The fall morning light slants through the tall windows, cutting across rows of ledgers. The air carries a low vibration from the floating turbines anchored in the river below, their hum a steady backdrop beneath the day’s work. They once powered the entire base through the worst of the collapse, but since the main hydro plant upriver came online earlier this summer, they serve mostly as backup. Dominion’s current runs steady now, quiet but constant, and for the first time in months the world sounds almost civilized.

I sort through the latest reports from the towns under my sector, the figures clean and within range. Fuel, harvest, production. Winter stores are ahead of projection in two districts and close enough in the third that another week of dry weather should settle it. The shore crews are still stringing cable. The northern depot wants another pump before the freeze. A machine shop that sat dead for more than a year turned out its first usable replacement bearings yesterday.

None of it is dramatic, and that is the point. The world ended in noise. Rebuilding it is schedules, inventories, repaired lines, and people doing what they are supposed to do when no one is watching.

Most of us have already begun drawing our forces back for winter consolidation. Cassian is the exception. His main body remains north, where Taren Kade has secured Port Jervis and Matamoras and begun pushing Dominion’s reach farther along the river. Useful territory, if they can hold it. Expensive territory if winter arrives before they are ready.

With the extra power from the plant, we can feed more current across the river to the factories Adrian’s capital division began clearing months ago. Each week brings another block restored, another line reconnected. If the pace holds, some of those buildings might be producing again by next year.

A knock sounds against the open door.

Bryce steps in with a clipboard tucked against his chest. Twelve now and approaching thirteen in a few months, he is lean and sun-dark, with brown hair cropped close and sharp, restless eyes. He used to twitch through every briefing. Now he stands steady.

“Survey teams say the Atlantic-shore line reaches the outer town by week’s end,” he says. “Cable crews asked permission for double shifts until it’s finished.”

“No.”

He blinks.

“Six hours maximum. Rotate another crew in after that.”

“We lose time.”

“We lose more if someone drops a cable because their hands stopped working.” I sign the bottom of the supply request and slide it aside. “Cold makes people stupid before they realize they’re cold.”

His mouth twitches. “I’ll tell them.”

“Tell them I said it. They can complain about me instead of you.”

That gets the grin.

He checks the next line. “Captain White sent her inventory. Food is fine. Heating fuel is tighter than she wants, but the new power should cover most of the difference.”

“Captain White always wants more reserve than she needs.”

“Probably why she still has reserve.”

I look up at him.

He keeps his eyes on the clipboard with exaggerated concentration.

“Patty has earned it,” I say. “You can deliver the update yourself when rotation allows.”

His jaw tightens slightly, a smile threatening to break through before he reins it in. “When rotation allows, General.”

“Of course.”

The plague generation is growing up whether any of us are ready for it or not. They were children when the world ended. Now some command squads, run storehouses, repair turbines, teach younger children, argue over work assignments, and find reasons to volunteer for routes that happen to pass through someone else’s town.

That matters more to me than speeches about what Dominion will become. I can walk outside and see it becoming something.

Two medics pass the doorway carrying linens and a stack of lesson folders. One pauses long enough to hand Bryce a revised winter sanitation schedule. She glances at him twice while he reads it and manages to turn pink when she notices me noticing.

Bryce notices nothing. I almost laugh. Almost.

The folders under the linens are harder to miss. Revised health lessons. The medics took most of that work off my hands months ago, once the older children began needing more than sanitation and first aid. Safety, hygiene, pregnancy, contraception where we still have it, and enough plain information that no one has to learn by making a mistake they cannot undo.

Kira argued for something broader. She always does. To her, desire is not a problem to contain; shame is. Confidence, pleasure, knowing what someone wants and what they want from you. She treats all of it as another kind of power. Her civilian towns have embraced that faster than mine. They are also the first reporting pregnancies among the older population.

I prefer fewer complications while we are still trying to keep everyone fed through winter. Kira would say that is because I mistake restraint for virtue. I would say she mistakes freedom from embarrassment for freedom from consequences. Neither of us has convinced the other.

Bryce finishes the remaining reports, salutes, and turns for the door.

“Bryce.”

He stops.

“Cassian confirmed the spar?”

“This afternoon. My unit’s already setting up the field.”

“Reinforce the outer plates.”

His grin returns. “Wouldn’t want the fence coming down again.”

“He tends to overdo it.”

“My squad says that’s because you keep embarrassing him.”

“My squad should spend less time gossiping.”

“Yes, General.”

He leaves before the smile can betray him.

For a moment I sit with the ledgers open in front of me and listen to the building work. Typewriters clack down the hall, boots cross concrete, and a hammer strikes scaffolding outside, all over the low electrical hum beneath it.

There are still towns that resist us. There are still children who think discipline is cruelty until the first hard winter teaches them what disorder costs. There are still places where the old world’s habits have survived longer than the people who created them. One of yesterday’s reports ended with three ringleaders sentenced after the second ration-store raid. Two will work under guard through winter. The third organized both raids and threatened the children who reported him. I approved the execution before breakfast.

I do not make that choice lightly. I still make it when leaving one person alive teaches a hundred others the wrong lesson.

But here the lights stay on, the food is counted, and the roads are patrolled. Children who once waited for adults to save them are learning to run what remains.

I close the ledger and check the clock. Enough time to warm up before Cassian tries to prove Bryce wrong.

---

By the time I reach the yard, the air smells of dust and metal polish. Warm light spills over the packed-earth ring where the morning drills scuffed the surface smooth. Cadets crowd the perimeter, two rows deep, uniforms streaked from earlier sparring. Half wear my colors, half Cassian’s, with a few from the other divisions having found excuses to be here.

Across the ring, Cassian fastens his gauntlets, forged steel closing around his forearms with a series of clicks. The plating is heavier along the outside, the joints narrower than the last set. He rolls one wrist, then the other, testing the fit while Gonzalez waits behind him with a clipboard. He has changed them again.

“Standard rules,” Cassian calls. “Three points or ten minutes.”

I look pointedly at the gauntlets. “Are those going to stay attached this time?”

“Probably.” His grin widens as Bryce lowers his head beside me and Gonzalez pretends not to hear.

