I bare my teeth at the empty hallway. This is exactly how vulnerabilities begin. Not all at once. A conversation here. An exception there. One decision that makes sense on its own, followed by another, until suddenly there’s someone in your life important enough to be used against you. I’ve spent years making sure I owned nothing anyone could reach. Lately I’m no longer certain that’s true.
I put the thought where it belongs and bury it beneath the work. If Miro found Selin in two days with a redacted dataset, the mole can find their next target in less. I stop in the dark stretch between two wall panels where nothing carries and key the comm.
Resh answers on the first tone. “Tell me you slept.”
“Lock down the eastern junctions. Rotate every credential that touched Selin’s cell before the cycle turns. The two operatives whose covers ran closest to hers, pull them off rotation and into quarters I control. Tonight.”
Resh is quiet for a moment. “They’ll resent that.”
“They’ll be alive to resent it.”
I keep walking, the passage sloping deeper beneath the Warrens. “One more thing. Double the watch on the contractor in the residential tier. Corridor monitoring on every approach to herquarters. I want to know who walks past her door and who finds a reason to slow down doing it.”
The silence that follows lasts a little longer.
“That’s a considerable amount of security for a contractor.”
“She’s the only person making progress.”
“You’ve run audits before.”
I don’t answer.
“You’ve hired specialists before.” His voice stays maddeningly neutral. “You’ve never put a personal watch on one of them.”
A low hiss escapes me. Resh doesn’t press it. That’s one of the reasons he’s still alive.
“She’s not to know about any of it,” I say.
“You say that like it’s a professional concern.” His amusement reaches me even through the comm, and I decide not to reward it.
“It’s a concern, nothing more.” The edge on my voice should tell him to leave it alone.
“The gaps are shrinking,” he says after a moment. “Months between the first incidents. Weeks after that. Barely a week before Selin.”
I remember every report. Every operative. Every time a problem became a body. The pattern stopped looking like patience a while ago.
“I know.”
“If they’re moving faster—“
“They know something’s changed.”
Neither of us says the rest. If the mole has realized someone is getting close, the next move won’t be defensive. It will be directed.
“I’ll handle it quietly.”
“You always do.”
The line disconnects.
I lower the comm and keep walking, though my pace has slowed. The numbers refuse to balance. Every precaution creates a new problem. Every answer exposes another question. Selin is dead. Miro found her anyway. Kazren is circling things that should still be invisible. And somewhere in the middle of all that, I’ve started assigning extra security to a human female who should mean nothing.
The junction to the upper levels appears ahead, where the humid warmth of the Warrens gives way to the colder air reserved for House Sethrak. I smooth my expression before I reach it.
Kazren is already there.
I flatten my scent automatically. He carries the same training I do. Better, some days. We were shaped by the same male, taught the same lessons, punished for the same weaknesses. I draw the air across my tongue out of habit and get exactly what he intends me to get. Nothing. No irritation. No anger. No satisfaction.
