POV: Zane

The argument starts in the operations room and does not stay contained there.

I am running the latest intercept cross-check when Ryker comes in from the north wall with the kind of controlled intensity that means he has already decided the shape of the next week. Caius is at the main board updating the credential retirement list. Ayla is not present. That absence becomes the first problem.

“We lock the inner compound down to verified personnel only,” Ryker says without preamble. “No more mixed rotations near her wing. No more open movement through the service levels even with the new hardware. Until we have exhausted the ledger routes...