“Reassuring.”

Cassian raises his hands. Gonzalez signals, and he closes distance first.

The right gauntlet comes low. I pivot away and drive my heel into the dirt, letting Flashpoint answer the movement. Pressure snaps outward between us. Cassian crosses his arms and takes it on the steel. The impact drives him back, boots cutting twin lines through the ring, but he turns with it instead of fighting to stop.

Better.

I am already moving when he uncrosses his arms. The left gauntlet launches from his wrist, steel flashing past my shoulder before I can get inside his reach. I turn after it, expecting him to pull it back, and Cassian is there instead. His armored fist catches my guard hard enough to numb my forearm.

I shove a pulse between us and he gives ground. Behind me, the loose gauntlet scrapes through the dirt as his magnetic pull drags it home. I hear it coming and duck. It passes over my shoulder before snapping against his wrist with a hard metallic click.

The cadets erupt.

“Still watching the wrong hand,” Cassian says as he settles the gauntlet into place.

“You added a third one.”

“Seems unfair to ignore it.”

He comes at me again.

Cassian fights like a problem he expects to solve. Every exchange gives him information, and every failure becomes something he removes from the next attempt. His gauntlets have followed the same progression. First armor. Then reinforcement. Now something he can fire away from himself and drag back, turning the return into another attack if I forget where the steel landed.

He wants them to become an extension of his ability rather than something he happens to wear. I understand the impulse.

With the cadets I am always measuring distance and force, deciding how much I can safely let through. Cassian heals as quickly as I do. If I knock him down, he gets up irritated. For ten minutes, neither of us has to pretend training and fighting are the same thing.

His right shoulder shifts before the gauntlet launches again. This time I do not follow it. Cassian does exactly what I expect and steps inside behind my guard.

I catch his wrist, turn past his shoulder, and release a short burst into his side. He twists with it, but not enough. His boot lands beyond the painted line.

“Point Kaelis,” Bryce calls, and my cadets answer with a cheer.

Cassian looks down at his heel. “You pushed the line closer.”

“I did not.”

“You considered it.”

“I considered making the ring smaller,” I tell him as we move back toward center. “That is different.”

“It absolutely is not.”

The loose gauntlet drags a furrow through the dirt as Cassian calls it back. It bumps once against his boot before rising the last few inches into his waiting wrist.

I nod toward it. “That part is better.”

“I know.”

“Still ugly.”

“I wasn’t asking.”

Gonzalez signals again. Cassian circles instead of rushing me this time, shoulders loose, his attention moving between my hands and my feet.

“You were right about Port Jervis,” he says.

That gets my attention more effectively than his stance.

“I usually am.”

“Modest too.”

“You were the one who wanted to push that far north before winter,” I remind him. “I just told you it was aggressive.”

“I said I could take it.”

“And apparently you did.”

Cassian shifts his weight. “Taren has Port Jervis and Matamoras. Picked up a few smaller settlements on the way.”

“So it worked. You sound surprised that I can admit that.”

“You sounded disappointed.”

“I said aggressive, not stupid.”

His left arm snaps forward and the gauntlet launches straight at me. I knock it off line with a pressure burst and close before Cassian can call it back. He catches my next strike on the remaining gauntlet, metal ringing against my reinforced glove.

“Besides,” he says, giving ground, “Taren has somewhere else to be.”

I raise my guard. “Where?”

“There’s a bridge town west of Port Jervis. Barryville.”

The name means nothing to me. There are hundreds of towns like it scattered through the territory, most of them reduced to whatever the surviving children have managed to keep alive.

“What about it?”

Cassian smiles. “My scouts found the adults.”

For one moment, I stop watching the gauntlet behind me. That is all he needs.

The steel tears backward through the dirt as he recalls it. I turn too late, and the returning gauntlet catches me beneath the ribs before slamming home against his wrist.

“Point Drex,” Gonzalez calls.

Cassian steps away while I straighten. “One-one.”

I rub the impact through my shirt. The ache is already beginning to fade. “How many?”

“Six adults. Two adolescent girls. One baby.”

“How young?”

“Hard to tell. Around a year, maybe younger. Old enough that they’ve seen him walking.”

That settles one question immediately. Whatever else the scouts might have mistaken from a distance, the adults are adults. A baby that age means at least one of them was capable of having a child well before any of the surviving adolescents could have been.

Cassian sees me reach the same conclusion he already has. “That was my thought too.”

“And you are certain?”

“The first scouts were certain enough that I sent another team to verify it.”

He comes in again. I meet him this time, turn his armored fist aside, and release Flashpoint through the motion. Pressure cracks between us and sends him sideways. His other gauntlet launches as he moves, forcing me to break off before I can follow.

“How long ago?”

“Long enough.”

“Cassian.”

He grins as he calls the gauntlet back. “Long enough to make sure.”

The steel skids toward him. I step out of its return path and watch it reconnect. There is something carefully incomplete about his answer. There usually is when Cassian has decided something belongs to his operation.

We close again, trading three quick strikes. His gauntlets change the weight of every block, while short Flashpoint bursts keep him from settling into a rhythm. He is strongest when he controls the exchange, so I keep changing it.

I break left, drive pressure low, and force him to hop clear. “When did the first scouts find them?”

“A couple months ago.”

That answer almost costs me my footing. I recover before he can use it, but the timing settles into place.

“You already knew.”

Cassian’s expression tells me he knows exactly what I mean.

“When you asked to push north last month,” I say, circling him again, “you already knew they were somewhere beyond Port Jervis.”

“I knew the first scouts had found something.”

“And by then you were confirming it.”

“I like being certain.”

I send a burst low enough to kick dirt against his boots. Cassian moves before the pressure reaches him, cutting sharply to the side.

“That is why you were willing to push farther than we planned before winter.”

“Taren taking Port Jervis still made sense.”

“I know. I said it was aggressive. I did not say it was a bad operation.”

His smile returns. “You should say that louder.”

“I am not saying it twice.”

He attacks before I finish. The right gauntlet launches toward my chest, forcing me aside while Cassian closes behind it. I evade the steel, catch his remaining armored wrist, and drive my shoulder into him before he can turn the hold.

