Mist clung to the canyon like breath to cold glass, soft and stubborn. The last of the light had drained out of the sky and left the rock in bands of amber memory and black intent. Far below, twelve shapes held a pocket of order against the wild—my squad's camp, cut perfectly into the base of the canyon's throat. Fire low, masked by stone. Sentries posted on the walls. Perimeter lines braided into scrub so nothing glinted that shouldn't. Brenda's signature was all over it.
I stayed high and watched.
From up here, their movements looked small but not tentative—every step a decision that had been rehearsed enough times to become muscle. Sirone's silhouette leaned over a weapon, rechecking the action, every click a downbeat. Rin sat on a flat stone cleaning blades with the slow care of someone whose brain was awake but whose body wanted a bed. Olivia wrote something on her kneeboard, then tore the page, folded it, and fed it to the coals. The little rituals of a unit that refused to believe chaos owned the night.
Three weeks since the capital burned.
'Guess I'm late to my own rumor.'
I started down, boot edges setting shale to skid. The slope wanted me to hurry. I didn't. Even that small rush pushed tiny pains through the veins under my skin like someone testing a web for tears. The air in the throat tasted of wet iron and old gunpowder—the canyon had seen work.
The field bag I'd taken from the Federation team thumped against my hip as I moved. Sirone would get better use out of it than me.
Close now, voices rode the mist: Sirone's clipped cadence, Brenda's low, flat responses, and a softer laugh that belonged to Toma when she forgot to be the quiet knife at the rear. The sound folded around me and hit something under my ribs I'd let go numb—belonging, rude, and immediate.
I stepped from shadow into the shallow glow.
Sirone turned first. The cloth in her hand slipped and thumped into cold ash.
"Captain?"
Brenda's hand went to her thigh out of reflex, half-drew, and re-holstered before the steel ever showed. Her eyes did the rest of the math: stance, breath, and the way my left hand hovered near a hilt, not because I meant to threaten but because empty felt wrong.
I stopped three paces from their fire, close enough to see the question in all twelve faces.
"Miss me?"
Silence, brief and total, the canyon holding it for us like a bowl. Then the ripples—shock, relief, suspicion, grief, trying to stand up and sit down at the same time.
Sirone closed the distance until my breath fog mixed with hers. "They told us you—" She swallowed and started over.
"I heard," I said. "Turns out I'm inconvenient."
"That's not funny," Brenda said, but the bite had no teeth.
"Didn't say it was."
Sirone's hand rose like she was asking permission from a ghost. She touched my sleeve. The tremor made my throat tight in a way I didn't like. When her fingers didn't pass through me, her shoulders fell a centimeter, and that centimeter told me more than any speech.
Rin exhaled a laugh that sounded like someone letting out a string tied around their chest. "Of course she shows up looking like a bad idea we missed."
"Language," Olivia murmured, because Olivia is a law of nature.
Chinada stood from her rock and came to attention without needing to be asked. Old habits. Toma crossed herself with two fingers quick and guilty, like prayer was contraband. Sarian muttered, "About time," and then pretended she hadn't. Nekro didn't move at all, but her jaw set the way it does when she's swallowing an argument she plans to win later. Brit smiled with her eyes and nowhere else. Mia made the kind of small, wet sound people pretend is a cough.
And Apricot—
"Mom!"
She nearly tripped over her own pack in her hurry, caught herself, and then was there, right in front of me, eyes wide and bright and already glossy.
"I knew it," she said, her voice wobbling into a grin. "I told them you don't die like that. I told them. They said—they were—they're dumb."
"I told you to stop calling me that," I said, and my hand found the top of her head before permission asked any questions. Her hair was damp and smelled like cheap soap and stubbornness. She closed her eyes, leaned into my palm like she'd been holding that spot open for weeks, and for one stupid second everything hurt in a way that wasn't about veins.
Rin, because Rin is a menace, stage-whispered, "Mother and child reunion."
Apricot, without looking away, lifted a hand and flipped her off with the solemnity of a court oath.
