Noel watched Tyson’s eyes move over the spread of coordinates, his brow folding deeper with each line he traced. The early light coming through her blinds carved a pale stripe across his face, catching on the bruise-dark crescents under his eyes.

  “This is too much,” he muttered, sliding the sheet across the table with a disgruntled sigh. “I—I have to get to the motor pool.” He pushed back from her kitchen table like he was already halfway out the door.

  “Okay, it’s a deeper truth,” she said. Her fist clicked at her side, trembling. “One we should uncover together.”

  He stopped. The words hung there between them. His shoulders tensed. “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, not looking at her.

  “Someone is hiding something, and I think it’s serious.”Tyson was unchanged. Noel swallowed. “Okay,” she said carefully, “those coordinates will take us to answers both of us likely never fathomed. HIVE always has an answer. It’s a complete system, which would mean the protocols are being, I don’t know, obscured from me. Somebody’s lying.”

  Tyson exhaled hard through his nose. “I don’t know what any of that means, and I don’t think it’s my problem.” His feet carried him closer to the door.

  “Not your problem yet.” She said. “Something’s not right in the CRD. I have this feeling. It’s weird. I’ve never been locked out of the systems before.”

  He finally looked back at her. There was something in his gaze that hadn’t been there before last night. Not the guarded irritation she’d seen that first week, or the quiet annoyance when she’d corrected his understanding of her equipment. This was sharper. Less patient.

  “Not my problem in the slightest.” His hands reached for the knob.

  “There may be some credence to what the other Marines are saying…”

  It was enough to stop him, dead in his tracks, pivoting to make his point. “You disappeared,” he said. “In the middle of the night. Didn’t say a word. I wake up and you’re gone, and now you’re handing me coordinates and rambling on about your secret mainframe and permissions? I don’t care.”

  The heat crept up the back of her neck. He wasn’t wrong to feel this way. The timing was all wrong. She’d left him asleep in her bed and walked out like a thief, as if they hadn’t just spent the evening together; heart pounding, bodies entwined.

  But she needed answers, and the lab was calling louder than any guilt. Now he was looking at her like she’d stolen something from him.

  “I went to check something,” she said. “That’s all. Jax keeps a maintenance log on HIVE. A private one. I knew if I left a message there, he’d see it. I needed to know if my paranoia were real before I dug in any deeper.”

  “And?” Tyson’s jaw flexed.

  “And it’s real.” Her fingers tapped once against the edge of the file. “He’s locked out, too. He’s supposed to have the same security level I have. He’s not as easily disarmed, though.” She scratched her eyebrows, then scratched her head. “He was able to trace traffic back to multiple sites, off-book, using my hardware. Our hardware. They don’t show up in any of the official manifests. Not the ones they let me see, anyway.”

  Tyson’s gaze drifted back to the paper, then to her again, weighing her words like parts on a scale.

  “You trust this Jax,” he said.

  “He’s the only reason the mainframes haven’t melted down,” she replied. “And the only person in that building who doesn’t treat HIVE like a god or a vending machine. He’s… careful.” She hesitated, then added, “He also said something else.”

  Tyson waited.

  “Sydney’s been talking to federal agents,” Noel said quietly. “CIA, maybe others. He saw her meeting them. He thinks she’s blowing the whistle on CRD. On—“ she hesitated, letting out a big sigh, “Calibre. Cuba, Vietnam, everything they’ve touched. That’s not a rumor. That’s him doing his own snooping. I think they may be interested in something we’re doing out here.”

  “And you’re telling me this because…?” he asked.

  Because I don’t want to die ignorant, she thought. Because if they kill me for snooping, I want at least one person to know why. “Because if I’m right,” Noel said, “and if Jax is right, then somebody is using my work to build something off the books, in a war zone. And they’re using your Marines to get there. Your convoys. Your people. That should bother you.”

  “It does,” he said flatly. He retook his seat at the table and pulled the coordinates closer.

