Her voice drops lower.
“He said mistakes don’t repeat that clean unless someone’s making them on purpose.”
I exhale slowly, the air feeling heavier now.
“That sounds like him,” I say.
“He wasn’t wrong,” she adds.
“No,” I agree. “He wasn’t.”
Silence settles between us again, thicker now, harder to move through.
“You need to stop asking about this,” Shasha says suddenly, her tone tightening again as the fear pushes back in. “Whatever you’re digging into, it’s not just going to sit there and wait for you to figure it out.”
“I’m aware,” I reply.
“No, you’re not,” she snaps, stepping closer, her voice dropping. “Because if you were, you wouldn’t still be standing here asking questions that could get both of us flagged.”
I hold her gaze, steady.
“He already got flagged,” I say. “And now he’s dead.”
Her expression falters again, just briefly.
“That’s exactly my point,” she says.
I don’t respond, because there is nothing I can say that makes that less true.
“Be careful,” she adds, quieter now. “You’re starting to sound like him.”
The words land heavier than anything else she has said.
“I’ll take that as a warning,” I reply.
“You should,” she says.
I step back, giving her space again, and this time she does not try to stop me.
—
The corridor outside the supply bay feels narrower than before, the air pressing in as I move through it, carrying the same stale mixture of heat and metal but with something heavier layered beneath it now. I take the lower route instead of returning to the surface, letting the dimmer lighting and uneven crackle of the systems ground me as I move through the maintenance corridors.
He is already there when I reach the meeting point, exactly where I expect him to be.
Hrask leans against the wall near the junction, his posture relaxed but his attention sharp, his gaze snapping to me the second I step into view.
“Well?” he asks.
I don’t answer immediately. I close the distance first, stepping into his space until the gap between us narrows to something that feels intentional, something that makes the air shift.
“He knew,” I say.
His expression sharpens.
“Knew what?” he asks.
“That something was off before he got flagged,” I reply. “He was tracking patterns. Routes. Gaps. The same things we’re seeing now.”
