His uniform collar is open, his hair looks like he’s dragged his hands through it fifty times, and the skin under his eyes has thatgray, sleepless cast people get when they’ve been living on caff, adrenaline, and bad institutional decisions.
When he sees me, he lets out a breath like he’s been holding it for the length of the corridor.
“Hey.”
I stop six feet away and don’t make it easier for either of us. “You asked for urgent.”
“Yeah.” He rubs the heel of his palm over his mouth. “Yeah, I did.”
The corridor’s low mechanical hum fills the silence between us. Somewhere deeper on the level, a relay clicks through an access cycle. The vault wall beside him glows faintly from internal storage arrays, bands of cool white shifting to blue as the system updates. The light makes his face look sharper, hollower. Makes both of us look like we’ve already been archived.
I fold my arms. “You’re cleared.”
He gives a short laugh that sounds scraped raw. “That’s what they told the cameras.”
“Was it true?”
His head comes up fast. “Yes.”
No hesitation. No sidestep. Just immediate, tired offense.
I believe him, which is inconvenient, because belief doesn’t erase damage. It doesn’t make the last stretch of days less ugly. It doesn’t soften the fact that he was close enough to the machinery of this thing to be scorched by it.
“I didn’t authorize displacement,” he says. His voice drops, tight and earnest. “I routed a protected convoy through a priority lattice. That’s all. I never got corridor override authority. I never saw the civilian path adjustment. Selene, I swear to God.”
“I know,” I say.
He blinks at me. “You know?”
“The panel confirmed it.”
His mouth opens, then closes. “Yeah, but from you that could still mean, ‘I know and I’m deciding whether to kill you with my mind.’”
I hold his gaze for a beat. “I’m too tired for telekinesis.”
That gets the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it dies quickly.
“I don’t hate you, Garran,” I say, because the truth deserves clean edges.
His shoulders loosen by a fraction.
Then I add, “I just don’t have the emotional bandwidth to comfort you about brushing up against atrocity.”
He flinches. “Fair.”
The quiet that settles after that isn’t warm, but it isn’t cruel either. It just sits there with us, heavy and honest. I can hear the soft hiss of air moving through the corridor vents overhead. Feel the cool draft slide along the back of my neck where stray hairs have worked loose from my braid. The vault glass beside Garran throws a ghost reflection of both of us back into the hall, distorted slightly by the internal projection layers.
He glances toward the vault door. “You’re building the full chain.”
“Yes.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
“Jesus.”
“Not him,” I mutter. “Mostly me and an irresponsible amount of telemetry.”
