Page 69 of Fought and Found

"Next time." The purr goes rough. "I am holding you to the next time."

"Lovey, it's on the agenda."

Sprout's orb descends with the weary dignity of a chaperone who has given up entirely. "Approach control has hailed us. I informed them we required a moment. They did not ask why. I did not elaborate. The chair will need maintenance, and I want it minuted that this vessel used to have one dignified seat."

Outside the viewport, Junction One's beacon grows — a warm point of light in the dark, getting closer. Home. Or the closest thing I've had to one in ten years.

The co-pilot's chair creaks under our weight. Too big. Too heavy. Too many limbs and horns and the armrest is cracked twice over and the tea ring is still there and my mug is going cold on the console.

Perfect fit.

19

Leaving Home

Xor

Thecargobunkdooropens and Saar does not look up.

Sitting on the bunk. Injured knee splinted with thermal thread and medical tape—her work. Flossie patched the operative who came to kill her. She did it minutes after the fight, with her own blood still drying on her face, because someone needed fixing and she was the one with the kit.

Saar's silver eyes find mine. The blue skin catches the dim cargo light with that faint luminescence—even injured, even contained, the Yulx looks like something sculpted rather than born. We trained together at SRS's advanced program—three years of cross-species combat exercises, infiltration scenarios, the kind of work that bonds operatives across species lines whether they want it or not. Different biology,different homeworlds, but the same training architecture flattening us into instruments. I recommended his promotion. Saar was fast. Precise. The kind of operative Trell built careers around.

The cargo bunk is too small for either of us. It is absurd—a Xarthian Tier 1 and a Yulx Tier 1 in a space designed for a human courier's overflow cargo, the fairy lights blinking above us, the air smelling like peppermint and bonding pheromones and the faint copper of Saar's injury.

"You look different." Saar's voice is smooth. Clinical beneath the polish, but always smooth—the Yulx charm that operates like a secondary weapon system even in containment. "Your markings are darker. Your pupils are dilated. The fuzz along your jaw is thicker." He pauses. Cataloging. Three years of training beside Xarthians means he knows the signs even if the biology isn't his. "Bonding response. Full onset. And you smell like her—peppermint and something biological that I'm going to choose not to identify in detail."

"Yes."

"The bonding is permanent."

"Yes."

"And you chose it."

The question is not clinical. Beneath the Tier 1 detachment, Saar is asking something that has no operational framework—the same way I had no framework for lovey, no framework for tea offered without transaction, no framework for a woman who writes down lost things and means it. Different species, different biology, but SRS took the same things from all of us. The Proving Dens beat the purr out of Xarthians. Whatever the Yulx equivalent is—the softness, the unguarded impulse—SRS found it and removed it withthe same efficiency. Saar is asking: is it possible? Is the thing they took from us possible?

"I did not choose the biology." Careful. Precise. Because this is the last truthful conversation I will have with someone who understands what SRS took and what it costs to take it back. "I chose her. The biology followed."

Saar is quiet. The bunk creaks. Outside, Flossie is running pre-docking checks—I can hear her voice in the cockpit, telling Sprout to confirm berth allocation, telling the station she is the Petal and she is coming home. The warmth of her carries through the ship like a frequency.

"She patched my knee." Saar says it like a male still processing data that does not fit any model. "I came here to kill her. Or to bring you back and kill her in the process. And she opened the door with a medical kit and told me to hold still and called her AI 'correct' when it said I wasn't worth talking to." The silver eyes hold something I have not seen in them before. Not charm. Not assessment. Something rawer. "The briefing said she was a low-priority civilian target. Non-threatening."

"The briefing was incomplete."

"The briefing was a lie." A pause. "She's terrifying, Xax. Not in the way we're terrifying. In the way that matters."

I let the silence hold. Then: "There is something you need to know."

I set the data chip on the bunk beside Saar's knee, and beside it, the display tablet with the deployment file pulled up. Two timestamps glowing on the screen. 14:07 and 14:43.

"Flossie found this. Your deployment package was tampered with. The recall notice—Trell's order to bring me back—was compiled at 14:07. Standard SRS architecture. Clean routing. That part isgenuine." I point to the second timestamp. "The kill order targeting Flossie was injected thirty-six minutes later. Different compilation signature. Spoofed clearance code. Piggybacked onto your deployment in transit."

Saar stares at the timestamps. The silver eyes narrow. The smooth composure cracking—not much, but enough. "The kill order wasn't Trell's."

"The kill order was Varren Drask's. An independent broker with real-time access to SRS deployment channels. He watched Trell compile your recall, waited for it to enter the transit pipeline, and injected his own order before it reached you. You carried two sets of instructions from two different sources and had no reason to question either one."

Saar's jaw tightens. The blue skin along his cheekbones seems to darken—his species' version of a flush, perhaps, or something closer to anger. "I would have killed her. If you hadn't been here—if you had complied—I would have killed her on a forged order from a broker I've never heard of."