He stumbles but stays inside the boundary. The cadets react as one, my side groaning while his answers with laughter.

“Almost,” Cassian says as he regains his stance.

“Keep talking.”

“I have been. You keep hitting me.”

“That is generally what happens here.”

He calls the launched gauntlet back. I move clear of its path before it reaches him.

“How certain are you they are still there?”

“Certain enough that I know where they sleep.”

That changes the shape of it again.

Cassian sees my expression and finally gives me the rest. “The confirmation team stayed. I added more people once they knew what they were looking at. They’ve watched the roads above and below the town, and sent people through when they could manage it.”

“For how long?”

“About a month.”

A month of watching six adults without approaching them. A month of learning who they travel with, where they sleep, what they do, while Taren moves north under an operation Adrian already approved.

I look at Cassian. “You used Port Jervis to put Taren close enough to reach them.”

“I used Port Jervis to take Port Jervis.”

“And the adults happened to be nearby.”

“That part is convenient.”

I should be annoyed. I am, a little. Mostly I am impressed.

“You could have told us what you found when you asked to go north.”

“And Adrian could have decided six adults were not worth changing the plan for.”

“So instead you gave him a plan that worked either way.”

Cassian spreads his hands. “Taren has Port Jervis.”

“And now you want Barryville.”

“Now I want the adults.”

Gonzalez gives us a warning from the edge of the ring. Neither of us looks away from the other.

“And the adults?” I ask. “Anything unusual about them?”

Cassian knows what I mean. “Not that the scouts have seen.”

“No abilities?”

“Nothing.” The gauntlet comes straight at me again. I step outside its path instead of wasting a burst, and Cassian immediately starts pulling it back. “They hunt. Trade. Work with the kids in town. Everything the scouts have reported says they’re ordinary adults who somehow survived.”

I make him wait for the gauntlet. A pressure wave drives him sideways, forcing him to abandon the recall long enough to keep his balance. The gauntlet drops into the dirt behind me.

“Six of them?”

“Apparently.”

That bothers me almost as much as the baby. Six adults surviving together should have an explanation. Powers would have been one.

Cassian finally gets enough space to retrieve the gauntlet. It tears through the dirt toward us, and I move aside before it reaches him.

“They’ve been watching the roads above and below the town,” he continues. “Farther upriver too. If the group tries for one of the crossings, we should know.”

“And the river itself?”

“Fast, cold, and wide enough to do most of the work for us. Patrols are moving along it too. If they start hauling a boat or raft down to the water, someone should see them before they get across.”

Roads watched in both directions. Crossings farther upriver under observation. The Delaware closing the remaining side, not because it is truly impassable, but because crossing with a group that size would be slow and visible.

Especially with a baby.

“So the river is your western wall.”

“For now.”

“Six adults might still try swimming it.”

“With two adolescent girls and a baby?” Cassian catches the returning gauntlet against his wrist. “In that current?”

That gives me less to argue with, and he knows it.

“If they run north, we see them heading for a crossing,” he says as he advances. “South, we see them leave. If they try the river, they have to do it slowly enough for someone to notice.”

“Assuming your scouts do their jobs.”

“They have so far.”

He swings. I slip beneath it.

Cassian has been watching my hands, so I stomp instead.

Flashpoint bursts outward beneath him. Cassian reacts quickly, dropping his weight and crossing the gauntlets in front of himself, but there is nothing for magnetics to grab and nothing for the steel to stop. The pressure ruins his footing.

I follow before he can recover, driving a second concentrated burst into his guard.

Cassian slides backward. His heel cuts through the painted boundary.

“Point Kaelis,” Bryce calls.

My cadets erupt. Cassian looks at his foot, then at me.

I smile. “That line move too?”

“I liked you better before Bryce started talking.”

“I’ll let him know.”

We reset while Gonzalez checks the time.

“Forty seconds.”

Cassian flexes his hands inside the gauntlets. “If six adults survived together, I want to know how.”

“So do I.”

“Then we agree.”

I shake my head as we begin circling again. “We want the same answer. That is not the same thing.”

“Sounds close enough.”

“Thirty seconds,” Gonzalez calls.

Cassian attacks before he finishes saying it.

The first gauntlet launches high. I duck and hear it hit the dirt somewhere behind me. Cassian is already inside the space it forced me to give him, his remaining armored fist catching my guard.

I turn the strike aside and shove him away with my forearm before he can follow.

The gauntlet behind me starts coming back. I hear steel tearing through dirt and throw myself right, adding a burst to the step. It cuts through the space I leave and slams back onto Cassian’s wrist.

He barely waits for it to seat before launching the other. I knock it off line with a short pulse.

The crowd has stopped sounding like individual voices. My cadets, his cadets, boots against dirt, Bryce shouting something I cannot make out.

Cassian feints right, the same opening he used weeks ago. I see it, and he sees me see it. He changes halfway through, firing the recovered gauntlet straight at me from only a few yards away.

Too close to dodge cleanly.

I bring my hand up.

For an instant there is only steel rushing toward my palm.

Then Flashpoint releases.

The pressure front meets the gauntlet before it reaches me. Metal stops so close I can see the scratches across the knuckles.

Then both forces give.

The gauntlet rockets backward toward Cassian as the opposing impact drives me off balance. Cassian throws both arms across himself before the steel reaches him, his magnetic pull catching it badly against the gauntlet still on his other arm. The collision knocks him back at the same moment the recoil forces me two steps in the opposite direction.

Neither of us goes down. Neither of us crosses the line.

“Time!”

Dust hangs between us as we stop. Cassian straightens first and pulls the loose gauntlet the last few feet toward him. It catches against the wrist mount before locking into place.

Bryce and Gonzalez compare their marks.

“General Kaelis, two. General Drex, one,” Bryce announces.

My side of the ring erupts. Cassian’s cadets answer with complaints loud enough that Gonzalez turns and gives them a look. They quiet down.

Mostly.

I nod toward Cassian’s arms. “They stayed together this time.”

He looks down at the gauntlets. “That was the goal.”

“Low standard.”

“You blew the last pair apart.”

