Eleven minutes and forty seconds.
She'd shaved twenty seconds off her own estimate, which meant she'd run part of the way. I heard her boots hit the stairs before I heard her key in the lock, and by the time I had the door open she was already stepping past me into the room with the momentum of someone who'd been walking through obstacles her entire life and expected the pattern to continue.
She'd changed. Full combat suit, the custom job in purple and black that hugged every inch of her like it had been painted on by someone with a very specific agenda. Her hair was pulled back into the tight tactical braid she only used when she expected violence, white streaks catching the moonlight from the window and glowing faintly the way they did when the Covenant hummed too loud in her chest.
She looked at the blown-out lamp. Then the feathers. Then Maki, still purring, still naked under the blanket, one tail wrapped around my wrist like a claim of ownership.
