I woke before Raze.That was new. In the years before, he was always up first, already somewhere in the compound before I surfaced, the space beside me cool and decided. This morning his chest was still warm beneath my cheek, and his hand was still in my hair, slower now, unconscious, the rhythm of a man deep in sleep who had not let go.I lay still and listened to the compound.It was early. The grey that came before light, before the perimeter guards changed and the kitchen started and the day acquired its weight. I had maybe forty minutes before the operational morning began and took everything with it.I used them.Not sleeping. Thinking. The kind my father had called "honest accounting"—when you add up what you have, what you owe, and what you cannot afford to lose, and you do not flinch at any of the numbers.What I had: Ada's intelligence. My father's network, dormant and waiting. A compound that was structurally sound and operationally compromised in at least three places, one
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