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“Central Review sent them.”

Veyr's expression hardened. “Someone using its authority did.”

The distinction mattered. Especially now.

I read the routing code once more.

My quarters. The reclassification order. The demand that I report for review. And now this.

For the first time, we had something physical tying the people hunting me to the same administrative chain.

Proof.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Veyr

The first thing I did after we left Darev’s clinic was stop protecting the mission.

Until then, I had been treating the Veil’s orders as damaged intelligence. Compromised, perhaps. Manipulated, possibly. But still part of a structure that could be corrected if I identified the corruption and isolated it.

That assumption was becoming harder to defend.

Central Administrative Review had sent trained enforcement personnel after Talia. My safehouse had been queried through obsolete covert architecture. My legal death record had been accessed. Ghost identifiers appeared inside reproductive files that should never have known we existed. And now we had physical authorization tying the same administrative chain that ordered Talia into reclassification to the males who had tried to retrieve her by force.

Protection was no longer enough.

I needed to know who had built the mission.

We moved again.

Of course we did.

The new location was a temporary rental above a storage facility near the edge of the commercial district. One entrance. One emergency stairwell. Two windows facing separate streets.

Talia watched me check the door twice, then both window latches, then the stairwell landing.

She said nothing.

That was probably worse than commentary.

Darev had sealed the cut along my ribs before we left. The skin still pulled when I turned, and the sealant needed another day to finish its work. He had also demanded that I return in six shifts for observation.

I had not agreed.

I had walked past him.

Talia had been waiting outside with her bag already over one shoulder. She had not asked whether Darev was finished with me. She had simply fallen into step.

That still required adjustment.

The rental itself was functional enough. One common room. One narrow sleeping space. A food unit stocked for two days. A bathing room designed by someone who had never considered the width of a Zunatorian male’s shoulders.

Talia walked through it once, dropped her bag beside a chair, and immediately began reviewing the copies we had made of the Review authorization.

I noticed the damaged strap before she sat down.

It had partially torn during the attack.