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“Do it,” I said.

She blinked, surprised. “That easy?”

“No.” I met her gaze steadily. “It is a good idea.”

Something softened in her face then—the slightest relaxation around her eyes.

She removed the secondary evidence module, her fingers steady as she slid it into an empty sample sleeve we’d taken from the previous site. I watched her code it, the small screen casting a faint blue glow across her face. “Destination?” I asked.

“Temporary quarantine hold.”

“Which facility?”

She named one I didn’t recognize, and I frowned. “Why there?”

“Old lab overflow,” she said, still focused on the coding. “Low priority. Automated review every thirty-six hours.”

I looked at her, something shifting in my assessment. “You remember that?”

Her eyes flicked up briefly. “I worked in the system.” Right. Not operative, not warrior—something else entirely. Useful in ways the Veil would never have predicted.

She inserted the sleeve into the slot. It accepted with a soft click. A light flashed amber: transfer pending. Then it vanished.

“One copy separate,” she said quietly.

“Yes.”

“If we lose everything else,” she added, turning to look at me fully now, “we retrieve it.”

“Yes.”

Her gaze held mine, intent and clear. “Together.” The word landed with unexpected weight, more feeling than I was prepared for.

I nodded once. “Together.”

We moved on, and the deeper we went, the more the infrastructure seemed to tell its own layered story: military construction underneath, medical administration plastered over it, old Ghost design buried beneath both. Zuna built its systems like it built its history—nothing ever truly removed, only covered over, waiting.

Talia walked beside me now instead of behind—a deliberate shift. Mine, possibly hers.

At the next checkpoint I stopped. A service gate blocked the corridor, old black metal, no visible reader. I knew this one—not the location, the architecture. The words left me automatically.

“Stay here. I need to cross the scanner field to activate the manual override,” I said. “If it has been updated, it may flag my identifier.”

“And if it does?”

“Security response within ninety seconds.”

“Can I do it?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“It requires a Ghost biometric.”

Her expression tightened, but she only asked, “Then what are my options?”

I appreciated the wording.