Chapter 517 | Adjust Your Worldview

Chapter 517: 517 | Adjust Your Worldview

Blair’s ears went crimson. The exact shade they’d turned in the conference room when I’d reminded her which way the bet would break. She grabbed her cracked water bottle and drank from it like she could drown the reaction if she committed hard enough.

Naomi’s thumb moved against my thigh, one slow pass, an anchor and a warning at once.

The thing about running eight people who couldn’t agree on lunch was that the meeting only worked if I let it look like it wasn’t mine. Belle handled the numbers. Blair handled the tactical calls she was constitutionally incapable of surrendering. Naomi held the emotional center without knowing that was her job. Javier fed us data. Jordan complained until his complaints turned into contingency plans. Hikaru said nothing and noticed everything.

My job was to sit here, eat my rubber eggs, and drop one sentence at the exact moment the room needed a decision instead of an argument.

"Blair’s right about the shelf," I said.

Blair’s water bottle paused halfway to her mouth.

"Say that again," she said.

"I’m not going to say it again."

"I want it documented. Belle, document it."

"I’m not documenting Monroe agreeing with you," Belle said. "That’s not evidence of anything except the water biome making the call for us. You said that first, actually, so technically the math still belongs to me."

"You’re insufferable."

"I’ve been told." Belle’s mouth twitched at one corner. "By him. Constantly. It’s contagious."

Blair set her water bottle down. She looked at the map again, at the shelf and the transition zones and the tidal markers Javier had penciled in with that careful protractor discipline of his. Something worked behind her frost-blue eyes, the machinery of someone who’d spent eleven years being told strength meant standing alone and was starting to suspect she’d been told a lie.

"We stage on the shelf during low tide," she said slowly. "Naomi holds high ground as artillery. Jordan controls the water’s edge with shadows, whatever he can manage in the murk. Belle and Hikaru run detection because visibility’s going to be garbage down there." Her eyes flicked to me, then away. "And whoever’s field lead makes the call on when we abort if the tide comes in faster than projected. Because it will. Gates lie about their timers."

I felt the ring flicker. Thirty-three percent, three question marks, brighter now than it had been an hour ago.

"That’s a good plan," I said.

"I know it’s a good plan. I made it."

"You made half of it. Belle made the other half."

"Belle made the boring half."

"The boring half is the part that keeps you alive," Belle said. "You’re welcome."

Addison had gone quiet through all of this, which was rarely a good sign. I glanced over and found her watching me with those violet contacts over the brown eyes she hid from everyone, a lollipop stick jutting from the corner of her mouth, an expression on her face that wasn’t quite a smirk and wasn’t quite anything I had a name for.

"What?" I said.

"Nothing." She pulled the lollipop out with a wet pop. "Just watching you do the thing."

"What thing?"

"The thing where you sit there and let everybody fight and then say one sentence and suddenly the whole room agrees and thinks it was their idea." She jabbed the lollipop back between her teeth. "It’s disgusting. Aurora talks about it constantly. Now I have to see it in person. She was right, which is annoying, because she’s always right and it goes to her head."

"I don’t do a thing."

"You absolutely do a thing." Belle didn’t look up from her laptop. "It’s why you’re field lead. Vale saw it, Misato saw it, the entire squad saw it. You’re the person nobody argues with when the ceiling comes down. Which is a terrible quality in a person and an excellent quality in a field lead, so congratulations, you’ve weaponized your worst trait."

Across the cafeteria, the doors opened, and I caught a flash of lime green.

Misato crossed the room with a tablet under one arm and her captain’s mask locked in place, the professional stillness that gave nothing away to anyone who hadn’t spent this morning with her hands fisted in their shirt in a tree line. Her ponytail swung with each step. Her Obsidian uniform sat crisp against a body she spent every waking hour trying to make the world look past.

The lime green ring in the back of my skull pulsed. Sixty-one percent. Yours.

She reached the table and set the tablet down between Belle and Blair without ceremony.

"FGRA confirmed the Monterey credentials," she said. "Deployment Friday, fourteen hundred, eight-person clearance. Full combat authorization." Her eyes swept the table and landed on the projection, the map, Blair’s plan glowing in blue light. "You built a formation without me?"

"Blair and Belle built it," Naomi said. "It’s good. Naomi holds high ground, artillery role, Blair takes support flank because her fire tanks in the humidity."

Misato’s eyebrows lifted a fraction. She looked at Blair. "You accepted support flank."

"I accepted the biome making the call," Blair said. "There’s a difference."

"There isn’t, but I’ll let you have it." Misato picked her tablet back up. Her gaze crossed mine for half a second, and something private moved behind the captain’s mask, gone before anyone but me could catch it. "Debrief the plan again tomorrow after morning drills. I want it running in the simulator before we commit real bodies to a real gate."

"Six AM?" Jordan lifted his head. "You said six AM was for punishment."

"Six AM is for winners now. Adjust your worldview." Misato tucked the tablet under her arm. "Monroe. You’re staying on top of extraction reserves before Friday. I don’t want you burning a cup of essence to Overclock because the tide came in and you decided to be a hero again."

"I would never."

"You did that exact thing three weeks ago."

"That was a different tide."

Misato’s mouth almost, almost moved. She caught it before it became a smile and turned toward the drink station instead, and I watched her walk away with the specific care of a woman who’d let something slip in a tree line this morning and was still figuring out how to hold the rest.

The graft hummed. Eight rings. Nine, if you counted the one flickering in Santa Barbara where a copper-haired scientist kept dead birds in jars and measured how much these people loved me on a crystal plate.

Belle closed her laptop with a click. "Meeting’s over. Everyone eat something that isn’t candy." A pointed look at Addison. "And no scythes in the cafeteria. There’s a sign."

"The sign doesn’t apply to me."

"The sign applies to everyone."

"The sign," Addison said, plucking a fresh lollipop from her pyramid and pointing it at Belle like a duelist’s rapier, "is a suggestion written by a coward, and I don’t take suggestions from cowards."

Naomi laughed. The sound landed warm against my shoulder, and her knee pressed harder into my thigh, and eighteen days sat on the clock like a road with a visible end. Blair’s fire ran too hot two seats over. Misato filled a water bottle across the room and pretended she wasn’t watching me. Hikaru drank her tea in silence and noticed all of it.

I unwrapped Addison’s second lollipop. Cherry again.

"That’s the second one," Addison said. "You still owe me coffee jellies. Two of them. And your hair on Tuesday, non-negotiable, I already bought the dye."

"I know."

"Good. Don’t forget or I’ll haunt you."

"You can’t haunt me. You’re not dead."