Page 49 of Pocket Wife

Not a command.

A reminder.

I lift my chin. “Put that in writing.”

Corvek pauses.

“You want people scared,” I say. “Then sign your name to the threat.”

The display goes blank.

For three seconds, no one moves.

Then the clinic administrator looks down at her console. “Temporary authorization restored. Twenty-four hours. Manual review pending.”

Nara’s knees nearly give. Celia catches her before she falls.

I should feel relief.

Instead, I understand the new shape of the war.

Helix is no longer only after land. It’s after anyone I love enough to defend.

Rethan’s eyes go to the door, where the road splits toward the cistern, the burial rise, and the schoolhouse harvest stone.

“We should move quickly,” he says.

I nod, watching Nara hold her son as if the room itself might steal him.

“Yes,” I say. “Before they choose the next person to hurt.”

CHAPTER 20

RETHAN

The old north cistern does not look important enough to kill for.

That, I think, is why it has survived.

It sits beyond the first irrigation fields, a low ring of weather-dark stone half-covered by moss, with a rusted handwheel locked beneath a wooden cover. Children have carved initials into the outer blocks. Someone has tied blue thread around the railing for the planting prayers Lucy mentioned.

Helix would call it obsolete infrastructure.

Lucy stands beside it with Celia, Torren, Samuel, and two council witnesses. I insisted on witnesses. Director Kaun’s restriction means no private evidence custody, no unsupervised retrieval, no filings that do not pass through her office.

So I have made the valley itself part of the record.

“Ready?” Lucy asks.

“No.”

Her mouth twitches. “At least you’re honest.”

“I am ready to proceed. That is different.”

Torren mutters, “He makes even fear sound documented.”

I lift the wooden cover.