  “Then help me check,” she said. “Just… help me compare the routes. We cross-check these coordinates with your logs at the motor pool. If none of them match, we pick the one closest to anything you’ve driven and we go look. Together. If I’m wrong, you can go back to pretending I’m just a civilian pain in the ass with fancy toys, and I’ll go back to pretending I sleep at night.”

  He stared at her for a long while.

  “You know what happens,” he said quietly, “if this is bigger than you think? People disappear. In my world and yours.”

  “I know exactly what happens,” she said. “Nancy made sure I understood the cost of ‘curiosity’ before she put me on that boat. ‘Loose lips,’ ‘project integrity,’ all of that. She made a special point of warning me about Marines.” Noel held his gaze. “And I still showed you the file.”

  His mouth twitched, like he wanted to smirk and couldn’t justify it.

  “We’d have to make it look official,” he said at last.

  “Of course.”

  “No joyride into the desert.” He pushed back from the table, the chair legs scraping. “We check the logs. If any of my drivers have been out that far, we’ll know. If they haven’t, we pick the least insane route and I sign out a truck like we’re on a tasking from the medical group. If we get stopped, you say we’re delivering gear for your project. I’m your armed escort. That’s it.”

  “That’s it,” she echoed.

  “And Noel?” He paused at her door, hand on the frame.

  “Yes?”

  “If this turns out to be some kind of test—” his eyes narrowed, “—or if you’re feeding me whatever your bosses want me to see… we’re going to have a different kind of conversation.”

  She nodded once. “Understood.”

  “Show up, ready to kick this ‘rouse’ off. If what you say is true, you may not be coming back here. I’m going to head back to the barracks and do the same.”

  Her flat looked smaller in the daylight. The shadows that had felt soft and forgiving the night before now exposed every stack of journals, every half-finished cup of tea, every solder-burn on her coffee table. The bed was unmade, sheets twisted where they’d both been.

  She paused in the doorway, eyes catching on the indentation in the pillow where his head had been. A different life might’ve let her sit there in that moment and pretend this was all that mattered: the warmth, the quiet, the scent of his cologne still lingering on the air—familiar, almost painfully so, the same kind her father had dabbed on his wrists before important meetings.

  Instead, she crossed the room and stripped the sheets with practiced efficiency. No evidence. No leverage. Nobody at CRD needed to know she’d let a Marine past her door, not in that way.

  The shower was fast and hotter than she needed. As steam filled the small bathroom, she ran through contingencies in her head. If this is a trap, then I’ve invited him into it. If Nancy finds out I’ve been snooping, HIVE access is the least of what I’ll lose. If CSS decides we know too much…

  Her hands shook once, briefly, when she buttoned the top of her shirt.

  She packed light. Field jacket, ID. A copy of the latest system specs. A spare notebook. Nothing that couldn’t be burned or tossed out a window. She hesitated over her father’s old slide rule on the dresser, then left it where it was. He’d built enough ghosts into this world; she didn’t need to take one into the desert.

  On the ride to the motor pool, Beirut pressed close on both sides. Traffic clogged the main arteries—a mix of battered taxis, overloaded trucks, unmarked vehicles, and the sudden flash of a CSS convoy cutting through with sirens off and lights low. The city smelled like exhaust, sea air, and a faint undercurrent of smoke that never really went away.

  By the time she pulled into the lot bordering the motor pool, the heat had settled like a hand on the back of her neck. The sunlight bounced hard off the metal hulls of parked vehicles, making the edges of everything too bright.

  Tyson was already there when she arrived. Fresh uniform, sleeves rolled with regulation precision, sidearm holstered at his hip.

  The motor pool was alive even before full sun, engines coughing to life as crews cycled through the morning checks. Sand dusted everything; it lived in the seams of the concrete, in the cracks of the cinderblock walls, stacked in pale drifts against tires and pallets of spare parts. The air smelled of diesel and burnt rubber.

  Noel had always experienced it from the passenger side, standing at the edge with her cases and manifests while Marines joked or cursed around her. This time she walked in beside Tyson, the two of them drawing a few quiet looks from the crews already under hoods.

  He went straight for the little caged office at the back, where a corporal hunched over a ledger the size of a phone book.

