Two troopers break off, heading for the Skybreaker.
Sera meets them at the foot of her ramp, a knife in one hand, a compact silence-repeater in the other, moving with a kind of feral grace that makes my calculations adjust on the fly. She’s not Aetherion, but she’s trained. And pissed.
“Cassian,” Lythar says, watching all of this with clinical interest. “Only you would make an ambush into a field experiment.”
“Only you would turn a salvage dock into a sacrificial altar,” I shoot back. “We all have hobbies.”
His gaze flicks to Nyra as she moves with me.
“You feel it, don’t you,” he says softly. “The way the web wants you. The way the Codex wants to answer. You could make this so much easier by stepping into alignment.”
Nyra laughs once, harsh and small.
“I’ve done your kind of ‘align
