Page 26 of Tracked and Taken

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome, lovey.” Flossie’s eyes do the thing they do when she is about to let me off a hook I did not know was in my mouth. “Xor and Tael are on the Velarkis run. SPROUT will relay findings. We’ll have you on a secure channel within an hour of any contact. You can run Junction One from Junction One and sleep in your own bunk, which,” the warm voice, and now the operational one under it, “I am told you have not been doing recently.”

“SPROUT.”

“I did not file that, Torres. I mentioned it in conversation.”

“SPROUT.”

“…Apologies. I was being helpful.”

Flossie hides a smile in her tea.

The part of me that has been running on Option C for ninety minutes hears, under the thank-you and the tea and the open door, the very specific shape of the exit being offered. I can go home. I can sleep. The case is in excellent hands. My hands have done their part.

The other part of me, the part I have been managing with cold competence for four years, opens its mouth before the professional part has fully signed off.

“I’m coming to Velarkis.”

Flossie’s pen, which had started moving again, stops.

“Lovey.”

“Chain of custody. If Tael finds the compound source and I’m not in the room, anything we recover gets thrown out at the first evidentiary review. I vetted Harkin. I know his supply chain. I know what a Junction One diagnostic trail looks like and what it doesn’t. This operation originated on my station and I am not handing the finish over the comms.”

“That’s one reason.”

I pause.

Flossie does not pause.

“I’m not counting them, lovey. I’m just noticing that the reason you gave me is a reason, and good reasons are like that. They tend to travel with company.”

I open my mouth. I close my mouth.

Across the room, Tael’s tail shifts against the reinforced chair. One inch. The coil loosens by a quarter-turn. I do not look at it. I do not need to. My peripheral vision has been recalibrated without my permission to track the movements of one specific male’s anatomy.

“And the Velarkis end is the end with a clock on it.” The operational voice. The one that has survived every argument I have ever had with a superior. “Harkin has been off the dock two hours. His handlers paid him an advance and they have a job pending, and the hour they work out he is in a cell instead of a bunk, they burn the relay and the handler goes to ground and this unbroken thread goes dark. The station end is watch-and-wait and it does not need my hands on it. The trail does. I want to be standing on it before anyone out there knows Harkin is compromised.”

“I want to be there.” Flat. The voice I used when a commanding officer asked me why I punched him. “I need to be there.”

“Okay, lovey.”

“Okay?”

“Okay. Go.” The pen lifts and tips back over her shoulder toward Xor. “Change of shape, then. Xor stays. That cover is built for two, and a third body on a dock like that reads as muscle to anyone who has paid for their own. Besides, Harkin’s handlers have an advance out and a job pending. If that thread twitches anywhere near Junction One, I want SRS tradecraft standing on this end of it.”

“Agreed.” Xor, flat.

Flossie turns to Tael. Warm eyes going operational. “Tael. You will keep her safe.”

“Yes.”

“You will not improvise.”

A beat. “Reasonable.”

“You will also not not improvise. Do the thing you do. Do it carefully. I want her back.”