Brenda waited out the moment, then walked over, the camp's center of gravity moving with her. Up close, the past few months had carved something leaner into her face. Not older. Sharper.
"You're really her," she said, no theatrics, just verification.
"Last time I checked."
"Prove it."
"Want me to list the times you got disarmed twice in melee drills because you were too proud to duck?"
Brenda coughed, "Lucky hits."
Ren's mouth did a thing that wasn't quite a smile. "Still a mouth."
"Still your problem," I said.
Something eased around the fire, like the canyon itself allowed air to start again.
"Sit," Sirone said, because officers are allowed to order captains about basic biology. She shoved a steaming mug into my hand. "Still bitter."
The first sip tasted like burnt herbs, strong tea, and two kinds of punishment. "Perfect."
Brenda planted herself beside me, eyes still on the walls. "We had your name on a wall in the mess."
"Take it down after breakfast," I said.
"We already did."
The little noise the squad made at that belonged to a species halfway between laugh and prayer.
Sirone settled near my knee, posture still in parade rest even when she sat. "You look… different."
"I feel different," I said. "Less boom, more blade. Healing isn't done. No mana. No tricks. I'll keep up anyway."
Brenda's gaze traced the pale, angry lines along my wrists, the faint throb there that even the firelight couldn't pretend into nothing. "Mana?"
"Off-limits," I said. "Veins are throwing a tantrum."
Apricot nodded like I'd just said gravity still worked. "Attitude is SSS-rank."
Rin lifted a finger. "You mean SSSsh—"
"Rin," Olivia warned again, exactly as before.
"Right, sorry. Attitude."
"For the record," Brenda said, the corner of her eye cutting to me, "we gave you three days. Then a week. Then a funeral we didn't attend because it felt wrong to pretend you'd go quietly."
"I don't like quiet," I said.
"No," she agreed. "You don't."
We let the fire say things for a while—the crack, the hiss, the little sigh when sap found heat too quickly. The canyon's wind moved at shoulder height, cool and damp, carrying faint echoes that could be beasts or memory.
I looked at the tarp near Brenda's boots. Its middle rose and fell, small, controlled, awake. Rope bit around it in practical knots: Sirone's handiwork. A gag tied off neat: Olivia's, because improper knots bother her sleep.
"Payload?" I said.
"Dea," Brenda answered. "Federation breeder. Monsters. Claims high clearance. Orders from Command are explicit: living pickup."
The name hit a hinge in my head and swung a door I hadn't opened in a long time.
"Dea," I repeated, tasting the grain. "As in—"
"As in the one whose designs show up when things crawl out of pits looking too perfect to be accidents," Sirone said. "Yes."
I crouched by the bundle and lifted just enough canvas to show a face.
Pale eyes. Too pale for comfort in the fire's light. Strands of hair stuck to her forehead in damp curls. Her gaze found mine and went wide—recognition arriving in a hurry, like a messenger who had run down too many stairs. Shock, disbelief, and then an emotion that flickered sharply between relief and fear.
"Hey, Dea," I said softly. "Long time."
Her breath went faster. The rope at her wrists jumped once as if her hands had opinions they weren't allowed to hold.
Brenda watched the exchange. "Are you two acquainted?"
"We've met before," I said, letting the canvas fall back. "I'll get you a version Stacy can shout at later."
"Good," Brenda said. "She was planning to shout anyway. Now there's efficiency."
"Stacy herself?" I asked.
Sirone nodded. "Dawn. Two Federation aircraft on approach. She didn't trust the manifest to anyone else."
That sat heavy and right at the same time. "Of course she didn't."
I glanced up toward the mist and felt the faint thrum of air somewhere high, almost below hearing range. The wind carried a subtle pressure under the rain's hush—the sound of engines trying to pretend they were weather. They really need to get quieter aircraft, I thought. I'm telling her that first thing.
Apricot tugged my sleeve like a child demanding proof the sun would show up tomorrow. "You're staying with us. Right?"
"Until Stacy says otherwise," Brenda answered before I could. "Under me until then."
