Locke made the decision at 14:30.
He would visit in person rather than call.
The justification formed automatically, tactical and clean: fewer misunderstandings face-to-face. Less traceable than electronic communication. Direct contact eliminated ambiguity that phone conversations introduced through tone and interpretation.
All true.
All insufficient.
The actual reason was simpler and more dangerous: distance was easier to maintain remotely. A phone call could be controlled. Timed. Ended when necessary. Physical presence required different discipline.
He needed to test whether he could hold his ground in person.
Whether the boundaries he'd constructed would survive proximity.
...
At 16:47, he arrived.
The house hadn't changed.
Suburban neighborhood. Tree-lined street. Modest two-story structure with a well-maintained lawn and painted trim that suggested care without ostentation. Two cars in the driveway—her sedan and something newer, probably belonging to their daughter now that she was old enough to drive.
Everything was ordinary.
That was what unsettled him.
This was terrain he couldn't map with surveillance or preparation. No tactical approach. No contingency planning. Just a door he'd walked through hundreds of times in a previous life, now requiring the same calculated nerve as entering hostile territory.
Locke stood on the sidewalk for eight seconds.
Then walked to the door and knocked.
She answered within fifteen seconds.
Emily.
His ex-wife looked exactly as he remembered and entirely different. Same features. Same posture. But something in her expression had calcified—not hardness exactly, but a kind of permanent guardedness that hadn't existed when they'd first met.
He'd put that there. Not alone, but significantly.
"Damien," she said. Not surprised. Not pleased. Just acknowledgment.
"Emily."
"You could have called."
"I was in the area."
A lie. He'd driven two hours specifically to have this conversation. She knew it. He knew she knew it. Neither acknowledged the deception.
"Come in," she said, stepping aside.
The interior was familiar. Same furniture, mostly. Different photographs on the walls—ones that didn't include him. The house had continued existing after he'd stopped being part of it, adapting to his absence the way living systems adapt to amputation.
They moved to the kitchen. Emily didn't offer coffee. Didn't engage in the small performative gestures that suggested hospitality. They'd moved past that years ago.
"What do you need?" she asked.
Direct. Efficient. The way she'd learned to communicate with him after realizing that emotional framing only prolonged conversations without improving outcomes.
"I'm leaving for Sacramento," Locke said. "Business. I'll be out of contact for approximately ten days."
"You came here to tell me that?"
"Yes."
She studied him. Not suspicious—she was past suspicion. Just calibrating. Trying to identify what he wasn't saying.
"Is it dangerous?" she asked finally.
"No more than usual."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Emily's jaw tightened fractionally. Old frustration surfacing briefly before being suppressed. She'd learned not to push. Pushing never produced information. It only created friction.
"Fine," she said. "Why tell me at all?"
Locke didn't have a good answer. Protocol didn't require informing her. They weren't married anymore. His operational security didn't intersect with her life except in the abstract sense that their daughter connected them.
"Seemed appropriate," he said finally.
The answer was insufficient. They both knew it.
Before Emily could respond, footsteps sounded on the stairs.
His daughter appeared in the doorway.
Sarah.
Seventeen now. Older than he remembered, though he'd seen her less than four months ago. The gap between visits always made the changes more stark—not dramatic transformation, just the accumulation of small shifts that marked time passing.
She was taller. Her features had sharpened slightly, losing the last softness of childhood. She wore her hair differently. Moved with more confidence.
She looked like her mother.
"Dad," she said. Not cold. Not warm. Practiced neutrality.
"Sarah."
She nodded once and moved to the refrigerator. Poured water into a glass. The casualness was deliberate—performing normalcy to mask the careful assessment happening beneath it.
"Business trip?" she asked without looking at him.
"Yes."
"Where?"
"Sacramento."
Sarah turned, glass in hand, and leaned against the counter. Her expression remained neutral, but something in her posture shifted—interest, maybe. Or calculation.
"Sacramento," she repeated.
"Yes."
"That's funny. Some friends from school are doing a college visit there next week. UC Davis."
Locke said nothing. Waited.
"I was thinking about joining them," Sarah continued. "Just for a few days. Mom said it was fine if I could arrange the logistics."
Emily's expression didn't change, but her silence spoke volumes. This was the first she was hearing of it.
Sarah wasn't lying. She was testing.
"When?" Locke asked.
"They're leaving Wednesday. Back by Sunday."
Three days into his insertion window. Overlapping with the mission timeline in ways that created complications he couldn't predict.
"That's ambitious," Locke said carefully.
"It's just a college visit."
"In a city you don't know. With friends I've never met."
"I'm seventeen, not seven."
The retort was reflexive. Defensive. The tone Sarah immediately seemed to regret, her expression tightening fractionally.
Locke's response formed instantly, automatic: No.
Too dangerous. Too unpredictable. Sacramento wasn't safe even without HYDRA embedded in its infrastructure. Adding his daughter to that environment introduced variables he couldn't control.
He opened his mouth to shut it down cleanly. Minimal explanation. No room for negotiation.
Then hesitated.
The hesitation wasn't logical.
The reasoning against allowing it was sound. Bringing personal baggage during a mission was exactly the kind of situation he'd spent years training himself to avoid—personal entanglement intersecting with operational requirements.
