The Mitsurugi compound sat at the top of the sector and had its own zip code.

Caleb arrived at fourteen-hundred in a vehicle the Hacker had sent for him. A black town car with corporate plates and a driver who did not say his name. The driver took him through the south gate, past the formal gardens, and around the main hall to the east wing, where the inter-corp meetings happened.

Furuhashi’s logo was on the welcome screen at the entrance.

Mitsurugi’s logo was beside it.

VeilWard’s logo, which had been there for six years, was not.

A woman in a charcoal suit took his helmet at the door.

She gave him a chip clipped to a lanyard and said: "The session begins in eleven minutes. The stream is already live. Please be aware that the room has fourteen camera positions and three audio feeds. The audience count is currently four point one million viewers."

"Okay."

"Captain Mitsurugi requests that you take the seat at the right hand of the table, not the left. The left is reserved for Furuhashi."

"Okay."

"Tea will be served. Decline politely if you do not want it. Acceptance will be read as a Mitsurugi alliance gesture by the audience."

"Okay."

Her expression stayed professionally empty.

She opened the door.

The room was a long lacquered chamber with a single low table running the length of it. Floor cushions. Sliding paper screens on three walls.

Kikaru’s grandfather was at the head.

He was seventy-eight years old. His suit was black. His hair was white and short. His face had been on the cover of three corporate magazines in the last two years and he seemed older in person than in the photographs, which meant the photographs were taken under good light.

Kikaru sat two seats down from him on the right, eyes fixed on the table when Caleb walked in.

She was wearing a formal heiress robe, dark grey with silver thread at the collar, the family crest at the left shoulder. The brace on her left leg was hidden under the skirt. Her hair was pulled back tight. The leather of her ear was visible from where she had pinned her hair behind it.

Caleb sat in the seat at the right hand of the table.

The grandfather took Caleb in, then Kikaru, and smiled like a man being recorded.

"Mercer," he said. "Welcome."

The session went thirty-eight minutes.

The room dressed the meeting as a sponsorship review.

It was a corporate audit of Caleb’s Saint Halvard’s incident dressed as a sponsorship review for the audience’s benefit. The grandfather asked seventeen questions. Caleb answered nine of them. The Hacker fed him the wording for six of those nine through the earpiece. Three he answered himself.

The questions about Caleb’s father were the ones he left untouched.

The grandfather let them stay that way.

The audience watching the stream did not understand. The public chat scrolled theories fast enough to turn the side of Caleb’s visor into noise.

VeilWard_Investor_44 posted: "Mercer is holding the line. This is an audit. The sponsor offer is theater."

The chat tried to argue with VeilWard_Investor_44 for thirty seconds and then stopped.

At the thirty-six-minute mark, the grandfather closed his folder.

"Mercer."

"Sir."

"My granddaughter has requested a private moment with you before you leave the compound. The session is closing. The stream is wrapping in two minutes. I will not be in the garden when you go to the garden. The cameras will not be in the garden. The microphones will not be in the garden. Five minutes is the maximum I am giving you. After five minutes, my granddaughter will return to this room to brief me. Do not say anything in the garden that you would not want me to know within the hour."

"Understood."

"Good. The stream is closing. Have a pleasant afternoon."

The screens slid open. The lights came up. The cameras blinked out.

Caleb stood.

Kikaru kept her face angled away from him and walked through the east-facing screen into the garden.

He followed.

The garden was a square of raked white gravel with a single ornamental tree at the center and a stone bench under the tree.

Kikaru went to the bench.

She did not sit.

She put one hand on the back of the bench and the other at her left thigh, where the brace was tightest.

He stopped three feet from her. She turned, and the heiress face was gone.

"Caleb."

"Kikaru."

"I have five minutes. I want to use them in a specific way. Do not interrupt me until I am done."

"Okay."

She took a breath.

She let it out.

"My grandfather is going to disinherit me on Day Eighteen. He told me last night. He has the papers drawn. The disinheritance is not because of you. It is because of a position I took on Day Six that has nothing to do with you, but he is going to use you as the public reason. The public reason is going to be that I picked you over my division. The real reason is that I refused to sign a Mitsurugi Compliance order that would have authorized hunters to move on Captain Elara’s apartment on Day Eight. I held the order in my desk for three days. He found it last night. He did not raise his voice. He went into his study and drew up the disinheritance papers and brought them to me at breakfast."

Caleb said nothing.

She continued.

"I am telling you because if I do not survive Day Sixteen and you do, I want you to know what I did. I want you to know that I made a choice and the choice was not romantic. The choice was a position about my division and about the captain I respect. The fact that you are connected to that position is incidental. I want you to know that because I do not want you carrying a debt for a decision I would have made anyway."

"Kikaru."

"I am not done."

"Okay."

"The second thing is that the decision being not-romantic does not mean I do not want it to also be romantic. I want it to be both. I am twenty-one years old and I have been told for the last three years what I am supposed to want, and I have stopped wanting it. I want one thing the Mitsurugi family has not chosen for me. I want it to be you. I do not know if you want me to be that thing for you. I am not asking you to decide it today. I am telling you it now because if I do not survive Day Sixteen, I want you to have it in your head."

She stopped. Her attention settled on him. He stepped forward. She did not move.

He put his right hand on her left cheek, his thumb at the line of her jaw, and he held her there while the gravel garden went quiet.

Then he kissed her, slower than the motel room and steadier than either of them had earned.

She put her hand on the back of his neck and held him in place for it.

When she stepped back, her eyes were wet, but the tears stayed where they were.

"Caleb."

"Yeah."

"You came when I needed it. I will not forget. Survive Day Sixteen. I will find you."

"Always."

"Yeah."

She walked back into the building with her eyes forward.

The car was waiting.

The driver did not say anything about Caleb’s face.

The Hacker came on the comm at the second gate.

[Hacker: Aris was taken at oh-eight-fourteen this morning. I learned about it twenty minutes ago. The executive hunters moved him out of the city through the east airstrip. Elara is mobilizing. She wants you at the staging point at sixteen-hundred. The staging point is the disposal yard you used to work at. Vance is expecting you. Bring the dampener. Bring the harness. Bring whatever else of your father’s you are carrying that is not the photograph.]

"Why not the photograph."

[Hacker: Because if you die today, I want the photograph to stay with someone who will give it back to your mother.]

His attention fixed on the back of the driver’s head.

"Take me to the south disposal yard."

"Yes, sir."

The car turned.