"Not here. Not on comms. When we're clean, back at the house, behind closed doors."
She held my gaze for three seconds. The bond between us carried a silent negotiation that would have taken anyone else twenty minutes of argument. Natalia weighed security against urgency, risk against reward, her desire to know everything immediately against the tactical reality that we were standing in an unsecured combat zone with six team members, no legal authorization, and approximately forty minutes before city workers arrived.
She nodded once.
"Move."
The team moved. Not because Natalia raised her voice or because I gave a formal order. They moved because seventeen people who had bled together developed a particular sensitivity to tone. When Natalia Kuzmina said move in that specific register, the one that sat somewhere between commanding officer and natural disaster, your body obeyed before your brain finished processing the syllable.
