It was a nonlinear place, unlike my mind.

  The shelves of books opposing the data server, and scattered pads seemed to mismatch at first glance, but they encapsulated a mind such as his. And the knowledge as well as the skills he obtained through the years. Every object lived in a state of utility—arranged by category, methodically. Sebastian moved with the same manner as his archive. Each gesture carried a tired fluidity, like water flowing through channels it had long since carved. I noted the grace of his austerity, and in my mind I wrote: not disorder, but personalised order.

  I did not speak. I just observed in peaceful silence until Sofiya broke it that is.

  “So what?” Her voice cracked against the stillness, impatient. “You sit down here with your books while she runs everything into the ground?” Her arms folded, tight, knuckles white. “She treats people like broken tools. And you just… let her.”

  Her tone had darkened. Shadow had risen.

  “How is that efficient? And not just cowardice?”

  The word fractured the room. I felt my brows furrow. The term felt like it did not belong with Sebastian. I studied the jagged shape of Sofiya’s fury, its heat contaminating Sebastian serenity. His expression remained steady, the weariness of a man long past pride; he leaned back in his chair instead, folding his hands loosely.

  “Is it cowardice,” he asked softly, “or is it triage?”He let the question linger, then continued. “Lira is a superb administrator for a stable system. Her rigidity is a strength when maintaining a course. My role is not to steer the ship, but to ensure the ocean charts are accurate and the hull is sound. If I fought her for the wheel every day, the ship would go in circles. Sometimes, the most powerful action is to guide from the shadows, to correct the course subtly, so the captain believes it was their idea all along.”

  His methodology was not passive on its own. It was a form of long-range tactical manipulation. He was treating Lira as a complex variable in a larger equation, not as an opponent to be defeated. The model felt complete—until Iris’ commented unbent.

  “It’s a clean, quiet theory, but theories don’t have to live with the consequences. You let her break promises and think people are disposable. You’re so busy preserving the system that you’re letting it rot from the inside with cruelty.” Her voice hardened, every syllable carrying the weight of years.

  “What good is a perfectly charted ocean if the crew mutinies because the captain is a tyrant you empowered?”

  Silence stretched.

  My eyes moved from Iris to Sebastian, and back again. The turbulence inside me—so many conflicting variables—compressed into stillness. Sebastian’s gaze shifted, steadying on Iris.

  “Lira may think she is the one in charge,” he said calmly but weighted. “I don’t mind her thinking that, from time to time. But Aris and I chose you as Anne and Sofiya’s protector because Anne’s presence here solidifies a new legacy. Her legacy. When she graduates, that role will be hers. But when the time comes for Lira to step down—or be replaced—it is Anne who will decide, and we chose you to secure that path.”

  Iris’s breath caught. Her voice came low, almost trembling with the force she suppressed.

  “Then why did you have to do all of that?” she demanded to know. “Was it all truly necessary to make me the perfect guardian?”

  Sebastian did not apologise or offer excuses. He simply revealed the bare truth.

  “The old world, the one that wants to consume Anne, would have used your son against you in a heartbeat. I’m sorry but there was no path that assured both Anne's safety and your old life.” He only leaned forward, his eyes carrying a gravity I had no formula for—an immense, weary sadness. “Iris,” he said, and the sound of her name landed like a wound reopened.

  “What would you have done to keep both your son and Anne safe by your side?”

  That was a complex question that no matter the willpower of the receiver, someone would have to be sacrificed.

  Iris’s face flickered in pain.

  Then Sebastian turned his gaze to me.

  “Anne,” he said, calm. “Technological systems are one thing; this is something else. This is a type of leadership stripped of sentimentality. How would you have approached this dilemma with success while minimising the damage? Would you have made the same choices Aris and I made?”

  I felt the weight of their eyes on me. Iris’s, sharp with pain. Sebastian’s, heavy with expectation. Sofiya’s restless, waiting. However, logic and I would have never allowed for sentimentality to impede my family and I safety.

  Above anything and anyone.

  “Your choices failed to include the degradation of Iris' long-term efficiency due to psychological trauma. A broken shield is worse than no shield.” Iris’s eyes glistened. The muscles around her jaw trembled with restraint. The data was clear: my words had an impact beyond their logic.

  I rephrased it.

