“Then we don’t waste time,” I say. “You tell me what you’ve seen. I do the same.”
“And we trust each other?” he asks.
“No,” I reply immediately. “We verify.”
That pulls a sharper reaction from him, something that looks closer to approval than amusement.
“Smart,” he says.
“I don’t have the luxury of being anything else.”
He nods once, slow and deliberate.
“Alright,” he says. “We trade.”
I hesitate for a fraction of a second, the weight of the decision settling fully into place.
This is the line.
And I am stepping across it.
“You go first,” he adds.
“Of course you’d say that,” I reply.
“Of course you’d argue.”
I exhale slowly, then begin, choosing my words carefully, giving him enough to matter without giving him everything.
And once I start talking, I do not stop.
CHAPTER 6
HRASK
Information doesn’t come from the people who are supposed to have it.
It never has.
It comes from the ones who live around it, the ones who move through the cracks where official channels don’t bother looking. The ones who hear things they’re not meant to hear because nobody thinks they matter enough to keep quiet around.
That’s where I go.
The lower sectors of Coalition territory don’t get the same attention as the command corridors or the border line. The lighting is worse, the air thicker, carrying the smell of old machinery and too many bodies packed into too little space. Conversations overlap here, voices blending into a constant murmur that makes it easier to disappear if you know how to move through it.
I do.
I step into one of the side corridors that branches off from the main maintenance route, my pace slowing just enough to signal I’m not in a hurry. The walls are scuffed, the metal dulled fromyears of use, and the hum of the systems running beneath them is deeper here, more uneven.
A group of techs stand clustered near an open panel, their voices low but not quiet enough.
“—telling you, it wasn’t in the log?—”
“It doesn’t have to be in the log if it came from above?—”
“Then why move it through here?”
“Because nobody checks here.”