“And yet you brought another pair.”

“They’re better.”

Cassian turns his wrist. The troublesome latch sticks for half a second before releasing.

I look at it. He looks at it.

“Mostly better,” he says.

Bryce makes the mistake of laughing.

I take the towel Bryce offers and wipe the dust from my face. “So when does Taren move?”

Cassian looks up from the gauntlet. “Already moving. He left Port Jervis this morning.”

“For Barryville?”

“That’s the idea. Depending on the roads, he should be there within a day or two.”

I lower the towel. After a month of watching the town, Cassian is not sending Taren to investigate. He is sending him to collect.

“And then?”

“Then I find out who these people are, how they survived, and why there’s a baby with them.”

“And Adrian?”

Cassian tests the latch again. “I’ll lay it out at the generals’ meeting this afternoon.”

Of course he will. Not when the idea is still a possibility, but after the scouts have confirmed it, Port Jervis is his, and Taren is already moving.

Adrian may object to being informed this late. He will have a harder time arguing with the operation itself.

Taren is already north. The scouts have spent a month learning the adults’ routines. Barryville is close enough to make the detour practical. If Cassian comes back with six living adults and a baby, the extra time and fuel will be difficult to argue with.

If he comes back empty-handed, that will be a different conversation.

I nod toward the gauntlet. “You should probably fix that before then.”

Cassian looks down at the latch.

Bryce laughs again.

---

By the time I reach the council room, Cassian has the northern map open across the table.

A second, smaller map sits beside it, folded back along the Delaware. Finn Arlo stands at Cassian’s shoulder with a folder tucked under one arm, ink smudged across two fingers and another streak near his wrist. He has several pages arranged in front of him and keeps nudging their corners back into alignment whenever Cassian brushes against the table.

Ronan has taken his usual place near the heater. Dimitri is going through his notes while Kira sits lost in her own world, inspecting the nails of one hand as though whatever she finds there deserves considerably more attention than the rest of us.

Her coat hangs open despite the chill, the collar beneath it lower than anyone else here would bother wearing to a meeting. On Kira it never looks accidental. Dimitri glances over when she shifts, catches her noticing, and immediately drops his eyes back to the page.

Kira’s mouth curves into a sly smile before she goes back to her nails.

Kira does not need everyone to want her. She only needs to know when someone does and what that gives her. Dimitri has never learned the difference.

The door opens behind me, and Adrian comes in last. He takes his place at the head of the table, looks around once, then notices the maps spread in front of Cassian and Finn waiting beside him.

“Okay. You first.”

Cassian straightens. “Taren reached Matamoras without much trouble. Port Jervis fought harder, but we have both sides of the crossing now. We picked up a few smaller settlements along the route.”

Kira’s attention finally leaves her nails. “Both sides?”

Cassian glances toward her.

“Matamoras is yours,” she says, leaning over the map. Her finger follows the Delaware north until the river bends west. “Port Jervis is mine. The river was supposed to divide us up to here, then the line continues north.”

“The river stops cooperating with that plan,” Cassian says.

“The river bends. Our territory does not have to.”

Adrian watches her finger trace the line. “Cassian named Port Jervis when he proposed the northern expansion last month.”

Kira looks at him, then at the rest of us. The silence answers the question before she asks it.

Her eyes narrow. “And no one thought that was worth mentioning to me?”

“You were here,” Ronan says.

Cassian’s mouth threatens a smile. “You didn’t object.”

“I wasn’t listening to you.”

“That sounds less like my problem.”

Kira exhales through her nose and looks back at the map. “Fine. You can have Matamoras. Port Jervis is another conversation.” Her nail traces north from the crossing. “But from here, the line goes north. I’m not finding out next spring that you decided this entire side was yours because I ignored one meeting.”

Cassian studies the line she has drawn. “I’ll make it up to you later.”

The smile he gives her has nothing to do with territory.

Kira’s irritation does not disappear. It does, however, change shape.

“I better be sore afterward.”

Ronan coughs into his cup. Cassian’s smile widens, but Adrian has already waited long enough. He watches Kira settle back into her chair before looking between them. “Anything else?”

“Yes, actually,” Cassian says.

Kira closes her eyes for a moment.

Finn unfolds the smaller map and turns it toward Adrian. A circle marks a town west of Port Jervis along the Delaware.

Barryville.

Adrian studies it. “Why? What’s over there?”

“Adults.”

That brings Kira’s attention halfway back despite herself.

Cassian rests a hand beside the circle. “While we were preparing the northern expansion, my scouts found reports of adults moving through this area. I had them confirm it and keep watch while Taren continued north. They’ve been watching the group for about a month now and learning what they can.”

The version is clean enough for a meeting.

I have known since late winter that Cassian never really stopped looking. I even helped him once when information crossed my desk that belonged more naturally on his. None of that required me to ask what he did with it afterward.

Adrian looks at the map. “And now Taren happens to be sitting in Port Jervis.”

“Exactly.” Cassian taps the route west. “He finished the northern objective. The scouts know where the group is staying, what roads they use, and where they trade. Taren left this morning to pick them up.”

Adrian looks from the map to Cassian. “Before bringing this to me.”

“I wasn’t going to hold him in Port Jervis for a meeting when he could already be moving.”

There is enough edge in Adrian’s expression to show what he thinks of that answer, but he looks back at the map instead of arguing.

“How much have you put into this?”

Cassian glances toward Finn.

Finn answers immediately, almost before Adrian finishes asking. “Eight scouts at the most, sir. Usually fewer. They rotated through so the town wouldn’t keep seeing the same faces. Once Commander Kade reached Port Jervis, food and fuel came through his existing supply route.”

He does not need the page in front of him.

Cassian prepared him for that question.

The version they are presenting is tidy. Scouts encounter the adults while preparing the northern expansion, Cassian confirms the report without diverting meaningful resources, and Taren happens to end up exactly where he needs to be when the opportunity becomes actionable.

None of it is false.

It simply fits together more neatly than the version Cassian gave me in the yard.

Cassian nods toward Finn. “No separate fighting force. No new supply line. Now Taren is already close enough to finish it.”

