"Noah."
"You'll do it," Noah said, "because he's right, and because if you go to Meridian Heights I will physically remove you, and neither of us wants that conversation."
Cel exhaled. Then she stepped up and kissed my cheek, dry and quick and entirely unlike her, and she was already walking before I processed it.
"Come back," she said over her shoulder. "I have a full report to demand."
Monday night through Tuesday afternoon, the house turned into a machine.
Natalia ran both formations in the basement gym like she was auditioning for a war. Isabelle drilled her seven on corridor rotation until Hikari begged for mercy and Marco stopped being able to lift his arms. My five ran barrier timing over and over: Natalia throwing walls, Skylar seeding smoke, Soomin calling threat vectors from a catwalk twelve feet up, Emi tracking output on all four of us so she'd know who was about to break before they knew.
