Page 161 of Tracked and Taken

I send Flossie Case one.

She sends back: Of course, lovey.

I lean in the chair. Tail in the spiral. Coffee cooling at my elbow. A male between cases with forty-five minutes and nothing operational to spend them on.

The intake door cycles.

Thane.

He stops in the doorway because civilian doorways are not built for him, scans the room, and steps through.

No rifle. No field jacket. Just a dark gray Korrhai-cut shirt that cuts across teal-blue dermal plates and shoulders that have carried unconscious bonded males through breach corridors. His hands are empty. He reads rooms with his hands.

He has come from the medical bay. Antiseptic on his sleeve at three meters.

He has been to see Torek. Twice since yesterday. Thane carries the people he carries, files them, closes the file. Torek is, by some part of him none of us are going to ask about, not closed.

He stops at the center of the room.

“Florence.”

“Lovey. Sit down.”

He takes the second reinforced chair. The reinforcement order is fresh. Petra filed it after deciding, on no available evidence, that Thane was going to stay. She has been smug about that one since the order cleared and she has, so far, been saving the smugness.

She is today going to spend it.

Flossie sets her pen down.

“Thane.”

“Florence.”

“You came back to Junction One after Iris-Nine without a contract obligating it.”

“Yes, Florence.”

“You have been to the medical bay twice since yesterday.”

“Yes, Florence.”

“Sign the contract, lovey.”

He signs without reading.

Flossie picks her tea up.

“Welcome to SNAG, lovey.”

“Thank you, Florence.”

“Petra is going to want to make you a tea.”

“I am prepared for that.”

Petra is already on her feet with the kettle.

Flossie, warmer: “And lovey. I want you to know how this office runs. We are a small team. We do not have a chain of command. We have a crew. Xor reads tactics. I read intake. Tael reads bodies. You read what your work tells you to read. Nobody on this floor is going to ask you to file something through a junior officer because nobody on this floor is a junior officer. We are operators. We make our calls in the room.”