“Unfortunately.”
Her gaze stays on me, sharp but not hostile. “Continue carefully.”
“You adjust fast once you accept the plan is dead.”
“The plan is not dead.”
“Parts of it are scattered across that asteroid wearing drone scratches.”
She looks toward the display, and the signal marker glows faintly beside the damage map. “The objective remains.”
“Yes,” I say. “And you are starting to understand that the road to it is going to keep changing.”
Roma looks back at me. “Starting?”
“Fine. You are violently resisting understanding.”
“That is more accurate.”
“And still moving.”
For a long moment, she says nothing. Outside, the distant drones shriek, but the sound is farther away now. The cockpit’semergency lights continue their cold pulse. Somewhere in the wall, the repaired routing hums unevenly, alive for now.
Roma’s voice softens by one degree. “You backed off.”
“I did.”
“Why?”
I look at my hands. There is dried blood at the edge of one glove, black in the blue light. “Because I realized I was pushing to see what would break.”
“And?”
“And I didn’t like wanting to know.”
Her face changes in a way I cannot read quickly enough. With Roma, that means it matters.
“I am not breakable,” she says.
“No,” I agree. “But you are woundable.”
“So are you.”
I glance at the patch on my side. “Apparently.”
“That is not what I meant.”
I smile faintly, though my chest feels strange. “I know.”
The next hull impact lands softer, farther aft. Roma checks the display and dismisses it as noncritical, but I see her eyes flick to the signal again. Her father’s mark still waits there, fragile and real, pulling her deeper into danger. Earlier, I cared about the mission because it was a good place to die. Then because it mattered to her. Now, sitting in this damaged cockpit with blood under my armor and her future hanging on a faint line of data, I realize the mission is no longer the center of the thing for me.
Her survival is.
That thought should scare me.
It does.
I stand, slower this time. “Tell me where you need me.”