  “I would not have made the same choices,” I continued, softer. My gaze went to Iris, then returned to Sebastian. “The only way to protect me was to protect her. Entirely. That means protecting what she loves. The mission parameters would have to expand. The system—The Legacy—was not robust enough. The failure was not in Iris’s attachment, but in the system’s inability to secure it, and expand the safety net for her family too.”

  The silence that followed was different—charged. For Iris, I saw it in the small tremor of release that passed through her. Shifting my gaze to Sebastian, I saw it as satisfaction. A faint smile curved at the edges of his lips. His gaze moved to Sofiya then, and his voice carried no judgment, only invitation.

  “Sofiya,” he said. “Your turn. The same question. How would you have solved this dilemma?”

  Sofiya did not hesitate. “I wouldn’t have given her a choice.” Her words landed like a fracture in glass. She leaned forward, blue eyes hard and cold as she locked onto Sebastian. “You showed Iris the monster and told her to walk away from her kid. That’s not efficient. What you should have done instead is: choose for her. Made it so there was no choice.”

  Her voice dropped, lower.

  “I’d have taken the son. The same night I grabbed Anne, I’d have grabbed him, hidden him, kept him safe in the Mountain, then I’d have gone to Iris and said, ‘Your boy is safe. Now you can fight for us with both hands, because the only thing you love is already behind our walls.’”

  Her gaze swept from Sebastian to Iris, not cruel, not mocking—utterly convinced. “You don’t ask a mother to choose. You save her child, then she’s yours forever.”

  Iris went rigid, as though the words had split her open. Horror flared in her eyes, yet behind it—buried so deep I could almost miss it—was the dangerous whisper of temptation. The suggestion was clear: Sofiya’s method would have spared her the wound of separation, but at the cost of her freedom. A kinder hell, perhaps, but still a hell. I measured it as a system.

  The Volkova Protocol.

  Maximum short-term efficiency. Near-total elimination of vulnerability. Guaranteed loyalty. But also catastrophic long-term consequences: autonomy destroyed, trust corroded, agency severed. A tool sharpened until it cracked. Sebastian’s eyes softened with respect and sorrow. He comprehended the limits of Sofiya’s empathy. And in that understanding was grief—for the logic of a child who had learned that safety could only be enforced by violence, that love was conditional, that protection was a prison.

  He spoke quietly.

  “How is your protection different from her cruelty?”

  Sofiya’s eyes widened. “It’s not the same! I’d be keeping him safe—” Her voice cracked defensive.

  The shape of his question unfolded inside her. Her breath stuttered, and she leaned back, her gaze dropped, the fire in her eyes dimming to a brittle ember. The certainty was shattered, leaving only a child’s raw wound behind.

  Sofiya’s model was brutal, but its core was familiar. Her model and Lira’s model shared a common root: the belief that human emotional variables were too volatile to be left to choice. They had to be controlled, but ruthless systems would eventually break themselves.

  Sebastian’s voice drew me back.

  “So, Anne, after this back and forth, perhaps you might begin to see that taking charge of the Legacy is no simple feat. And your right hand”—his eyes lingered on Sofiya—“is not yet fully in control of her own shadows to be of any help.”

  Sofiya flinched as though struck, her gaze dropping.

  Sebastian voice did not soften.

  “Criticising Lira’s ways without offering efficient, effective alternatives is not acceptable. You are not ready for the Prism school yet, Anne. Not ready to fix the world. Not until you can propose more than condemnation.” His eyes held mine, sharp and unyielding. “Lira's methods keep us safe but fracture our humanity. Your methods inspire loyalty but create vulnerability. I cannot simply replace Lira without causing a schism that could destroy us from within. Your final test before school is not to build a device, but to design a transition. Find a way to move this base from Lira's rule of fear to your rule of innovation, without getting us all killed. And if you succeed—” he leaned back, weary but resolute—“I will give the order to Lira to implement it.”

  The fog of philosophy cleared, crystallising the dilemma into a puzzle to solve.

  My language.

  I nodded once. “Acknowledged.”

  Beside me, Sofiya’s head snapped up. The shame in her eyes burned away into resolution. She didn’t look at Sebastian, but at me.

  I will fix this, her gaze sincere. I promise.

  Iris, on the other hand, did not move. Her arms remained crossed, her stance unyielding. Her eyes narrowed, scepticism cutting the air sharper than any blade.

  “And if they do?” she asked, her tone hard. “If they somehow design this perfect, humane solution on paper? You’ll just give the order, and Lira will implement it? Just like that?”