Attachment created liability. Proximity invited loss.
This was how he'd always chosen distance. How he'd justified absence as protection.
But another voice—quieter, unwelcome—countered with evidence rather than emotion.
Distance hadn't protected anyone.
His absence hadn't prevented damage to their relationship. Hadn't shielded Sarah from the consequences of having a father who operated in shadows and disappeared without explanation.
Control hadn't preserved anything worth preserving.
The logic he relied on had produced measurable results: Sarah prepared for rejection before she'd even finished asking. Emily watched him with permanent guardedness. The house continued without him because it had learned it needed to.
This wasn't sentiment.
It was data.
And the data suggested his methodology for managing personal relationships had failed as catastrophically as his tactical approach had failed in the warehouse.
Sarah didn't push. Didn't plead. Didn't argue.
She just watched him with that same careful neutrality, already preparing for the answer she expected.
That preparation landed harder than any accusation could have.
"Conditions," Locke said finally.
Sarah blinked. "What?"
"If you come to Sacramento, there are conditions."
He saw Emily's expression shift peripherally—surprise quickly masked by caution.
"You're saying yes?" Sarah asked.
"I'm saying conditionally yes."
Locke enumerated them precisely:
"You stay with your friends. You don't try to coordinate with me or find where I'm staying. If I contact you, you respond immediately. If I tell you to leave the city, you leave without questions or delays."
"That's—"
"Non-negotiable," Locke finished. "You want independence, you accept that independence includes constraints you don't control."
Sarah's jaw tightened. For three seconds, he thought she'd refuse on principle.
Then she nodded. "Fine."
Not celebration. Not enthusiasm. Just acceptance.
Relief flickered across her face—subtle, contained, gone almost immediately. Like she'd learned not to trust sudden generosity. Like she was waiting for him to retract the offer once he'd thought about it longer.
That hurt more than he wanted to acknowledge.
Emily remained silent throughout the exchange.
When Locke looked at her, she met his eyes directly.
No anger. No approval.
Just caution.
As if she was waiting to see whether this would hurt their daughter more than his absence did.
"I'll send you my contact protocol," Locke said to Sarah. "Memorize it. Don't write it down."
"Okay."
"Wednesday departure?"
"Yes."
"Text me your flight information. I'll be in the city by then."
Sarah nodded again. Still processing. Still waiting for the conditions to escalate or the offer to evaporate.
Locke turned to Emily. "I'll coordinate pickup information once she's there."
"You don't have to—" Emily started.
"I know."
Silence stretched between them. Years of unspoken conversations compressed into three seconds of eye contact.
"Thank you," Emily said quietly.
Locke nodded once. Then moved toward the door.
Sarah followed him to the entryway. "Dad."
He stopped. Turned.
She looked like she wanted to say something significant. Something that would bridge the distance or acknowledge what had just happened.
Instead, she just said, "See you in Sacramento."
"Yes."
He left.
The drive back was two hours of silence.
Locke didn't turn on music. Didn't make calls. Just drove and let his mind process.
The decision to allow Sarah into Sacramento violated multiple tactical principles. It introduced unpredictable variables during a mission that already had too many unknowns. It created emotional leverage that enemies could exploit if they identified the connection.
Every strategic framework he'd built said no.
He'd said yes anyway.
Not impulsively. Not enthusiastically. He'd established conditions designed to maintain control. Boundaries that would let him monitor the situation without allowing it to compromise the mission.
But underneath the tactical justifications, the truth was simpler and more uncomfortable:
He hadn't agreed because it was safe.
He'd agreed because saying no felt like surrender.
Not to emotion—to finality.
To accepting a future where Sarah existed entirely separate from his life. Where the distance he'd constructed became permanent. Where one day she'd stop asking and stop hoping and stop preparing for rejection because she'd learned he wasn't worth the effort.
Some part of him—the part that couldn't be surgically removed through discipline or training—refused to accept that outcome.
---
At 21:33, Locke returned to the training space.
He ran the combat rig for thirty minutes. Pushed through exhaustion. Let it hit him more often than necessary.
Not punishment. Analysis.
Testing whether the decision he'd made would compromise his operational effectiveness. Whether knowing Sarah was in Sacramento would create hesitation he couldn't afford.
The answer wouldn't come from drills.
It would come in the field.
When variables aligned or didn't. When choices had to be made without time for analysis.
Locke shut down the rig and sat against the wall.
He kept telling himself to cut Sarah out. To maintain the distance that protected them both. To accept that his life and hers couldn't intersect without causing damage.
But his actions kept pulling her closer.
Not because he believed he deserved it.
Not because he thought it was safe or smart or strategically sound.
But because some stubborn part of him—the part that had survived the warehouse, that had rebuilt from honest assessment, that had accepted an impossible mission from a god-like being—refused to accept a future where she was gone from his life entirely.
The contradiction couldn't be resolved through logic.
So he let it exist. Unresolved.
A variable he couldn't control.
Sacramento waited.
The mission waited.
And now his daughter would be there too.
Whether that was tactical failure or something else entirely, he'd find out soon enough.