  “Morning, Corporal,” Tyson said.

  “Staff Sergeant.” The corporal straightened, nodding. “Doc.” A dip of his chin toward Noel. Her reputation preceded her, it seemed.

  “I need the last three months’ vehicle logs,” Tyson said. “Convoy destinations, grid references if you’ve got ‘em. Any runs marked ‘medical support’ or ‘special cargo.’”

  The corporal frowned. “All of them?”

  “Yeah.” Tyson’s tone brooked no argument. “Command wants a readiness audit. I want to see how we’re dispersing the miles. You keep good notes, we won’t be here all day.”

  That seemed to satisfy him. He started pulling logbooks off shelves, dumping them on the counter. Tyson flipped them open in sequence, fingers moving quickly, eyes faster. Noel stood beside him, a file under her arm, feeling like a kid who’d snuck into the grown-up section of the library.

  He slid one book toward her. “Here,” he said. “Mark the ones that look close to your list. Grid, unit, whatever you recognize. Use your own system.”

  She opened her folder and laid the coordinates beside the pages. Row by row, line by line, she compared them. A few were close—same general direction, same highways—but none were exact. Not one. Not over three months, in a fixed AO.

  “These,” she said, tapping a cluster of entries. “These are close. They come off the coastal road, swing inland, then stop short. My coordinates keep going. Same angle. The math lines up.”

  Tyson leaned over, jaw tight. “That’s as far as we’re tasked to go,” he said. “We drop gear, evacuate wounded, pick up personnel. After that, we turn around. The rest is ‘not our concern.’”

  “But something keeps going,” Noel said. “Same line. Same direction. Same spacing between sites.”

  He followed the path with his finger, imagining the map overlaid on the desert. Mountains. Dry riverbeds. Abandoned villages. Places he’d skirted but never entered.

  “This one,” he said finally, tapping one coordinate from her file. “Here.” He flipped to an old map pinned to the wall behind the desk, traced the route with a grease-stained fingertip. “Convoy route Bravo-Nine. We’ve run this road half a dozen times, but we stop… here.” He jabbed a point that sat miles short of her mark. “Your spot is a couple of ridgelines past that. Off the grid.”

  Noel nodded slowly. “Then we go a couple of ridgelines past that.”

  He stared at the map a moment longer, then turned to the corporal. “Prep a six-by with full tanks and spare fuel. Mark it for medical support. Two personnel. Departure in one hour.” Tyson thumbed through outstanding loads, pulling serials. “Find these items in the lockup, load ‘em up. We’re going to make some high-profile drops.”

  The corporal’s brows shot up. “Yes, Staff Sergeant.”

  Tyson scribbled his name on the dispatch form, the pen biting into the paper. “Make it look normal,” he added. “I don’t want this standing out in the stack.”

  On their way out, Noel felt the weight of a dozen glances on her back. Word traveled fast in tight compounds. A Staff NCO and the strange civilian doc heading off alone was the kind of thing people noticed and pretended not to.

  Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Those aren’t your usual fatigues,” Noel’s eyes looked Tyson up and down. “What’s that band around your arm?”

  “I don’t know where we’ll end up, but we need to sell this. This brassard will show them that it’s a special assignment. Should be the attention to detail that lets us slip through the cracks.“

  She felt his eyes on her now, assessing. Judging. Was this alook of determination or accusation?

  “You got everything you need?” Outside, a truck pulled up, brakes squeaking. The corporal poked his head back through the door, giving a thumbs up.

  “Here. Learn this. It’s what we’re hauling.”

  She skimmed the manifest. Half the items were things she’d actually designed. The other half were vague enough to mean anything.

  “Ready?” he asked, leading her to their chariot.

  “No,” she said, climbing into the cab. “But I’m going anyway.”

  He snorted once, no humor in it, then swung up into the driver’s seat.

  The city peeled away in layers. Concrete high-rises gave way to low stucco buildings and half-finished construction sites. Then those gave way to scrubland and the jagged backs of hills. The road narrowed, patched asphalt turning to hard-packed dirt in places, pocked by old shell impacts and fresh potholes from overloaded convoys.