  Sebastian was not offended. He inclined his head slightly, the gesture almost appreciative.

  “Lira implements the protocols I authorise, Iris. That is her function. She believes the protocols are her own ideas, refined through her own rigorous analysis. It is a delicate illusion, but a stable one.”

  He leaned forward, the lamplight glinting across the weariness etched into his features. “She will not be given a choice. She will be presented with a new, optimised security configuration for high-value operatives with external dependencies. It will be wrapped in data, supported by risk-assessment models that show increased long-term operational stability. She will see the logic. She may even believe she thought of it.”

  He raised a hand, pre-empting her protest.

  “As for George—no, you will not ‘just see him whenever.’ That would be reckless. But you will see him. Under controlled, secure conditions, by the design of the plan, Anne and Sofiya will bring me. The first meeting will be the hardest. The second, easier. Lira will see the asset—you—become more focused, more stable.” His final words carried a quiet finality. “This is not about asking for permission, Iris. It is about engineering a new reality so logically sound that resistance becomes an irrational act. That is how you change a system from within.”

  He leaned back, signalling our dismissal. Sofiya and I rose together. Already, my mind was aligning variables, constructing frameworks. Her stride matched mine, the silent fire in her eyes telling me she had already accepted the challenge.

  I turned at the door, searching for Iris. She did not follow.

  She remained rooted where she stood, her arms still crossed, though her breath betrayed the tremor beneath. She did not look elated by the promise of change. She looked terrified by it. She remained a statue in the quiet room, caught between the devil she knew and a solution that threatened to give her that fragile thing called hope.

  I need the solution to facilitate…help me build a bridge of trust between us. I thought and did what I do best. Work.

  Thus, the archive became Sofiya’s and mine go-to location after every session in the axiom lab. Day blurred into night, and night back into day, though the bunker’s concrete walls betrayed neither. Sofiya and I worked. Designed. Failed. Worked again, and failed again. It wasn’t great the sight of our plans crumbling so easily when confronted with human’s illogical and unpredictable reactions. But i knew were close to a breakthrough.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  Our mornings and evenings were not concentrated solely on work, we also would spend time better knowing each other. I discovered Sofiya's unseen hobby of bug classification, the adornment of the colour pink in every object, corner of our room and secret infatuation for a fictional vampiric character designed even before she was born. Such information was superficial, useless for a test or project, yet it built a solid friendship I never believed I would have had the chance to cherish. The time I confessed my annoyance at the pace humans conduct themselves in different settings, her understanding, lit me up, to be able to find a person, whole or not, to enjoy my company undeterred by the language style that seem to deject everyone else in the mountain, was a gift, everyday.

  I would not name it as love, but finally finding someone I could share the weight of life among non savants was a reassuring delight. So I would call it belonging.

  Even spending silent hours in the archive did not affect us. The architectural schematics of Proposal 734-ALPHA glowed on the screen, a puzzle of steel and concrete that Sofiya and I had deconstructed and reassembled three times. The logic was sound, but our minds, particularly Sofiya’s, required a break or two.

  “My eyes are cross-referencing themselves into a knot,” Sofiya declared, pushing back from the terminal and stretching like a cat. The motion was all Sunny, a deliberate shedding of Shadow’s intense focus. “Let’s go. I need to see something that isn’t a touch screen.”

  I nodded.

  Our exploration of the Mountain had been limited to the direct routes between our quarters, the Nexus, the Axiom, and the Archives. Vast sections of the map remained UNEXPLORED TERRITORY.

  Our first discovery was a sector humming with a different energy than the Nexus’s electronic silence. The air smelled of fresh linen, and… popcorn? The door was marked LOGISTICS & ACQUISITIONS. Inside was an organised sensory imagery of apparel. Racks of clothing—everything from haute couture to janitorial uniforms—stood next to shelves of outdated mobile phones, fake passports, and wallets. A man with a meticulously trimmed beard and an eye-patch, LOUIS - LOGISTICS DIRECTOR, was calmly directing two assistants who were packing crates marked as ‘ARTISANAL OLIVE OIL.’

  He saw us and paused, his single eye crinkling at the corner. “The prodigies. Finally, here to see where the magic happens?” His voice was warm, light.

  “This,” he said, gesturing around, “is the wardrobe department, the prop shop, and the escape route, all in one. Every identity you’ve ever worn started here as a blank page and a bolt of cloth.” He held up a nurse’s uniform identical to the one Iris had worn. “Camouflage is not just about acting a part. It’s about feeling it. The weight of the fabric, the wear on the shoes. The devil’s in the details, and I am a very devout man.”

