Page 127 of Tracked and Taken

“Tael.”

“Quarters.”

“Quarters.”

Junction One staff quarters are, by the standard layout I helped design four years ago, two-room configurations.

A small living space. A bunk room. A washroom. Standard issue for officer-grade staff. My quarters are on level six. Tael’s quarters — assigned at 0900 on day one when Flossie processed his temporary docking credentials — are at level five. One floor down. Direct lift.

We walk to the lift.

He does not take my hand.

I do not take his.

He heard me. He is honoring the I will come to you when I am ready. He is honoring it without performance and without pressure.

The lift opens at level six.

I step out. He stays in the lift.

“Nat.”

“Tael.”

“Sleep.”

“You too.”

“Yes.”

The lift doors close.

SENTRY, on my private channel, before I have taken three steps: “Officer Torres. For the record: JINX has transmitted a data packet addressed to me. Subject: pulse-sync analysis, annotated. I have received it.”

“Received.”

Not “refused.” Received.

The distinction is doing a great deal of work, and both of us know it.

“Noted, SENTRY.”

I walk to my quarters.

The door cycles. The lights come up at low.

My quarters are the quarters I have lived in for four years. The bookshelf at the wall. The small print of my mother’s garden at the kitchen counter. The throw on the couch that I have not refolded since I left for the breach forty-some hours ago. The tactical kit by the door from the morning I left, which is not the kit I am wearing — that one is at the medical bay being chain-of-custody-logged for the case file.

The quarters smell like my quarters.

They do not smell like Tael.

The thing I am about to do is the thing I am about to do in this room. In these walls. With the throw on the couch and the print at the counter and the bunk through the door at the back wall. I am going to sit in this room and decide.

I sit on the couch.

I take my boots off.