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Behind me, Talia shifted. I heard the slight scrape of her boot against the floor.

She was watching me.

The order was clear. So was the authorization. I had obeyed worse.

As a warrior, I had held positions I knew I would not survive because command required time bought with bodies. As Ghost, I had eliminated targets on evidence I was never permitted to see in full.

I had never considered that disloyal.

Compartmentalization was not mistrust. It was structure, and structure kept operations intact. Loyalty meant accepting that my part of the mission was only my part.

I had lived by that long before the Veil gave me a new name. Which meant I should have ended this now.

One controlled discharge. Minimal pain. No risk of dissemination.

Mission complete.

My hand did not move. That was the first problem. The second was that I noticed.

I closed the channel.

When I turned back, she had crossed her arms.

“So?” she asked.

“So what?”

“You searched my things. I apparently failed whatever interrogation this was. What happens now?”

I looked at her.

Brown eyes, lighter at the edges than at the center. She held my gaze a beat too long before blinking, and the blink was fast, like she was afraid of what might happen in the half-second her eyes were closed.

Angry. Her mouth pressed thin, and there was a flush climbing from her collar toward her cheeks.

Frightened. I could see the pulse in her wrist where she gripped the strap of her bag, and she kept shifting her weight from one foot to the other without ever quite settling.

Alive. She breathed through parted lips, and every exhale came out visible in the cold air of the corridor.

I could end the mission before she understood what I was doing. One pulse. Precise. No suffering.

The authorization was valid.

The Veil had confirmed it twice.

And yet I had nothing in front of me that justified the order.

No stolen data. No hostile communication. No evidence of conspiracy.

Only a human female who had found discrepancies in records and then panicked when the people around her began behaving as though she had discovered something dangerous.

Orders were not built on instinct.

Neither were refusals.

I needed evidence.

The thought settled badly.