"Was going to say you still need to lead this mission," I said easily. "You call, I carry."
Sirone blinked. "No argument?"
"I'm tired," I said. "Ask me again after I eat."
That bought me the first real round of laughter, small and honest, with a crunch of relief so strong it felt like bark underfoot.
We ate what passed for dinner—field stew that tasted like discipline and salt and hard bread that tried to chip a tooth to earn its pay grade.
Rin told a six-sentence story about almost tripping a landmine that somehow included a moral and an apology to the landmine.
Chinada briefed us on the options for moving a prisoner without causing injury, mentioning a canyon choke located two kilometers west and a ridge path with poor footing.
Brit folded a map with the same reverence some people reserve for altar cloth. Mia pretended not to sit closer to Ava whenever the wind shifted cold.
Nekro watched Apricot watch me. Sarian sharpened the same knife twice, like she was smoothing out a thought instead of an edge. Toma counted stars on her fingers and stopped when the mist made a liar of the sky.
I allowed the sounds to fill the spaces within me that had grown accustomed to silence. The ache in my arms felt less like an injury and more like a price.
"Rotation," Brenda said at last, and the camp rearranged itself without needing explanation. First watch: Brenda and Rin on the canyon lip. Second: Sirone is with me because logistics keeps its pets close. Third: Chinada and Brit, the sober dawn shift.
I took my place near the fire, not on the warm flat stone I normally claimed by rank and entitlement, but a step back, because tonight wasn't about old privilege; it was about the new air we had to learn together. Apricot abandoned any pretense of sleeping elsewhere and dropped onto the ground at my side like a sack of stubbornness. She unfurled a blanket, then another, and then, frowning, tugged the edge of mine straighter.
"Your corners," she muttered, scandalized. "You never learned bed discipline."
"I learned not to die," I said. "Corner tucking fell off the list."
"Well, I'm adding it back," she said, and the tiny frown she wore trying to look stern cracked something I decided I could afford.
When her head rested on my thigh, she let out a long sigh as if she were canceling a constant alarm. The heat of her cheek bled through cloth and into muscle that had forgotten gentle pressure wasn't always a prelude to pain.
Across the way, the tarp over Dea moved again, this time a cautious inch, like a thought trying to become a decision. I didn't look directly. People behave better when you pretend you can't see them.
Rin padded up, leaned on the wall near Brenda, and stared into the dark the way a cat listens to a room. The canyon murmured back—the moving things small and small-minded; the bigger silences older than all of us.
"Second watch," Sirone said after an hour, voice low, already standing. "Up."
Apricot made a small unhappy noise and groped for my sleeve before remembering she was awake and had hands. She let go like the sleeve burned and tried to arrange her face into a soldier instead of a child. She failed. I didn't penalize her.
Sirone and I took the north wall. The rock felt slick and familiar under my palm. My body liked the climb, even now, even without the old tricks that turned steps into something else. The top gave us a narrow shelf and wind that cut through my jacket and tried to turn my ears into knives.
Sirone set her rifle down and scanned with her eyes instead. She trusts her senses more than any barrel ever made.
"You died," she said after the quiet had proven itself.
"Almost," I said. "Close, but my mother and Kayda were there when I went away."
"We carried your armor out," she said, eyes still on the canyon. "Or what was left. I don't like empty weight."
"I see, so they have faked my death?" I said, surprising myself with the way the word fit.
Sirone's mouth twitched. "Don't do it again."
"I'll check my calendar."
She huffed once. "Brenda stopped sleeping. Olivia started cleaning weapons twice. Mia talked less. Apricot started arguing with anyone who said your name in the past tense. " A beat. "I filed a complaint about the morale drop to Command. They approved more coffee."
"Effective response," I said dryly.
"I threw it at a wall," she admitted, so quietly I raised an eyebrow at her.
Wind hissed in the juniper along the shelf. Far out in the dark, something large coughed in that wet, chesty way predators do when they're close to old water. Sirone and I went still and counted seconds with our shoulders.
It passed.
"Stacy'll be here at first light," Sirone said. "She asked if I wanted her to bring the big hammer."
