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The next, metal slammed into place with enough force to shake dust from the ceiling.

I jumped.

Veyr didn’t.

He spun toward the sealed route, one hand already reaching for the weapon at his side.

The panel in front of us flashed again.

EXPECTED ARRIVAL WINDOW: ACTIVE

Then the screen went black.

“What now?” I asked.

Veyr looked down the corridor. “Now they know we are here.”

“That feels unnecessarily dramatic.”

“They knew before we arrived.”

“Even better,” I said, and meant it, because if they had known, then at least one thing in this building was telling the truth.

He moved forward, and I followed him down a slope into a transit level that looked older than everything around it. Military construction beneath newer infrastructure again—narrow ceiling, reinforced walls, emergency lighting buried behind metal grates. The air smelled like coolant and dust.

No people.

That bothered me. Everything near central Zunator had people. Cargo workers, administrative staff, medical teams, security, something. This place had silence, the kind that gets into your ears and stays there.

Veyr lifted one hand without a word.

I stopped. He crouched beside a service panel and touched two fingers to its surface.

Silver-white ŭre moved beneath his skin. Usually the glow was clean, controlled, beautiful in a way I still wasn’t used to admitting. This time it flickered. He pulled his hand back from the panel like it had burned him.

“What was that?”

“Countermeasure.”

My stomach tightened. “Against you?”

“Yes.”

“What kind?”

“They reinforced the circuit against electrical interference.”

I looked at the panel, then at him. “They expected your ŭre.”

“Yes.” He said it quietly, and that changed the fear.

Until now I had assumed the Veil was simply better at tracking him than he wanted to admit. This wasn’t tracking. This was planning. They knew how he fought, how he escaped, what he would try first. Someone had built this trap with Veyr in mind, and they had built it right.

He straightened, and for a moment he only looked at the corridor ahead.

“Stay close,” he said.

I stared at him. After a beat he caught himself, and his expression shifted, some old habit giving way.