Adrian considers that, then gestures toward the folder. “What do we actually know about them?”

Finn pulls several pages free, and something thicker slides out beneath them.

Photographs.

Kira notices those before anyone else does.

Finn spreads them across the table. The images are grainy and slightly washed out, some taken at a distance, others close enough that whoever carried the camera must have walked directly through the market.

Six adults. Two girls. The baby appears in only one, bundled against what must be his parents.

Kira leans across the table, her irritation giving way to interest as she studies the men in the photographs.

“Well. You neglected to mention the scenery.”

Ronan laughs outright. “How quickly her target changes.”

Kira picks up one of the photographs. “I can be angry about two things at once.”

“I’m sure you can.”

Cassian points at the photographs rather than getting involved. “Three men, three women. The girls are adolescents. The boy is around a year old, maybe a little younger. Scouts have seen him walking.”

Kira examines the photograph in her hand. “Your report is improving.”

Finn consults his notes. “The adults are Gabriel and Mio Voss, James and Angela Whitfield, and Marcus and Danielle Ellison. Voss and his wife appear to be raising the two girls. They call them Mom and Dad, and they call the Whitfields Aunt Angela and Uncle James.”

“And Marcus and Danielle?” I ask.

“They just use their names. Scouts think they’re brother and sister. They look enough alike, and people in town talk about them that way.”

Finn gestures toward the photograph with the baby. “The boy appears to belong to James and Angela Whitfield.”

Adrian reaches across the table and takes the photograph showing Gabriel.

“Gabriel Voss?”

Finn checks the page. “Yes, sir.”

Adrian studies the photograph.

Cassian notices. “You know him?”

“I do.”

“From where?” Ronan asks.

“Genesis.”

That brings the room back to the table, including Kira, although she is still holding one of the photographs.

Cassian looks between Gabriel’s picture and Adrian. “He worked at the lab?”

“He was connected to it. He was not one of the scientists.”

Cassian leans closer. “So you did know someone else survived.”

Adrian shakes his head. “I knew Gabriel received the cure at the lab. I believed he died there with everyone else.”

He looks at the photograph again. “If the records were accurate, he was one of the last adults to arrive before the accident. Perhaps that mattered.”

Cassian glances across the other photographs. “Doesn’t explain these five.”

“No.”

Ronan nods toward Gabriel. “What did he get?”

“Light.”

Kira lowers the photograph she has been studying. “Just light? No flying? Turning into a werewolf? Vampire?”

Adrian looks at her. “No. Just the ability to produce a small amount of light.”

Kira considers Gabriel’s photograph again. “Eh. A lamp.”

Ronan’s mouth twitches.

I look toward Finn. “Any sign of it?”

He shakes his head. “Nothing. No abilities from any of them. Scouts asked around the market too. The local kids didn’t say anything that sounded like powers.”

Cassian folds his arms. “Easy enough to hide. Imagine trying to spot Kira’s ability. Unless she’s actively using it on you, there isn’t much to see.” His mouth shifts. “And even then, you might be distracted.”

That earns a small grin from her.

“If the others have something equally subtle, the scouts could watch for a month and never see anything useful.”

“Possibly,” Adrian says.

His attention moves across the other photographs. He picks up the one with Mio and the girls, studies it briefly, then sets it down.

“His wife?”

“Mio Voss,” Finn confirms. “Yes.”

Adrian nods once.

“And the others?” I ask. “Any of them from Genesis?”

Adrian goes through the photographs again, giving each face enough attention to answer.

“No one I recognize.”

Nothing in his tone invites another question.

Cassian taps Barryville on the map. “The scouts have the roads covered north and south. They’re watching the crossings farther upriver, and patrols are moving along the Delaware. The river makes the western side difficult, especially with the girls and the baby. Taren comes in from the east.”

Adrian asks him about the force moving with Taren, then turns to Finn for food, fuel, and what has been left behind to hold Port Jervis. Finn answers each question from his pages, occasionally counting under his breath before correcting himself and giving Adrian the number.

I already know most of it. Adrian does not, and he makes Cassian walk him through enough of the operation to see where the seams are.

There are not many.

When Finn finishes, Adrian rests his hand against the edge of the map. “You should have brought the change in objective to me before Taren was already on the road.”

Cassian gives a small shrug. “Probably.”

“Not probably.”

“Okay. I should have.”

The answer comes easily because he already has what he wanted.

Adrian looks at him for another moment before returning to Barryville. “The plan is sound. Keep me informed.”

Cassian nods.

“And bring them back alive if you can,” Adrian adds, his gaze passing over the photographs again. “I want to know how six adults survived.”

“So do I.”

Adrian leaves it there.

Finn gathers the supply pages and the larger northern map while Cassian keeps the Barryville map and photographs on the table. He is almost to the door when Kira points toward Port Jervis.

“Leave that one.”

Finn pauses. “The northern map?”

“Yes.”

Cassian looks at her. “Planning something?”

Kira settles back into her chair. “Apparently I need to start.”

Finn leaves the map and slips out.

The meeting moves on to the ordinary reports. Dimitri asks for another security detachment after a depot crew abandoned its post and a second town refused the new collection schedule. Adrian gives him less than he wants, and Dimitri starts arguing through the numbers.

Somewhere along the way, one of Finn’s photographs has migrated from the middle of the table to the space beside Kira’s hand. Her attention seems to be on it while Dimitri talks, but I catch her gaze wandering between the photograph and the men around the table.

One glance at Cassian earns her half a smile. Whatever she looks for from Adrian, she does not get it; he remains focused on Dimitri’s report, and Kira’s mouth pulls sourly for a moment before her attention moves on.

It lands on Dimitri just as he starts complaining that two of his settlements refuse to follow the new collection orders.

“You could always give them a reason to cooperate.”

Dimitri looks toward her. “They already have one.”

“Apparently not a good enough one.” Kira shifts the photograph beneath her fingertips. “You keep asking people for things they don’t want to give you. Make them want something from you first.”

His eyes dip before returning to her face. The instant he realizes she noticed, he looks back at his notes.

There it is.

Kira settles back while Dimitri tries to recover his argument.

