Vihl goes still.
Not frozen.
Not shocked.
Just… still, like something inside him locked into place.
“Say that again,” he says, quieter now.
“I’m not returning her,” I repeat, my voice even, leaving no room for reinterpretation.
For a moment, he doesn’t move, and then he exhales sharply, stepping back as if distance will make the words change.
“You’re serious,” he says, and this time it isn’t a question.
“I am.”
He drags a hand down his face, slow and deliberate, like he’s trying to reset something that won’t reset.
“Alright,” he mutters. “Alright, let’s walk through this, because clearly I’m missing something.”
“You’re not.”
“Then explain it to me anyway,” he snaps, looking back at me with a sharp, searching intensity. “Because from where I’m standing, this is you lighting everything we built on fire for one asset.”
“She isn’t an asset,” I say.
“That’s exactly the problem,” he fires back.
The words hit harder than anything else he’s said, because they’re true in a way I don’t want to acknowledge.
“She is the marker,” he continues, stepping closer again, his voice lower but more forceful. “She was the marker. That’s what this is built on. That’s what makes this system work.”
“And what she is now?” I ask.
He hesitates, just slightly, and I see it.
“She’s… integrated,” he says finally, but there’s resistance in the word, like it doesn’t sit right even as he uses it.
“She’s necessary,” I correct.
“To you,” he says immediately. “Not to the system.”
I lean back slightly in the command chair, letting the weight of it settle, not avoiding the truth but not yielding to it either.
“She changes outcomes,” I say. “We’ve seen that.”
“So have I,” Vihl replies, nodding once, sharp and tight. “I’m not arguing that. I’m arguing that everything else falls apart if you ignore the rules that made those outcomes possible.”
“The rules were limiting,” I say.
“The rules were stabilizing,” he counters.
“They were predictable.”
“They were trusted.”
The word trusted hangs between us, heavier than anything else, and I know exactly what he means by it.