  They passed checkpoints where bored soldiers waved them through after a cursory glance at their documents. At others, tension hung heavier—guns at the ready, eyes sharp, fingers resting a little too close to triggers. Noel kept her mouth shut and her ID visible, letting Tyson do the talking. CRD had a reputation here. So did CSS. Neither were simple.

  Far off, columns of smoke rose from somewhere she couldn’t see, smudging the sharp horizon. The radio crackled every so often with snippets of code and coordinates, mentions of the barracks, rumors of more violence. Someone said the word embassy, and her stomach clenched around an empty space.

  Tyson kept his eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel, the other resting near the gearshift. After a long stretch of silence, he said, “You mentioned your friend in Princeton saw someone talking to feds.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  He nodded once. “We’ve been hearing things,” he said. “About our government. About projects. Files with Caliber’s name all over them. People say strange things about the embassy bombing; some say we caused it. You never know what’s true.”

  “What do you think?” Noel asked.

  “I think everybody out here is paying for something that started decades ago,” he said. “And half of us don’t even know what debt we’re working off.”

  She watched his profile, the way his jaw set when he said decades.

  “You had someone at the embassy?” she asked, softly. “I thought it was before you got here…”

  He didn’t answer immediately. The truck rocked over a rut. Dust plumed up around them, turning the world outside the windshield into a pale haze.

  “Boot camp,” he said eventually. “Guy in my platoon. Granados. He was a grunt who took ‘B billet’ for embassy duty. Last word I got, he was rotating through this region. Ever since the blast. Now, suddenly, the story changes every time I hear it.” His fingers tightened on the wheel. “Missing. Dead. ‘Reassigned.’ Depends on who you drink with.”

  “I’m sorry,” Noel said, resting her hand on his thigh.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat.

  Her hand recoiled.

  “Point is, doc, I’ve seen enough games to know when someone’s moving pieces off the board and telling us it’s the wind. If your coordinates are another one of those games, we need to know.”

  She turned that over while the miles slipped under them. Her own debts pressed against her ribs—her father’s secret lab, Nancy’s whispered promises, the weight of all the upgrades she’d accepted without reading the fine print. Who did she owe the truth to? The woman who’d rebuilt her life and body, or the man beside her who still smelled faintly like home?

  The air cooled as the day wore on. The hard noon glare softened into a flatter light, shadows stretching out from rock and wreck in long, thin fingers. When Tyson finally downshifted and turned off the main route, bumping them onto a barely visible track scraping along the side of a low ridge, she felt the temperature drop another notch.

  “We’re off the books now,” he said quietly.

  Ahead, the desert rolled out in three dimensions—no longer just a backdrop, but a maze of rises and depressions, dry wadis cutting pale scars across the land. In the distance, nestled low like it was trying not to be seen, sat a cluster of structures that didn’t match any village she’d ever driven past.

  Not tents. Not local construction. Prefab, modular walls in dull colors. CSS fencing. A squat, windowless building that could’ve been anything from storage to a bunker. Satellite dishes bristled from the roofline like quills.

  “That it?” Tyson asked.

  Noel checked the coordinate scribbled at the top of her page, then the handheld unit she’d borrowed from her own team. Numbers lined up. “That’s it,” she said.

  The closer they got, the more wrong it felt. There was no busy perimeter like at the field hospital sites. No organized queue of ambulances. A pair of armed guards at the gate watched their approach with flat eyes, rifles carried low but ready.

  “Listen.” Noel’s voice was quiet, her words measured. “Follow my lead. I don’t know what’s in there. If something goes wrong, do you know how to use that thing?” She motioned towards his sidearm.

  “Yeah. You think—“

  “I don’t know. I pray not.”

  Tyson pulled up just outside the barrier, killed the engine, and stepped down first. Noel followed, feeling the arid wind cut straight through her jacket.

  “Identify,” one of the guards called.

  Noel held up her badge. “Dr. Noel Stowers,” she said. “CRD. Senior Lead for the Neural-Tech and Conscious-Stream projects.” She nodded toward Tyson. “Staff Sergeant Graves, USMC. My escort.”