  At those words a significant shift in Sofiya’s. Her posture, usually coiled with either Sunny’s nervous energy or Shadow’s defensive readiness, softened. Her eyes, which typically scanned a new environment for threats and exits, widened with genuine, unguarded wonder. She drifted toward a rack of elegant evening gowns, her fingers hovering just above the sequined fabric. Louis winked his good eye at Sofiya, who grinned back, fascinated by this artist of deception.

  Louis noticed. A true master of observation, he read her fascination perfectly.

  “See something you like?” he asked, his tone gentle, devoid of the pressure the nuns at the orphanage always had. He walked over and, with a magician’s flourish, presented not the gown, but a box full of accessories. “The clothes are just the shell. The story is in the details.”

  He pulled out a wide-brimmed hat with a silk flower, a string of pearls, and a pair of ridiculously oversized sunglasses.

  Sofiya’s breath caught. For a glorious moment, Shadow was entirely dormant, and Sunny was in full control, presented with a treasure trove she’d never dreamed of.

  “Can I try?” she asked, her voice small and hopeful.

  “Be my guest,” Louis chuckled. “Just don’t try to smuggle the pearls out in your pocket. The last person who did that ended up on latrine duty for a month. The weight was all wrong.” He said lightheartedly.

  I watched as Sofiya, with a concentration usually reserved for field-stripping a weapon, tried on the sunglasses. She peered at herself in the reflection of a polished server rack, a tiny, sunny smile breaking through. She then added the hat, tilting it at a dramatic angle. Louis played along, handing her a feather boa from another crate.

  “For ambience,” he said gravely.

  It was a surreal tableau: the master forger and the traumatised child, surrounded by the tools of espionage, playing dress-up. Louis showed her how a simple scarf could change a silhouette, how a different walk could sell an identity. He was teaching her, but it felt like a game. In that room, Sofiya wasn't a weapon or an asset. She was just a girl, and Louis was the kind, eccentric uncle who owned a costume shop. As we finally left, Sofiya reluctantly placed the accessories back in their box with palpable nostalgia. She looked back at Louis.

  “Thank you,” she said, and the words carried more warmth than I had ever heard her use with anyone but me or mother and father.

  Louis gave her a genuine smile back.

  “Any time, kid. Next time, we’ll do the full monarch-in-exile look. I’ve got a tiara that’s been gathering dust.”

  The soft spot was firmly established. In Louis’s domain of infinite identities, Sofiya had found a safe space where she could try on being someone else, simply for the joy of it.

  Later, drawn by the sound of controlled impact, we found SECURITY & TACTICAL READINESS. This was Rudi Brookes’s domain. The head of security. The air was thick with the smell of sweat, gun oil, and disinfectant. Rudi, a mountain of a man with a web of scars across his knuckles, was overseeing a close-quarters drill. He didn’t speak in paragraphs like Louis; he communicated in grunts and precise, brutal demonstrations. He noticed us watching from the observation gallery and gave a curt nod. His gaze was assessing us, not the children but the two assets, calculating how we’d hold up under pressure. It was intimidating, but there was a blunt honesty to it. In Rudi’s world, things were either a threat or not. It was a simpler, if starker, mindset.

  Meanwhile, a different kind of integration was occurring beyond us. I noticed Iris, adhering to Dr Laurence’s mandate, had begun spending mandated “downtime” outside our quarters. She gravitated not to the common room but to the infirmary, finding a quiet corner to sip tea while Emma, the nurse, updated medical records. Initially, it was a transaction: Iris tolerated the environment for the sake of the mission’s psychological metrics. But emma’s easy, persistent kindness was a slow-acting algorithm. She didn’t ask probing questions; she talked about terrible base coffee, the best time to use the laundry, and her hopeless addiction to a radio soap opera. One evening, while Sofiya and I were crouched in the soil of the garden, monitoring and debating how long the seed of the avocado would take for us to see the fruits of it.

  Faith closed a file and looked at Iris.

  “Thursday night. The group is getting together. It’s going to be loud, stupid, and the beer will be terrible. You’re coming.”

  Iris’s instinctual refusal was on her lips but she held back. “Only if you’re coming with me,” Iris said, the condition of a test and a shield. “Each time.”