The advice is not bad. With Kira, I am never certain how much of the lesson Dimitri actually hears.

My own requests are easier. When I finish, Adrian returns to the maps he’s been asking me for. “Your supply range still ends well short of your southern patrols.” “For anything regular. I can send people farther. I can’t keep them there through winter.” “I don’t want you to.” He looks down the peninsula. “If your position holds through winter, there is an old Orbis site farther down the Eastern Shore I want you to secure when you resume expansion.” “Another depot?” “More than a depot.” I look at him. “How much more?” “Enough that I don’t want you reaching it until you can hold it.” His attention returns to my report. “If your division comes through winter where it is now, you should be ready.” That leaves me wondering what Orbis built down there that Adrian has waited this long to mention, but Ronan’s requests are easier. Kira spends part of her report asking about routes north that I am fairly certain she had never considered before today.

Cassian has the good sense not to comment.

Adrian says little about Barryville once Finn is gone. He follows the other reports, asks questions, and makes decisions as he normally does.

But twice while someone else is speaking, I catch his attention drifting back to the photographs.

The second time, his thumb rests over Gabriel’s name on the report, pressed hard enough that the skin has gone red.

Two and a half weeks later, the first hard frost turns the roofs white.

By noon most of it has melted, but the cold stays. Last winter came harder than we expected, and no one intends to make the same mistake twice.

Most of us started pulling our people back weeks ago.

Cassian has not.

I find him in his command office late in the afternoon with all three of his commanders around the long table. Elise Thorne has two stacks of reports arranged in front of her. Finn Arlo is working through supply figures beside her, ink across three fingers and one cuff. At the far end, Toby Lennox stands over a map of the Delaware with both hands braced against the wood.

Finn straightens when I enter. Elise is halfway out of her chair before Cassian waves them both back down.

Toby looks up, gives me a respectful nod, and returns to the map.

Cassian is sitting behind his desk rather than with them. He takes one look at me and says, “Don’t.”

I close the door behind me. “Don’t what?”

“Tell me you told me so.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

His eyes narrow. “You told me I was overextended.”

“You were.”

“That’s dangerously close.”

I take off my coat. “If I were saying it, you would know.”

That almost earns a smile.

Almost.

I pull out the empty chair beside Elise. “How bad is it?”

Cassian finally leaves his desk and joins us. “Depends which part.”

Barryville itself went almost perfectly. Taren reached the town without warning, secured the bridge and roads, and found none of the resistance he’d prepared for. Even towns that surrendered quickly usually gave him someone stupid enough to make an example of. Barryville didn’t. Its leaders accepted that they were outnumbered and started negotiating what happened next.

The adults were another matter.

Cassian puts a finger on the town. “Scouts had eyes on them that afternoon. Fog got heavier after dark, but nothing strange for the valley. Nobody saw them leave.”

“Taren thought they were still there?”

“At first. Then he thought the locals were hiding them.” Cassian slides one of the reports toward me. “They searched the places the adults had been using. Their supplies were gone. So was their trailer.”

I look at the crossings marked farther north. “And nothing?”

“Nothing. Every bridge team reported clear. Same for the crossings we had covered. Taren sent scouts north as soon as he realized they were gone, then widened the search when that didn’t turn up anything.”

Toby shifts one of the markers farther upriver. “They’ve checked the roads, abandoned houses, farms, anywhere a group that size could reasonably stop. No usable trail.”

“For two and a half weeks,” Cassian adds.

Long enough that whatever advantage the scouts had is gone.

Elise turns a report toward me. “Taren’s working with Barryville’s existing leadership now. They already had stores, housing, trade records, work schedules. Better organized than most of the towns we’ve taken.”

Whoever made that decision understood what fighting Taren would have cost them.

“They’re cooperating?”

“So far,” Elise says. “Which makes occupation easier. Winter doesn’t.”

Finn pulls a folded sheet from beneath his figures and opens it across the corner of the map. The image is grainy, but the sweep of cloud over the north is clear enough.

“The satellite feed came through this morning.”

The old weather network is mostly dead. This part isn’t. One of the passive satellite services still sends images and raw data to anyone with equipment capable of receiving them. No meteorologists telling us what it means anymore, but we learned enough last winter to pay attention.

The cold mass building north of us does not require much interpretation.

“Another one?” I ask.

Finn nods. “And the temperatures behind it are worse.”

Last winter caught us unprepared. If these patterns hold, this one isn’t giving us any reason to expect mercy.

Cassian folds his arms. “Taren wants another week.”

Nobody answers immediately.

He looks toward Toby. “You’ve been quiet.”

Toby meets his eyes. “You know what I think.”

“I want to hear it.”

Toby glances at me once. There is no nervousness in it, only an acknowledgment that this conversation now has another general sitting in it.

“You told me to disagree when I think there’s a reason.”

Cassian nods. “I remember.”

Toby touches the map north of Barryville. “There’s a reason.”

His finger follows the search area, then stops.

“If they left a trail we could follow, we’d have it by now. We don’t know whether they went north, crossed somewhere we didn’t cover, or found a place to hide. Sending people farther out won’t change that.”

Cassian’s jaw tightens. “Taren thinks he can find them.”

“Taren wants to find them. So do you.”

Finn looks down at his papers. Elise goes very still beside me.

Toby keeps his attention on Cassian.

“But we’re not tracking them anymore. We’re searching places they might be while winter gets closer.”

Cassian doesn’t answer.

He doesn’t need me to tell him Toby is right. That is why Toby is standing at this table in the first place. I’ve seen scouts outside Cassian’s command listen when the boy speaks, and Cassian trusts him enough to ask for the answer he doesn’t want.

Cassian turns to Finn. “Can you keep Taren supplied another week?”

“Yes.” Finn hesitates before adding, “But I’d rather start moving those transports back.”

Cassian looks to Elise.

“Barryville can support the garrison we’re planning to leave,” she says. “Not Taren’s entire force. Port Jervis still needs permanent winter staffing, and the smaller settlements aren’t ready to be left alone yet. Every week we wait pushes something else back.”

Cassian looks at the satellite image again. “And if that moves south faster than we expect?”

