Page 70 of Fought and Found

"Yes."

"And I would have filed it as a Trell-authorized termination and SRS would have processed it and Drask would have collected the container and nobody would have questioned a single line of the paperwork."

"Yes." I let that sit. "SRS has been compromised, Saar. Not by me. By a broker who can see their deployment orders in real time and inject commands into active operations. Trell's recall for me was genuine. His next deployment—whoever he sends after me, after her—Drask can tamper with that too. Every operation SRS runs is a vector for Drask until the breach is identified and closed."

Saar turns the data chip over. Studies it. The operative's brain running now—not charm, not assessment, but the tactical processing of a male who has just discovered that the weapon he was aimed as was held by a hand he didn't know existed.

"Everything Sprout pulled from your pursuit craft is on that chip. Drask's encryption methodology. The spoofed kill order with full routing analysis—both timestamps, both compilation signatures. The compromised comms architecture. Proof that SRS was used as a broker's delivery system." I let the weight of it settle. "Take this to Trell. Frame it as intelligence, not defection. Trell doesn't need to forgive me. He needs to know his channels are compromised, and he needs to know before Drask uses them again."

"And if Trell doesn't care? If reclaiming you matters more to him than a security breach?"

"Then he will send someone better than you." Not cruelty. Fact. Delivered with the respect of a male who knows Saar is good and also knows what Saar walked into on this ship. "And I will be ready. And the courier will shoot them over my shoulder at two and a half inches because that is what she does."

Something shifts in Saar's face. The smooth mask, the operative's composure—it cracks further. Not breaking. Opening. "They said you'd gone non-compliant. That the courier had compromised you." A beat. "They did not mention that the courier shot a mercenary over your shoulder at two and a half inches and stitched your gear and spotted a tampered manifest that your entire intelligence division missed. The briefing was—"

"Incomplete."

"Incomplete." He stands. The knee holds—barely. The splint is good work. Morrison-trained work, applied by a woman who learned to fix things because she could not bear to leave them broken.

"You chose a courier over thirty years of service."

"I chose a person over a system that forgot the difference."

Saar walks toward the door. At the threshold, a pause. He turns—not fully, just enough for the silver eyes to find mine over his shoulder. The calculated almost-smile surfaces, and I know what is coming before he says it.

"She's remarkable, Xax. If you ever—"

The growl that exits my chest is not voluntary. Low, sustained, a frequency I did not know I could produce outside of combat—the possessive register, the one that vibrates in the bulkhead and makes Saar's silver eyes widen fractionally.

"Finish that sentence," I say, "and the knee will be the least of your injuries."

Saar's smile widens. Genuine now. Not the weapon—the person underneath, briefly visible, amused and something close to wistful. "There he is. I was beginning to wonder if the bonding had made you soft."

"It has made me many things. Soft toward her is one of them. Soft toward anyone else is not."

"Noted." The smile fades to something quieter. "She's safe with you. That's—" He stops. The Yulx composure reassembling. "That's not something I say about anyone."

"One more thing, and then I'll deliver your intelligence like a good defector's errand boy." The silver eyes hold mine, and there is no charm in them at all. "The chip buys you Trell. Trell is pragmatic—show him the breach and he'll spend his anger where it profits him. But noteverything in that building is managed by Trell's pragmatism. There are people above him and beside him who don't process write-offs. They collect them. The chip buys you time, Xax. It does not buy you safety."

"I know," I say. And I do. The world outside her ship is not clean, and I chose it anyway. The choosing stands.

"Then we understand each other." The composure finishes reassembling. "Trell will get the chip."

"Operative Saar." I use the designation because it is the last time I will use any SRS designation, and the formality is a farewell. "Sprout has restored your craft—navigation, life support, sublight. The weapons stay dark until you are beyond the Reach. The intelligence reaches Trell and this ends cleanly. It does not reach Trell and I will know."

Saar nods. Once. Walks into the corridor toward the starboard airlock. A minute later the hull gives the double clunk of an umbilical releasing, and the last piece of SRS detaches from her ship and burns away toward a neutral station.

The Petal. The ship with the fairy lights and the tea stains and the co-pilot's chair that is mine now. Not SRS's. Not Trell's. Mine. Because she gave it to me and I took it and neither of us filed the paperwork because the paperwork does not exist for what we are becoming.

Flossie is in the corridor behind me. I know without turning—her heartbeat, her scent, the specific displacement of air that a five-foot-four woman in a daisy cardigan creates in a narrow space. Her hand finds the tip of my tail. Holds it.

"He'll deliver it," she says. Not a question.

"I do not know."

"But you think he will."

I think about Saar's face when I said I chose her. The flicker. The question beneath the question. SRS took the same things from all of us—different species, different methods, same result. Saar is carrying a data chip and a piece of evidence that choice is possible, and I do not know if that is enough. But he looked at the timestamps and understood what it meant—that he was aimed as a weapon by a hand he didn't know existed—and the understanding changed something behind the silver eyes.