Page 17 of Tracked and Taken

I shrug out of the jacket. Pull the windbreaker on over the dark shirt. The fabric settles across my shoulders with the protest of material asked to do a job it was not designed for: snug across the chest, riding up at the waist, sleeves ending two inches short of my wrists. The zipper refuses to close for the last four inches over my sternum. The Junction One crest sits somewhere between my collarbone and my throat and telegraphs OFFICIAL to anyone who isn’t looking too closely and STRUCTURAL FAILURE to anyone who is.

Torres looks.

The look is brief. Professional. She is assessing whether the insignia is visible, whether this is going to hold up to a legal review. That is what I am choosing to believe she is assessing. What my overlay is reading is different: the slight flare of her pupils, the way her gaze snags for half a second on the tight pull of fabric across my torso before she forces it back up.

Her pulse moves. I can hear it. One beat off rhythm, instantly corrected.

“It’s short in the sleeves,” I say. Mild. I watch the pulse in her throat and catalog the exact shade of pink that has climbed her skin.

“I can see that.”

“Also the chest.”

“I can see that too.”

“Should I stretch-test it?”

“No.”

I stretch-test it anyway. A deliberate roll of the shoulders. The fabric shifts across my back. The crest lifts a quarter-inch up my torso. The two inches of bare forearm past the cuffs go on display, the rosette markings traveling down the inside of my wrists in their dark whorl pattern, and Torres’s eyes, which have been rigorously above my collarbone, drop exactly once and snap back up.

Pink. The skin above the uniform collar, goes pink. Heat blooms under it, visible to me in the overlay as a warm-gold flush that has nothing to do with exertion and everything to do with the fact that she just watched a Draelith male fill a jacket that was never meant to hold him.

I am going to remember this moment for the rest of my operational career. The knowledge that I can make her pulse skip with a roll of my shoulders is deeply, deeply satisfying.

“Vosk.”

“Torres.”

“Take it off.”

“You said it was regulation.”

“I said regulation, not tourniquet. Take it off before you split a seam in a service corridor and I have to file a wardrobe incident report.”

JINX, in my earpiece, reverently: “I am filing this under Exceeded Expectations: Physical. The category had two entries before today. It now has three.”

“JINX.”

“I am also noting that Sentry’s audio feed is active and I am formally requesting permission to share this data with her.”

“Do not share that data.”

“She might find it interesting.”

“JINX.”

“It is in service of inter-AI diplomatic relations.”

SENTRY, from Torres’s earpiece, crisp as a pressed uniform: “Any data transfer from the Draelith AI regarding non-operational observations will be refused and logged as inappropriate contact.”

JINX: “She called it contact. That’s progress.”

I pull the windbreaker off. The release of the tight fabric across my chest is almost as good as the way her eyes track the motion before she can stop herself. Torres hands me a second folded cloth without looking. Smaller, this one, a black field vest with the crest on the shoulder. A compromise. A vest leaves the question of what fits and what doesn’t in the hands of whatever I wore underneath, which is a black shirt that has served me faithfully for years and has never once required a stretch test.

I put the vest on. The vest fits. It also leaves my forearms bare where the sleeves are pushed up, the markings on display, and I do not miss the way her gaze snags again before she locks it down.

“Better,” she says.