Toby answers this time. “Then we’re pulling people home through the same weather we should’ve brought them home ahead of.”

That does it.

Cassian stands over the map for several seconds, one hand resting beside Barryville. When he finally speaks, the frustration is still there, but the argument is gone.

“Recall the dedicated search teams. Taren leaves the planned garrison in Barryville and keeps working with the local leadership. Port Jervis and Matamoras go to winter staffing. The remaining search and support teams start consolidating south.”

Finn is already changing figures. Elise reaches for the orders sheet.

“Normal patrols keep their eyes open,” Cassian continues. “If anyone hears about adults, sees the trailer, anything that might be them, it comes back to me. We’re ending the search, not forgetting they exist.”

“I’ll get it to Communications,” Elise says.

Cassian nods. “Have Capital transmit it on their next scheduled contact with Taren.”

She gathers the necessary pages and stands. Finn follows with the revised numbers, noticeably more formal when he passes me than he is around Cassian.

Toby remains by the map.

Cassian looks at him. “You too.”

Toby raises an eyebrow.

“Before you find another reason to disagree with me.”

“I’ll save it for when you need it.”

Cassian gives him a look, but Toby is already collecting the northern patrol reports. He nods to me again before following the others out.

The door closes behind them.

I wait.

Cassian looks at the map. “Go ahead.”

“I still wasn’t going to say it.”

“You want to.”

“A little.”

He lets out a quiet laugh and shakes his head. “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Not currently.”

I let him have that one.

Three nights later, I arrive at Ronan’s suite with two bottles of wine.

Warm light leaks from beneath the door, and something savory reaches me before I knock. Ronan opens almost immediately, hair still damp from evening training.

“I brought gifts.” I lift the bottles. “Red.”

His eyes drop to them. “Good. I have meat.”

“Actual meat?”

“Actual meat.”

“Then I take back half the things I’ve said about your sector.”

“Eat first. You might get to three quarters.”

He steps aside to let me in.

His suite is warmer than the hall, lights low, heater humming steadily. Music plays from the speaker near the kitchen, guitar and a gravelly voice from sometime in the late nineties. Better than the ancient recordings the capital keeps cycling through the common areas. A new wooden rack beside the door holds his coats, joints fitted clean enough that I know it came out of one of his division’s workshops rather than a warehouse. Ronan’s people keep doing that. Repair something, then decide functional is not quite finished.

A pot simmers on the stove, a short glass of amber liquor resting nearby.

I look inside. “Stew.”

“With actual meat.”

“You oversold it at the door.”

“You can give the wine back.”

I take off my coat instead.

That is how it usually goes here. No salutes. No reports waiting beside the plate. No one measuring whether General Kaelis looks tired or annoyed or distracted.

I reach for the opener, and Ronan watches me do it.

“Don’t.”

“That was one cork.”

“Half a cork. The other half was inside the bottle.”

I take the opener from its drawer. “You have held onto this for months.”

“Because you keep opening the wine.”

I open the first bottle cleanly and hold it up.

“Growth,” he says.

Ronan ladles stew into bowls. Real red meat is rare in the capital now. Most of the nearby hunting grounds belong to towns that need what they take, and no one is stupid enough to strip them for officers. Ronan somehow traded for enough to make dinner feel like something from before.

We eat without talking for the first few minutes. Then Ronan reaches for his glass, and I see the scar across his right palm.

It is new. Pink and raised, running from below his thumb toward the center of his hand.

I catch his wrist before he can close his fingers around the glass.

“What happened?”

Ronan looks down at where I am holding him. “Cassian.”

I turn his hand over.

A wound bad enough to leave that behind would have been ugly yesterday.

“You fought him?”

“He challenged me.”

“And did this?”

“One of the gauntlets caught my hand against the wall.”

I look at the scar again. “That was a good hit.”

“It was a good fight.”

Ronan tears off a piece of bread. “He was good. Better than last time. They’ve changed the gauntlets again.”

“What did they fix?”

“Some of the heat problem.” He turns his hand over as he talks. “More insulation inside. Vents along the outside, and he can throw them off when they get too hot. Let the air take some of it before he pulls them back.”

That sounds like Cassian. Find the problem, rebuild around it, try again.

“Did it work?”

“For a while.” Ronan smiles. “He was very proud of himself.”

“That sounds dangerous.”

“It was a good fight. He caught me twice with one coming back, and I couldn’t just keep heating them every time they got close. He’d throw one, vent it, pull it back, switch hands. Made me work for it.”

I glance at the scarred hand again. “So what happened?”

“He told me I was holding back.”

I close my eyes.

“I warned him.”

“Of course you did.”

“Twice.”

“And then?”

Ronan takes a drink. “I stopped.”

I laugh despite myself.

“The vents help,” he says. “So does throwing the gauntlets away from himself. But there’s only so fast you can dump heat out of that much metal. I kept putting more back in.”

“Until?”

“Until he couldn’t cool them fast enough to keep wearing them.”

“And your hand?”

Ronan flexes it again. “He got one good hit in before that.”

That makes me look at him differently. “So it really was close.”

“Closer than he thinks.” Ronan dips bread into the stew. “That’s part of why he was angry. He’d almost solved it.”

I can understand that. Losing badly gives you something obvious to fix. Getting close enough to see the win and still losing tends to stay with you.

“He was already angry when he came to you,” I say.

Ronan nods. “Very.”

“Barryville.”

“I assumed.” He studies his glass for a moment. “He wasn’t out of control. Just pushing harder than usual. Every time I thought we’d stop, he wanted another round.”

That sounds more like the Cassian I saw three days ago than making his people pay for his mood would.

“Did you let him?”

“Until I thought we’d learned everything useful from it.”

“How generous.”

“I am known for my restraint.”

I snort into my wine.

The humor settles rather than disappearing. Ronan eats another few bites before looking toward me again.

“Still nothing from the north?”

“Nothing. Cassian called off the dedicated search three days ago.”

“I heard.” Ronan turns the bread between his fingers. “Still bothers me that they got out at all.”

“You and Cassian.”

His eyes lift to mine.

I take another drink. “Fine. Me too.”

