ログインI listened.The second is younger. A runner who used to move messages between packs. He sits on the edge of the chair like he is ready to bolt if the air shifts wrong, knees bouncing once before he stills them with effort.“They never hit me,” he says quickly. “I want that on record.”“There is no r
Sally brings me the list in the late afternoon, when the light has started to slant and the day feels almost finished.It is the hour when decisions feel heavier because the body is tired enough to tell the truth. She does not hand it over like a report. She sets it on the table between us and leave
I glance down at the manifest in my hands, deliberately mundane. “If your shipment is short, we can recount. If it is mislabeled, that is on logistics, not influence.”His jaw tightens further. “I am talking about authority.”“And I am talking about supplies,” I reply. “Which is what this exchange i
Neutral land always smells like compromise.Metal and dust and too many bodies pretending they are not measuring one another. The supply exchange sits in a wide clearing bordered by temporary structures and transport rigs, crates stacked in careful rows that suggest order even when trust is thin. Th
If someone is watching from the trees, they see all of it.They see no fear. No dominance games. No rehearsed hierarchy snapping into place the moment an outsider might be near. They see a space that does not tighten when observed. A group that does not flinch when attention brushes against it.At m
I wake before the light, the way my body still prefers it.The habit never left. It does not feel like vigilance anymore. It feels like alignment. I open my eyes to darkness that is already thinning, the edges of the room just beginning to separate from one another. The cabin is still. Even the boar