Alpha Caius Voss heard her voice from two corridors away.
It wasn't the words that reached him, but the specific, acoustic frequency of her cadence — that low, mathematically precise register she used when she was entirely stripped of societal performance. He had heard that exact tone only once before, in a midnight corridor weeks ago, when she had whispered, 'I am fine,’ and sounded like a soldier picking a bullet out of her own flesh with a hunting knife.
His muscles locked. He did not move towards the administrative wing.
He stood perfectly still before the floor-to-ceiling glass of his command suite, forcing air into his burning lungs.
She was inside his perimeter. The Phantom Bond had screamed the realization to his nervous system hours before Brennan had even entered the room to