  “We weren’t told to expect anyone,” the other guard said, eyes flicking from her ID to Tyson’s holstered weapon. “Especially not from headquarters.”

  “Well, surprise!” She glanced over at Tyson, recalling the excuse he gave his corporal. “Readiness Audit. Deadlines got moved up,” Noel said. Her voice came out smoother than she felt. “Nancy wants personal verification of all field sites’ readiness. That means me. I don’t go anywhere without armed security. Those are my orders.”

  “Inspection?” the first guard asked, skeptical.

  “Yes.” Her patience thinned. “I can have you call her if you like, but I doubt either of us wants that conversation. Or we can pretend you recognized the name she put in charge of the projects she’s spending half her net worth on.”

  The guard who’d spoken first shifted his grip on his rifle. The other one glanced at Tyson, as if measuring the likelihood this Marine would pull rank.

  Tyson stepped forward just enough to be seen clearly, shoulders squared, jaw set. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

  After a beat, the guard thumbed the latch and pushed the gate open. “Very well,” he said. “Enter. We’ll inform staff of your arrival.” He made one final glance at Tyson. “Stay where you’re told.”

  “Glad we’re all professionals,” Noel murmured, and walked through.

  Inside the wire, the air felt heavier. Cooler, too, like some of the heat never made it past the outer line. A narrow concrete path led to the main entrance; a set of double doors with a keycard reader that didn’t match any she’d seen back in Beirut. The logo stamped beside it was familiar, though.

  SynthiDermis Labs. Ducks’ project.

  Her stomach tightened.

  The doors opened from the inside before they reached them. A man stepped out into the light, wearing a lab coat over fatigues, badge clipped to his chest.

  “Dr. Stowers,” he said, surprise and caution chasing each other across his face. “We weren’t expecting you. Is… everything okay?”

  His tone suggested he hoped the answer was no, that this was all some bureaucratic mistake.

  She glanced at his badge before he could angle it away. “Dr. Ramos, Joaquin,” she read.

  He blinked. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You know who I am, then,” she said. “You also know I don’t take surprise inspections lightly.”

  “In—inspection?” He stammered a little. “We weren’t informed of any—deadlines. My team hasn’t received any updated timelines regarding the field tests, and if you’re here because you expect—”

  “I should report you for insubordination right this second,” Noel cut in, pivoting toward Tyson. “Graves.”

  He stepped closer, hand resting near his holster in a way that made it very clear he wasn’t just there to carry boxes.

  Noel kept her gaze on Ramos. “If you know my name, you know this is my project. I answer directly to the top. If there’s been a communication failure, it’s not going to be on my end of the line.”

  Ramos paled slightly. “I didn’t mean anything by it, ma’am. Just… asserting that my team is not prepared for an inspection today. Perhaps there has been a mistake—”

  “That seems like an outlandish assertion.” She nodded toward his badge again. “Dr. Ramos, isn’t it? You’re assigned to SynthiDermis?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then this facility is doing exactly what I think it is,” she said, more to herself than him.

  Another voice slid into the conversation like oil into water. It was soft, almost whimsical. “Dr. Stowers,” it said, amused. “To what do we owe this surprise?”

  A man stepped out from a side corridor, half-shadowed by the dim interior light. His smile was almost too wide, his eyes bright behind smudged lenses. Lab coat, yes, but the way he wore it was different—open, like he’d just thrown it open, sleeves pushed up, a faint streak of something dark on the cuff.

  “Dr. Ducks,” Noel said. “I didn’t realize you’d beat your own rumors down here.”

  “We get around,” he replied. “We were introduced on the rig, remember? Briefing room. My seat was three rows up from yours. Hard to forget a face Nancy calls out in front of everyone.” His gaze flicked to Tyson, then back. “Nancy told me not to expect you. But I knew better.”

  “How’s that?” she asked.

