pattern of tile would open a door out of this.

A bowl of protein bricks sat in the middle of the table, untouched.

Seren hovered near the radiator, back to the wall, the ghost of a smile on her lips that told Soren she was just waiting for the punchline.

He didn't have the energy to supply one.

They waited five minutes before the projection crystal blinked to life at the head of the table, spilling a blue-white figure into the room. It was Cirel, or at least the best version money could buy: her face unlined, her uniform an impossible shade of clean, the emblem on her chest somehow brighter than the actual lights.

"Debrief will commence now," she said, voice riding the speaker system like it was born for nothing else. "Objective completed. Observational integrity preserved. Begin report."

Soren didn't bother to introduce the team. Cirel's eyes, rendered in some algorithmic parody of empathy, tracked each face in turn, then logged the data points as if the next words were already being written to the record.

He started with the route. Summarized the pass, the loss of Jannek, the runner, the mercenaries, the city. He left out nothing, but also nothing extra—no editorializing, no mention of something as intangible as hope or spite.

Cirel interrupted once, to clarify the nature of Jannek's wound: "Hemorrhage or sepsis?" Soren said, "Both." She nodded, as if this was an acceptable answer.

She let him finish, then ran the rest of the team through the same. Each answered, in turn, with whatever dignity or exhaustion they could muster. Kale spoke slow, as if tasting the air before every syllable. Lira and Liane answered in tandem, their sentences overlapping like a braid. Seren said little, but Cirel's face betrayed the faintest flicker—either of surprise or disappointment, at her reserve.

When it was over, the projection recalibrated, Cirel's posture now reset to command. "Loss of asset Jannek: within anticipated deviation. Route deviation: above threshold, but acceptable given field conditions. Command cohesion: intact until final phase. Notable performance by unit lead, Vale Coren. Recommendation: provisional advancement, subject to post-mission containment."

Kale's voice cracked like a dropped plate. "That's it? You run us half-dead, lose Jannek, and it's just a line on your fucking spreadsheet?"

Cirel looked at him, a flat, perfect gaze. "Your mission was not to survive. Your mission was to observe and adapt. You achieved secondary objective. Collateral indicates threshold met."

Seren's hand drifted to the hilt of her blade, an aborted gesture. Soren caught her eye and shook his head, minuscule but clear. She let go.

Cirel waited a beat. "Coren Vale. You are to report to the Spire within forty-eight hours for further instruction. Your team is to remain in Meridian on stand-by."

Then the projection blinked out, leaving nothing but the echo of her voice and the blue afterimage on Soren's retinas.

For a time, nobody moved.

Kale finally spoke, voice gone small. "They're not even going to mention Jannek by name in the return?"

"They already forgot it," Lira said, picking up a protein brick and shattering it between her palms. "That's what the threshold means."

Seren slumped against the wall, the edge finally bled out of her. "You think the next test is better?"

Soren didn't answer. He watched the blue on the wall fade to nothing, then stood, joints lighting up with a fresh round of pain. "I'm going out," he said. "You don't have to wait."

He left before they could argue.

The city's cold was a different animal, less a matter of temperature, more a question of willpower. Soren cut through alley after alley, boots crunching ice and old plastic, never minding the occasional skitter of a rat or a drone-scout overhead. He found a staircase that led up to an abandoned train platform, the kind that offered a view without the risk of being seen. He took the steps two at a time, then let himself sprawl against the rails.

The city pulsed around him. Somewhere down-avenue, a siren wailed, then cut. A trio of kids with faces painted in blue war bands darted across the street, giggling like a dare had just paid off. The world, as ever, was happy to ignore him.

He liked it that way.

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