“Thanks,” I murmur, and feel like a fraud.
She nods and goes back to her bread. I make myself eat, and the table carries on without me.
A shadow falls across us. We both look up, and Kaylin lights up.
“Jericho!” She’s on her feet, arms barely reaching around his ribs as she hugs him.
“Hey, Short Stuff.” He ruffles her hair like she’s a kid—which isn’t strange, since even at twenty-two she still looks fifteen. He eyes her tray. “Trying the slop of the day?”
Kaylin wrinkles her nose. “What can I say? Gotta get my nutrients.”
“I hear ya.” His own plate is loaded like he grabbed it without looking.
He glances down at me. “Keeping out of trouble?”
“Always, Commander.” I hope my smile doesn’t look as tight as it feels.
“Good.” He moves on, patting my shoulder as he passes. He does this…not stopping to talk, exactly. Just checking on us. The warmth is real. So is the thing underneath it. Ex Syndicate.
Kaylin’s still smiling as she sits back down. “I love that guy.”
“Of course you do. He carried you out of a hellhole.”
“Yeah. He’s a good man.” She picks at her bread. “I just wish he’d start to believe it.”
“He spent most of his life as a Syndicate man.” I shrug. “He’s always going to feel responsible for what they did to us.”
“That’s not on him. It’s the sick fucks in the white coats. And the people at the top.”
“Sure,” I say, because this is a conversation I don’t want to be in—and not for any reason she’d guess. I look back down at my bowl of gloop.
At the far end of the table, the talk shifts, and I hearRafaelandCreedand go carefully still. Domenic, who runs comms, has a habit of thinking out loud that someone should have broken him of by now. He’s leaning toward the woman beside him.
“—they got out clean, can you believe it? Then ran straight into an intercept. Creed knew they were coming.”
“Coincidence?” the woman says.
“Yeah. Sure. Not.” He snorts. “That’s how they’ll spin it. Not all of us are dumb enough to keep swallowing it.”
“You still think there’s someone on the inside?” She sets her cup down.
My ears prick, but Domenic’s gone quiet. He leans closer to her, and the words blur into the noise.
I take another piece of bread and chew, but my mouth is dry. Kaylin’s chattering, not bothered that I’m barely answering. I like that about her. It lets me take in the room without anyone watching me do it.
“Anyway.” She pushes her bowl away and stands. “I’d better go. Got some new paint I want to try in my bathroom.”
“Viktor’s letting you paint your bathroom?” I raise an eyebrow. After Kaylin got the all-clear from the medical team, she spent a month in communal lodgings with the rest of us. Then Jericho pulled some strings for private quarters, and it’s all she can talk about.
“What Viktor doesn’t know about my bathroom won’t hurt him.” She grins.
“I’ll walk out with you.” I stack my leftovers on my tray and follow her to the return counter. “I’m on the stationery run the rest of the day.”
“Lucky you.” She laughs.
I shrug. “It gives me something to do. I need some way to make myself useful until they decide what to do with us.”
We set down our trays, hug, and part ways.