"She's bringing herself," I said. "That is the big hammer."
Sirone's profile softened by degrees. "She'll yell."
"She's earned it," I said.
Sirone risked a glance at me. "You'll take it."
"I'll deserve parts of it," I said. "Not all."
"Good," she said. "Because if she gets unfair, I'm writing her up."
I laughed, low. The sound scared a moth into my face. I pretended it had been strategic.
We stood in that old, comfortable quiet that pairs learn—the kind where two sets of eyes share the same job and the same refusal to blink until the world blinks first. Down below, the fire had fallen into a bed of orange bones. The squad were shapes under blankets and habits. Dea's tarp rose and fell steadily now, the way people breathe after they've decided to sleep because not sleeping doesn't change the math.
Sirone said, not asking, "You won't push mana."
"No," I said.
"You'll be tempted."
"Yes."
"Don't."
I tapped the cold glass charm against my wrist with a knuckle until its chill bit back. "I won't."
"Good." She eyed my hands. "You shake when you're still."
"It'll pass."
"If it doesn't, I'll hit you each time. That'll give it new purpose."
"Loving," I said.
"Efficient," she countered.
We traded the watch's small uglies—where the rock slicked, where the echo lied, where the wind played games with sound. She updated me on hand signs the squad had refined while I had been missing: a stranger might have called them graceless. To me, they were a dialect I knew the bones of. I updated her on exactly nothing, because tonight was not the night for complicated stories that could get someone killed in the morning for believing the wrong part.
When the hour turned mean and cold and the wet began to creep into sleeves, Sirone passed me a strip of jerky like a secret. We chewed in a shared grimace. The canyon chewed on our backs with teeth we'd already mapped.
"Welcome back, Captain," she said finally, eyes forward.
"Good to be back," I said, and meant it without flinching.
We climbed down. Chinada and Brit were already awake, drinking something that wanted to be tea when it grew up. Brenda had not sat since I'd known her and did not plan to start now. Rin snored exactly once, loudly, like a punctuation mark, and then rolled over to threaten the idea of snoring again.
I took my old corner of stone because Sirone pointed at it without looking and because at some point yielding becomes ruder than obeying. Apricot rolled toward me in her sleep the way a sunflower turns to a light it invented. I drew my blanket up over her shoulder because I'm not made of iron. Her breath puffed indignantly once and then settled into the rhythm soldiers learn in barracks—fall asleep fast, wake faster.
The tarp rustled again.
I let three minutes pass so Dea would think I hadn't noticed. Then I went over in the kind of casual way that tells a prisoner you are in absolute control even if your arms feel like somebody braided nettles under your skin.
I squatted, put two fingers under the edge, and lifted an inch. Pale eyes blinked at me from near-dark.
"Dea," I whispered.
Her throat worked like it had forgotten language hours ago. "Kitsu—" The gag turned my name into a breath. Her wrists flexed against the rope with tiny, precise motions: testing, not begging.
"You'll keep those on," I said. "Stacy wants you alive. I want you quiet. You know which one to fear more."
Her eyes widened. Shock again, sharper this time—recognition cutting through the fear. She hadn't expected to see me alive.
She nodded once, a small, controlled motion, eyes never leaving mine.
"Good," I said. "Sleep while you can."
I dropped the canvas and went back to my place because sometimes the right move is to choose the version of mercy that doesn't look like mercy to anyone else.
The canyon exhaled. Somewhere high, a cloud peeled back and let three stars do their work over our small fire. The cold settled into the bones of the rock and then into ours.
I lay there with my eyes open and counted the ways tomorrow could go wrong. Then I stopped because counting isn't the same as solving, and sleep is a tool, not a treat.
I put one hand on the hilt by my hip. The steel's honest weight ran through the ache in my veins like a straight line through noise.
Down the canyon, the wind changed. It carried a distant, low pulse beneath the night's hush—engines riding the weather, hours out.
Tell Stacy to buy quieter aircraft, I reminded myself, and shut my eyes until only the part that knows what to do next remained.