  He shrugged, already turning back toward the hallway. “She’s more machine than woman these days. Machines follow protocol; you of all people should be aware of that. You’re a scientist. Scientists ask questions. Seek answers. It’s our nature.” He gestured lazily for them to follow. “Come along. I’ll give you the tour.”

  Noel glanced at Tyson, who gave the smallest of nods, then they went.

  The interior corridors were narrower than she expected, the ceiling low, the walls a neutral, forgettable shade. The first stretch smelled sterile—disinfectant, circulated air, the faint tang of ozone from overworked equipment.

  “We’ve been focusing on the restorative tissue modules,” Ducks said as they walked, his hands clasped behind his back. “Your biomechanics gave us a beautiful framework. We get a lot of shattered bones, crushed joints, skulls that look like someone stepped on an eggshell. Messy. Your hardware lets us scaffold them back into something usable.”

  He spoke with the enthusiasm of a man describing a new motor, not shattered people.

  “My team over in Iowa developed a bio-organism that mimics skin but heals ten times faster than baseline,” he went on. “Fused with your robotics? Forget about it. We’ve been making some great breakthroughs.” He threw a grin over his shoulder. “They told me you were only the head of your own projects.”

  “No,” Noel said. The air felt cooler already. “The whole thing.”

  “That’s what I assumed.” He stopped at a set of double doors, keying a code into a panel. The lock buzzed. “I insisted on having my own surveillance-free space for the more sensitive work. You understand, of course?”

  Noel didn’t answer. Her breath fogged faintly as they stepped through.

  The room beyond was walled in glass on one side, overlooking a long chamber lined with parallel bars, treadmills, and weight racks. Inside, a man in a hospital smock and shorts—mid-thirties, maybe—walked back and forth between the bars, gripping them lightly. His right leg from mid-thigh down was mechanical, the plating smooth and matte. His left arm ended in a joint of metal and synthiderm that fused seamlessly into his upper arm. He moved with a careful, cautious grace, every step observed by two technicians with clipboards.

  “Here are some of the military subjects,” Ducks said. “The more successful transplants. All living, of course. Conscious. We want to see how the tissues integrate over time.”

  The man inside reached the end of the bars, turned, and jogged back. At Ducks’ signal, one of the techs handed him a pair of dumbbells. He curled them easily, weights far beyond what his frame should’ve been able to handle.

  “See?” Ducks said, delighted. “Your work, and mine, together.”

  Noel felt her stomach roll. The glass muffled the sounds inside, but she could see the man’s face—effort, strain, a flicker of something like fear when he tested his balance.

  “Does he know,” she asked, “how much of him is hardware now?”

  “We ‘brief’ them,” Ducks said, already moving on. “In varying amounts. Some of them don’t want to know everything, you’d be surprised.”

  Tyson hadn’t said anything since they’d come in. His jaw was tight, eyes tracking every scar, every stitch line.

  “Come on,” Ducks said, waving them down another corridor. “You didn’t come here to see my gym.”

  The temperature dropped further as they descended a shallow ramp. The lighting shifted from the yellowish hum of standard fixtures to a whiter, harsher glow that flattened color and made every edge look sharper. The smell changed too; the antiseptic was still there, but under it Noel caught something metallic and sour.

  “HERE,” Ducks said, tapping a keypad and opening another door. “Please give my accolades to your colleague, Mister Jackson, by the way. Conscious-Stream is a remarkable success. We’ve managed reanimation in multiple cases now.”

  Noel’s heart stuttered. “Reanimation,” she repeated.

  “Of the dead,” Ducks said cheerfully. “What else would we call it? You gave us the hardware. Jax gave us the pathways. We’re just… following the map.”

  They stepped into a larger, colder space. Rows of units lined the walls—cylinders, pods, consoles with nested cables like roots. Monitors blinked soft blue and green in the dim. The air was so cold now that Noel’s breath came out in clear clouds.

  “Right now,” Ducks said, “we’ve focused on translating the HIVE mind-state into post-mortem stasis. Basic protocols. Reflexive functionality. There’s a long way to go before we can move a consciousness wholesale from one body to another, but the math is promising. We just lack volunteers. People are oddly reluctant to die for science when it isn’t battlefield-adjacent.”