The Delaware had been high during the operation. Cold enough that falling in could kill an ordinary person long before they found a safe bank. Fast enough that a raft would be difficult even without a baby. Every crossing Cassian thought mattered had people watching it, and Taren’s scouts found no useful trail north.

Ronan watches me work through it. “Maybe they froze it.”

I look at him.

He manages to keep his face straight. “You know. Go all Frozen on it.”

“Go all what?”

The corner of his mouth gives him away.

“Never mind.”

“No. You said it. Explain.”

“Absolutely not.”

I stare at him for another second before deciding I probably do not want the answer.

“Even if someone could freeze water,” I say, “this is a deep, fast river replacing what is underneath you every second.”

“Fine. A lot of Frozen.”

“That means nothing to me.”

“I know.”

He is enjoying that far too much.

I reach for the bread, but the stupid suggestion stays with me anyway. Not ice specifically. The assumption underneath it.

We have been treating six adults who survived the cure as ordinary because Cassian’s scouts never saw them do anything unusual. Adrian knew Gabriel Voss received the cure at Genesis. He knew what Voss could do then: a little light, hardly more useful than a flashlight. Nothing that explains Barryville.

But Cassian made the point at the meeting. Some abilities are easy to miss when you do not know what you are looking for.

I turn the glass once between my fingers.

“Adrian knew Voss.”

Ronan glances up from his bowl. “He said that.”

“He said very little.”

Ronan waits. He is good at that when he chooses to be.

I think about Adrian holding Gabriel’s photograph. About the way his attention kept returning to the reports even after the meeting had moved on. His thumb pressed over Gabriel’s name hard enough to redden the skin.

“He thought Voss died at Genesis,” I say. “But hearing that he didn’t mattered.”

“They knew each other.”

“Yes.”

“That could be all it is.”

“It could.”

He studies me over his glass. “You think Adrian knows something.”

“I think he knows more than he told us.”

That is not necessarily the same thing as hiding something he owes us.

Adrian is allowed to know things I do not. He built Dominion before any of us understood what was happening to us. He has kept information compartmentalized from the beginning because half the people around him cannot keep their mouths shut and the other half think every fact belongs to their division.

I have defended that more than once, and I still defend it. But Gabriel Voss’s name changed him for one second. One second is enough when the man usually gives you nothing.

“What bothers you more?” Ronan asks. “That Adrian knows him, or that Voss is out there?”

I think before answering. “That there is an answer connecting those two things and I don’t know what it is.”

Ronan’s smile is small. “That sounds more like you.”

“I am choosing not to take that as an insult.”

“It wasn’t one.”

Outside his windows, the capital glows against the dark. Street lamps line the inner road. Work lights burn over the machine buildings, with a brighter strip near the kitchens. Beyond the walls, the river catches pieces of it and throws them back.

Proof. That is what I keep coming back to. The power works because someone repaired it, and the stores are full because someone counted them.

Barryville will make it through winter because its children already had systems worth preserving and Taren’s people had enough sense to use them. Dominion took the town without needing to destroy it first.

That is what structure is supposed to do: take what works and make it hold. Nothing about six adults changes that. Nothing about Gabriel Voss changes the fact that the world needed order. Nothing about Adrian knowing more than he says makes the lights outside less real.

And yet the photographs keep coming back to me.

“They were traveling with children,” I say.

Ronan follows my gaze toward the window. “So are we.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

“I know.”

“If they were only trying to survive, splitting up would be easier. Six adults are easier to hide than six adults keeping two girls and a baby with them.”

“Maybe they’re family.”

“Some of them are.”

“Maybe that’s enough.”

I turn that over without answering.

Ronan reaches across the table and nudges the bread plate toward me. “Eat.”

I look down and realize I have stopped again.

“Bossy.”

“You’re welcome.”

I take the bread.

We leave Gabriel Voss alone after that and talk about other things: a heater in one of my barracks that has broken twice because someone keeps installing the same warped replacement valve, Ronan’s cook arguing with his quartermaster over onions, Bryce volunteering for another shore inspection with such transparent professionalism that even Ronan has heard about it.

“Patty?” he asks.

“Captain White.”

Ronan smiles and wisely leaves it there.

The second bottle opens. The music changes, and at some point we move from the table to the couch without discussing it. The room has grown too warm, or maybe the wine has finally managed something. Not much. Just enough to loosen the muscles between my shoulders.

Ronan sits beside me, close without making a point of it. For a while neither of us speaks. That is rare everywhere else.

Silence in a command room means someone is waiting for an answer. Silence in the field means something is wrong. Silence in my quarters means I should be sleeping or working.

Here it can just be silence.

My head rests against the back of the couch. After a while Ronan says, “Cassian won’t forget about them.”

“No.”

“I’m guessing asking you to leave the thought alone isn’t going to work.”

I turn my head. I think about the photographs, Gabriel’s name beneath Adrian’s thumb, and six adults who disappeared from a town without Cassian’s scouts seeing them go.

“No,” I say. “I won’t.”

Ronan nods once. No lecture, no warning, no attempt to tell me what that means about me. I appreciate that.

I let my eyes close again. His shoulder is warm beside mine. When I shift, mine touches it.

I do not move away, and neither does he.

The questions remain exactly where they were. Gabriel Voss is still somewhere beyond our maps. The adults are still missing. Adrian still knows something he has not told us. Cassian still has more territory than he would like heading into winter.

None of that changes because Ronan’s room is warm and the music is low and I can stop carrying my rank for an hour.

But I do not need it to change tonight.

Eventually Ronan stands and offers me a hand.

“You should sleep.”

“I was awake.”

“You were losing an argument with your eyelids.”

I take his hand. “I was thinking.”

“Of course.”

He pulls me up. At the door he helps me with my coat, his fingers brushing my shoulder as he settles the collar into place.

For a second, neither of us says anything.

“Good night, Rhea.”

“Good night, Ronan.”

I step into the cooler hall. The base is quiet at this hour, lights burning along the corridor and across the courtyard beyond the windows. Somewhere below, machinery keeps running through the night.

I feel steadier than I did when I came in. Not certain, just steadier.

For now, that is enough.