Page 21 of Make Them Pay

"Does the crew?"

The question hangs in the dark. I can hear him breathing. The same controlled rhythm. Twelve to fourteen per minute.

"The crew’s made mistakes," he says finally. "Operations where the planning didn't account for everyone who'd be affected. Where people who shouldn't have been in the blast radius ended up there anyway. Dean keeps a file. Every civilian impact. Every collateral incident. He reviews it before every new operation so we remember what happens when we stop paying attention to the background."

"Does it work?"

"Most of the time. Not always." A pause. "Arrow almost quit after a job in Magnolia Ridge a while ago. A bystander took a round that was meant for a target. The woman survived. Arrow didn't sleep for three weeks. He stayed because Juno talked him through it, but he's never been the same in the field. More careful. Slower to engage. Better, honestly. The fear of it made him better."

"And you?"

"I build the digital infrastructure. I do surveillance. I handle the work that happens before and after the loud parts. The shipping container, your container, that was the first time I've been in the room when someone died."

The honesty surprises me.

"You're not what I expected," I say.

"What did you expect?"

"I’ve known you for years, but never really knew you. Ya know? I guess I expected you to be like you’ve always been. Quiet. Reserved. Something different."

"Everyone sees the version they want to see. The reliable one. The one who doesn't ask uncomfortable questions about methodology because asking them would slow things down." Another pause. "I ask them. I just do it quietly."

The green dot of the uplink charger blinks slowly in the dark. The storage unit settles around us, metal walls ticking as the temperature drops outside.

"Three days," I say. "Orchid says they might move the crew in seventy-two hours."

"I know."

"We lost the vehicle. We lost the secondary bag. We're working from a storage unit instead of a cabin. We’ve lost a lot of resources."

"Also accurate."

"And we're going to do it anyway."

"Yes."

The certainty in his voice isn't performance. It's bedrock. The same material he's been built on since before I knew him. He doesn't believe we'll succeed because he's optimistic. He believes because the alternative is leaving Poe and the crew in a hole, and that alternative doesn't exist in his operating system any more than running through Millhaven did.

I roll onto my side in the sleeping bag. The concrete is brutal beneath the thin insulation but the sleeping bag itself is warm and the dry clothes feel like a luxury I didn't earn.

"Render."

"Yeah."

"When this is over. When we get them out and Serafina is done and everyone is safe. I'm going to have questions about everything Poe kept from me. The operations. The mistakes. The file Dean keeps. All of it. I need to understand what I'm choosing to be part of if I'm going to stay."

"That's fair."

"And I need you to answer them. Not Poe. Not Dean. You. Because you're the one who asks the uncomfortable questions, and I need the answers from someone who's been asking them."

He's silent for a full minute. Then I hear the cot shift. The slight creak of the frame as he adjusts position.

"When this is over," he says. "I'll answer whatever you ask."

"Promise."

"Promise."