The balcony air still carried the words.

Now we’ve got a problem.

Caleb watched her stand at the railing, one gloved hand resting flat against the cold stone. The black dress moved against her ribs with each breath. The green strand in her dark hair caught the gala lights from below.

She wasn’t looking at him anymore. Her attention had moved to the lower foyer.

"Hassek’s two minutes from the main staircase," she said. Her voice had dropped back to the operational register. The eleven-year revelation was gone, packed back into whatever compartment she kept it in. "If he sees us together up here, the rest of the night becomes a different problem."

"Then we split," Caleb said.

"Then we split."

She didn’t move.

Neither did he.

The orchids in her perfume cut through the colder mineral wind off the upper terrace. Her shoulder was less than a foot from his arm. He could feel the heat coming off her skin where the dress left her bare.

She turned her head a fraction toward him.

"Service Three. Two minutes after you reach the floor."

"How do I know it’s clear?"

"I’m clearing it."

She stepped past him.

Her sleeve brushed his.

He didn’t watch her go.

Caleb took the marble staircase down at the speed of a man with no agenda.

The gala had thinned. The serious money had moved into private rooms on the upper level. What was left on the main floor was the second tier, working their drinks and their angles and pretending the night was still about charity.

Elara intercepted him at the third step.

She was in deep red. The Defense Force pin at her collar caught the chandelier.

"Dance with me," she said. Her smile was the one she used for cameras. Her hand on his elbow was the one she used for cover.

"I don’t dance."

"You do tonight."

She turned him toward the open floor, but the angle of her body was wrong for the music. She was walking him at the bar instead. Her hand stayed on his elbow. Anyone watching would see a First Division Captain leading a Seventh Division Jaeger across the floor for a drink.

"He’s at your nine," Elara said, her voice low under the string quartet. "Don’t look."

Caleb didn’t look.

The back of his neck registered Hassek’s attention anyway, the way a tooth registers cold water.

Elara handed him a glass at the bar.

"Whatever you’re doing," she said, smiling at the bartender, "stop being seen doing it. You owe me a clean answer about the napkin when this night is over."

"I’ll owe you two."

"Three. The bracelet you’re wearing is military property and I want it back undamaged."

She squeezed his elbow once and stepped away into the crowd.

The comms-chip behind his right ear ticked.

A single text scrolled across the inside of his glasses.

[Unknown User: Service Three. Now.]

Caleb finished half the drink, set the glass down with the bored disinterest of a man retreating to find a restroom, and walked.

Hassek didn’t follow.

That was almost worse.

The service corridor was lit at quarter power.

Caleb’s footsteps were the only sound. Linen carts and wine racks lined the walls. The catering staff had been pulled off this hallway by someone who could pull catering staff off hallways.

The door at the end of the corridor was already cracked.

He pushed it open with two fingers.

She was standing inside a maintenance alcove just past the threshold. The dress was the same. The posture was not.

Her right hand was pressed against her left ribs.

A dark wet patch had bloomed through the black fabric, slow and steady, the kind of bleed that wasn’t going to stop on its own in the next ten minutes.

She lifted her hand long enough to show him the cut, then put it back.

"It’s shallow."

"It’s not."

"It’s manageable."

He crossed the alcove and stopped a foot from her. The orchid scent was sharper here in the still air. Under it, copper.

He took her wrist and moved her hand.

She let him.

The fabric was cut clean along the line of her ribs, a four-inch slice that someone had put there with intention and skill. Not a deep wound. The kind a competent enemy made when they wanted to slow a target without killing it.

"Who," Caleb said.

"He’s not on the floor anymore."

"Who."

"Later."

She was looking at his face from this distance, not the railing, not the foyer below, not the operational middle distance. Looking at him.

The thing under his sternum stirred. The 99.1 bypass capacity registered her proximity the same way it had registered her every time, like a predator clocking a familiar shape. The heat behind his ribs banked low.

He didn’t think about it.

His free hand moved without instruction. He pressed his palm flat over the wound through the fabric, applying the pressure she should have been applying since she got here, since she put her dress back into place and walked the gala bleeding.

She inhaled once. Sharp.

The orchids cracked.

For a second she let her weight come forward against his hand. Just a fraction. Just enough.

Her forehead came down to rest against the side of his throat.

She didn’t say anything.

He didn’t either.

Eleven years was sitting between them in the alcove and neither of them was going to name it tonight.

The elevator behind her chimed.

The doors slid open on a private maintenance car that had no business being here.

She straightened.

The operational register came back into her shoulders. She turned, walked into the elevator, and held the door for him with the hand that wasn’t bleeding.

He followed her inside.

The doors closed.

The car descended in silence.

He kept his palm flat against her ribs. She kept her hand over his, not pressing, just there. The bleed was slowing under the pressure. The fabric stayed warm against his glove.

Three floors. Six. Twelve.

"You should have told me about the cut on the balcony," he said.

"It wasn’t relevant on the balcony."

"It was relevant the second it happened."

"It happened before the balcony."

He looked at her.

She kept her eyes on the floor counter.

He didn’t ask.

The car stopped. The doors opened on a tunnel that wasn’t on any military map. Concrete, lit at quarter power, with a single black transport vehicle idling at the curb with no driver visible behind the tinted glass.

She stepped out first.

He followed.

The transport door opened on its own.

She slid in. He slid in after her. The door sealed. The vehicle moved.

The bleeding had almost stopped.

She lifted his hand off her ribs the way someone lifts a borrowed coat, carefully, with acknowledgment, and set it back on his own knee.

She didn’t move to the far side of the seat.

His comms-chip ticked again.

A different sender this time. Encrypted civilian channel. He recognized the routing signature from a name he had not expected to see again in this lifetime.

The message was four words.

[Halsworth Crayne: He took Hassek.]

Caleb read it twice.

Then he turned the screen of the chip so she could read it.

She read it.

The black transport kept moving through the tunnel.

Her hand, when she finally set it on his thigh, was steady.

"Then the night isn’t over," she said.