  Faith smiled.

  “Deal. But you’re carrying your own weight. I’m not your social crutch, girl. I’m your guest.”

  I asked if Sofiya and I could come as well, and she agreed. That first Thursday, Iris stood at the periphery of the crowded rec room, Faith a solid, chatting presence at her elbow. I saw Louis laughing over a card game, Rudi surprisingly adept at a foosball table, and technicians I’d never met sharing stories. It was noisy, chaotic, and inefficient. But as Sofiya, my parents, and I sat there, i knew we weit was the sound of a hive. And for a moment, I felt like I wasn’t just an asset. Sofiya did not let her personality take over, and Iris did not act as a tool stored within the closet. We were, tentatively, a part of the hive too.

  Going back to work did not feel like a chore, because Sofiya’s body and mind were more at ease and focused, just as mine. The parameters of the first Proposal we thought of were supervised visitation once per month, carefully staged with a projected 27% improvement in Iris’s operational stability. However, Sebastian shook his head, refusing the idea.

  “Too visible. The Foundation would detect the pattern within a year.”

  The second Proposal was a synthetic proxy: a holo-construct of George, capable of growing with archived data, voice-matching, and even simulated memory. Sebastian listened in silence. Then he spoke softly:

  “She would know. A lie that perfectly corrodes more than a broken truth.” And he denied it.

  The fourth Proposal was mapped, staggered, and coded communications. Secure video bursts, each one threaded through layers of decoys and false trails. Sofiya grinned, feral.

  “No one catches us if we run faster.”

  Sebastian’s rejection was fast. “Speed is irrelevant if the enemy owns the road.” And rejected our proposal, again.

  The failures piled up, and with them Sofiya’s frustration mounted. She kicked a chair, cursed in Russian and Italian, muttering about ghosts and tyrants. I felt her Shadow coil and uncoil beside me. But each rejection refined us. Each denial stripped away the illusions until the shape of the real answer emerged.

  The final solution came not in triumph through exhaustion. The plan we engineered was a hybrid of the previous ones. Basically, George would remain outside, under ordinary guardianship, but the Legacy would weave a mixture of protection around him—quiet operatives, digital shields, medical oversight disguised as routine care. Iris would not just see him often, but she would have the chance to cherish his touch— through scheduled encounters disguised as anomalies, supervised yet genuine. Enough to sustain the bond without exposing him as vulnerable. He wouldn’t have to know it was her because she would disguise herself as she usually does. I explained it to Sebastian in precise terms:

  “A distributed shield managed by stochastic modelling, showing a range of possible outcomes and their relative likelihoods, offering a more realistic view of uncertainty. Iris remains whole. George remains safe. The system remains stable.”

  Sofiya added, her voice lower now, less fire, more steel:

  “And Iris can choose again, on a scheduled timetable.”

  Sebastian weighed on the proposal. Then, slowly, he nodded. His smile was faint but real.

  “This one holds.” he determined in the end.

  Sebastian’s final approval hung in the sterile air of the Archive like a celebration banner with our name on it. I smiled enthusiastically, satisfied. The holographic runes of PROPOSAL 734-ALPHA pulsed with a soft, green blue above the central dais. The plan was elegant, a masterpiece of targeted social manipulation that would create a permanent blind spot for our operations within a major European network. Father’s shoulders relaxed and Mother’s breath escaped in a quiet sigh of relief.

  Sebastian, weary resolve with pride, looked at Iris for the final confirmation.

  “The window is optimal. Your team is ready, Agent Sharp.”

  I observed Iris. Her expression was plagued with stress. Not the reaction I hoped for. Her gaze was fixed on the proposal, but she was not really reading it. It was a 3.4-second pause, a significant deviation from her standard operational decisiveness. Her hand trembled slightly as she reviewed the hologram. She avoided eye contact with us, possibly knowing what our solution entailed.

  “I need time,” she said using a deliberate neutral tone that cost her effort. “To think. The… collateral parameters. I need to be sure.”

  Her reasoning confused me.

  Was she afraid of the moral line the new plan crossed? Or was she, on a deeper level, afraid that if she accepted our radical plan, she would have to fully accept her new life in the Mountain, and finally, completely let go of the old way of being a mother?

  When she hesitated, the hum of the servers seemed to grow louder, and the holographic light of the proposal flickered for 2 seconds as if sensing her doubt.

  Hmm interesting.

