Akira's POV
I got home and sat on the floor. The floor was where I always ended up when something required processing from the ground up rather than from the comfortable position.
The floor had the quality of solidness for what I was carrying, a love confession delivered at six in the morning at the eastern perimeter by the most powerful hunter on Dune, the encrypted mission with Kael's name in the risk parameter, the masked figures in the street gap, the shadow guards dispersing then the warmth that had been running its temperature since the column and was currently running it loud enough that thinking around it was genuinely difficult.
I pulled up the system.
The screen appeared in the quiet of the apartment with its usual patience, the pale blue that had become as familiar as the ceiling.
"Tell me something," I said.
The screen waited.
"The encrypted mission. The convergence point. The permanent danger." I looked at the screens. "Is this connected to him or to me."