  His laugh was thin and quick.

  Noel’s fingers curled into her palms inside her pockets. “These… candidates,” she managed. “Where do they come from?”

  He blinked at her, genuinely puzzled by the question. “From where you’d expect,” he said. “Battles. Blasts. Collapses. CSS is very efficient at paperwork. The ones whose families will never see the bodies—those are easiest. But we do have agreements in place.” His tone brightened. “You’d be pleased to know we’ve sustained HIVE-state in three subjects beyond the forty-eight-hour mark. One even regained partial motor function.”

  She felt like she was drifting outside her own skin. This was her code. Her architecture. Stretched and twisted into something she’d never imagined when she’d been tinkering in her father’s basement.

  “You wanted to see the crown jewel, though,” Ducks said, almost conspiratorial. “The part very few get to visit.” He pushed open one more door, and a wall of cold hit them like a physical shove.

  The smell changed again. Bleach, yes, but under it—meat. Not fresh. Not yet rotted. That sickly sweet in-between.

  “We call this the Demortuary,” he said, like he was introducing a favorite pet. “Where the magic happens.”

  The room was long and low, lit by a row of fixtures that hummed faintly. Metal gurneys stood in neat lines, each holding a body under a sheet. Some had tags clipped to their toes. Others had numbers scrawled on the linen. Frost clung to the metal along the walls, a thin, glittering film.

  Noel’s breath hitched.

  “We had a series of candidates brought in in the recent days,” Ducks went on. “Marines, such as yourself, Staff Sergeant.” He nodded toward Tyson. “If you wanted to look them over, maybe you may know one or two of them…”

  “Doctor—” Noel started, but the word died in her throat.

  Tyson had already stepped forward, shoulders squared, eyes hard. Ducks watched him with clinical interest, like this, too, was a data point.

  Noel tried to catch Tyson’s attention. A small shake of her head, a barely-there movement of her hand. Don’t. Please don’t. If he recognized anyone here, this would not be a clean wound. It would fester.

  He either didn’t see her or chose not to.

  He moved down the rows, lifting corners of sheets, checking tags. The room seemed to shrink around them, the fluorescent buzz tunneling into Noel’s skull. Her own breath sounded too loud in her ears.

  Halfway down, he stopped.

  Noel saw it in the set of his shoulders first—a sudden rigidity, like someone had poured concrete down his spine. His hand tightened on the edge of the sheet, knuckles blanching. For the first time since she’d met him, he looked… small. Not in size, but in the way the space seemed to rear up around him.

  From where she stood, she could see only a slice of what he saw: the curve of a shoulder, a torso half-exposed, a head turned just enough to show a shaved scalp and the jagged seam of a scar running along the right side.

  Ducks’s voice filtered through the cold.

  “Remarkable, isn’t it?” he said softly. “This one’s injuries were catastrophic. We’ll have to replace quite a bit before we can attempt anything meaningful. But structurally, there’s still so much we can work with.”

  Tyson didn’t move. He didn’t speak. The silence around him thickened.

  Noel took a step toward him, instinct overriding caution. “Staff Sergeant,” she murmured. “We should—”

  He finally turned.

  The look he gave her stopped her mid-step. Whatever had been tentative or curious or almost-soft between them in her flat was gone. His eyes were shuttered, anger banked low but visible, heat under ash.

  To him, she realized, this was not an inspection. It was not a tour. It was her world laid bare: steel and cold and bodies turned into raw material. Regardless of how horrified she felt, she was the one who’d brought him here. The one whose name was on the projects. The one who’d disappeared into the night and come back with coordinates and half-truths.

  Behind her, Ducks continued to talk, words blurring into a distant, eager patter about timelines and tissue viability.

  Noel couldn’t hear any of it properly. All she could hear was the quiet verdict in Tyson’s eyes.

  Whatever fragile trust they’d built on the road, in the desert, in her bed—it cracked clean through, right there in the freezing air of the Demortuary, among numbered sheets and the ghosts of men neither of them would ever be able to save.