The transport kept moving.
Caleb watched the message fade on the comms-chip screen and turn itself off.
He took Hassek.
Hassek had stood outside Caleb's barracks with two men and a threat dressed up as scheduling information.
Now someone else had collected him.
Caleb should have been clean about that.
Instead, guilt moved under the practical part of him and refused to leave.
Hassek had meant danger. Hassek had also been bait, or leverage, or both. Caleb knew the shape of being turned into somebody else's useful object. Knowing that made the satisfaction harder to keep.
The Hacker watched the tunnel glass instead of him. Her hand remained where it was, steady and warm through the fabric of his trousers, but her attention had gone miles away. The distance sat in her posture. Whatever Hassek had become, the old man had reached past him and pulled on something older.
That made the tunnel less like escape and more like transit between traps waiting ahead.
