The metallic snap cracks through the tent.
Across from me, she doesn't flinch.
My jaw tightens.
Because the part of me that wants her dead and the part of me that wants her under my control are running on the same fuel.
Rage.
And rage is a volatile thing to build decisions on.
I rack the slide once, sharp and clean, and set the weapon down.
Don't look at her.
Don't feed the thought.
Because Lily needs me to be clear-headed.
And the woman sitting six feet away is a problem I haven't yet decided how to solve.
I look at her. Really look. She's watching the tent wall, or watching nothing—the particular fixed gaze of someone who has gone somewhere internal. Her hands are in her lap. The same hands that built the system that put ML-273 into children recovering from cancer. Into Lily.
I know what I am. I've spent twenty-two years being very clear-eyed about what I am. What I'm capable of. I've put rounds in men who deserved it. I've made my peace with it. Or something close enough to peace.
I protect. That's the operating principle. It has always been my operating principle. Women. Children. The ones who can't protect themselves. That's the job that keeps the whole architecture standing.
And this woman.
This woman sat in boardrooms. She signed documents. She looked at columns of numbers that represented children. Children recovering from cancer. Children who had already fought. Children who were supposed to be done fighting.
She moved money, and then she moved on to the next line item.
Just another column.
Just another transfer.
Just another clean entry in a ledger that turned children into infrastructure for a rogue AI.
My daughter was a number in her system.
A cost center.
A variable.
If Lily is harmed, I will not put a bullet between Stratton's eyes.
That would be mercy.
Too clean.
Too fast.
Too much like the mercy she tried to hand me in the control tower.
No.
If Lily is hurt, Stratton will learn how patient I can be.