  I added the anomaly to the file I had created at the hospital with Oliver. No one else seemed to notice. How curious.

  Sebastian’s eyebrows rose a millimetre. He gave a slow, gracious nod.

  “The proposal will remain active. The floor is yours, Iris. Take the time you need.” With a wave of his hand, the hologram dimmed to a standby state, and he turned, leaving the three of us alone in the vast, silent chamber.

  The moment the main door sighed shut, the atmosphere changed.

  “Iris,” Sofiya began, her voice a low, urgent whisper. She stepped forward, her posture coiled with frustration. “What is there to think about? We built this for you. It's better than Lira's stupid schedule!”

  “The probability of success for Proposal 734 is 92.1%,” I added, analysing the tension in the set of Iris’s jaw. “Delaying implementation introduces unnecessary variables. Lira’s scheduled visit is a fixed point of high risk. Our solution reduces that risk by 68%. This is illogical.” I challenged her professional identity.

  Iris turned to us, and for a fleeting moment, I saw not the operative but a woman stretched taut between two impossibilities.

  “I know your plan is good,” she said, her voice tight. “It’s clever. It’s everything Aris would have loved. But it’s a big step. A permanent one. I just… I need to do this one thing the old way first. I need to know I can still trust the system as it is.”

  It was illogical. The “system as it was” had been compromised the moment The Foundation would identify George as a lever. But I understood the emotional variable: the need for a baseline, for a familiar ritual before embracing a terrifying new paradigm.

  “So, what? You’re just going to go to the Nexus and ask Lira if your little field trip is still on?” Sofiya’s tone was sharp, laced with a protective anger that surprised me. She saw the danger more clearly than Iris did at that moment.

  “Yes,” Iris said, her resolve hardening back into the operative’s shell. “That’s exactly what I’m going to do.”

  She walked out of the Archive, her footsteps echoing with finality. Sofiya and I exchanged a glance. A silent, rapid data transfer passed between us: This is an error. She is walking into a denial. We followed a silent, two-person shadow trailing her to the Nexus. As she walked to the Nexus, she even rehearsed what she would say to Lira.

  As Iris was finishing her request, we arrived at the Nexus. Lira stood with her back to us, her attention on a data-stream depicting global energy grids.

  “…so, the schedule is clear for tomorrow?” Iris asked, her voice deliberately even.

  Lira didn’t turn.

  “The schedule is irrelevant.” She manipulated a control, and a secondary screen lit up with a series of timestamped images. They were grainy, taken from long-range lenses, but unmistakable.

  Jax Sterling.

  On a park bench. Leaning against a tree near the children’s playground. The same park Iris always visited.

  Oh no.

  I didn’t expect such deviation from his habitual outings. Random variables as such were the most infuriating things; even I couldn’t predict them.

  “He’s been there every day for the past week,” Lira stated, with a hint of irritation. She pressed a button on the keyboard, “Monday. Tuesday. Wednesday…” making it methodical and delibarate. “He’s not only surveying the park, he’s waiting. Your pattern has been compromised, therefore the visit is cancelled.”

  Iris stood frozen, the last vestige of her old life crumbling to dust in front of her. The professional acceptance on her face was a thin veneer over a devastation so profound I could feel its seismic tremor in the air. Her hand instinctively went to her chest, where the locket with George's picture was hidden. She didn’t argue because she couldnt argue against such revelation. The foundation of her compromise—“If I follow Lira's rules I get to see my son”—had just collapsed. She just turned and walked away, her posture rigid, moving past us as if we were part of the architecture.

  Sofiya watched her go, her own face a storm of conflict. She then turned to me, her blue eyes wide with a mixture of anger and a desperate need for a new plan.

  The old way was gone.

  The scheduled safety net had been cut. She looked at the frozen image of Jax Sterling on the screen, then back at me, her voice a hushed, determined whisper.

  Her voice, when it came, was a husky whisper, laced with a fear she hadn't shown since she arrived at the base, and a determination that dwarfed it.

  “What do we do now?”

  I didn’t know, but unpredictability was about variation in choices, not necessarily breaking rules. It was time to embrace the rogue factor that was Jax Sterling and show him that we could dance to his rhythm and stay on the path that matters.

  For the first time since I opened my eyes to the chaos that was the world, I fully felt a conspiratorial will that reflected Sofiya’s expression. She smirked at the same time as me.

  “We accept his invitation, ” I replied. “That's what we'll do,”