The briefing room was too clean to feel real. All straight lines and pale light and surfaces that refused to absorb sound, so every step Fiona took echoed longer than it should have, her boots tapping across a space that smelled faintly of recycled air and sterilized decisions.
They were already there.
Montoya leaning back in his chair, arms crossed, posture casual but eyes alert. Yoon standing near the central display, hands folded behind her back. Adeoye seated at the far end of the table and beside him, on an empty chair, a black box.
It did not belong there.
It knew it did not belong there.
And yet it rested like a heart removed from a body and kept alive anyway.
The door sealed.
Montoya was the first to break the silence.
"Ala," Montoya said, nodding at the book under Fiona's arm. "That's the one they banned twice, right? Once wasn't enough for these people."
A breath.
Then Yoon spoke.
"Let's begin."
The lights dimmed.
The central display awakened, and stars bloomed. Mapped, owned, subdivided into trade routes and corporate holdings and jurisdictional gray zones that layered over deep space like scars etched into a living body.
One name pulsed at the center.
COSMOS X.
"Interstellar logistics," Yoon said. "Energy infrastructure. Advanced physics research. Publicly civilian."
A pause.
"Functionally… something else."
The display shifted.
And Fiona's stomach dropped.
She knew that shape.
She had built it in a tech mall that smelled like fried oil and burnt wiring. Under flickering lights. On a borrowed terminal. With Dision whispering answers faster than her hands could move, and Archon arguing in parallel architectures while Fiona stitched their disagreements into something that worked.
A machine not born of genius, but of need.
"This is the quantum sensor," Yoon said. "Cosmos X already has it."
Fiona's voice came out calm.
"It wasn't finished, they shouldn't…"
"But they do."
Montoya tilted his head. "Wait, I thought that thing was still just theory."
"It was," Fiona said. "Until it wasn't."
The display fractured with a new layer.
Security footage.
A street.
Protests.
Firelight reflecting off broken glass. Police lines holding like walls. People shouting because their homes were being erased so something shinier could rise where their lives had been.
Fiona's hands tightened at her sides.
The screen zoomed.
A woman running.
Her.
Phone in hand.
The moment it slipped.
The moment it struck concrete.
The moment it shattered.
The moment she didn't stop.
Didn't look back.
Didn't know.
Not yet.
Not until now.
"Your phone was retrieved," Yoon said.
Fiona didn't move.
"Not by law enforcement. Not by the government."
A beat.
"By the Grand Lodge."
Something in Fiona cracked like old bone under slow pressure.
"So that's how," she said.
"Yes."
"They didn't steal my work," Fiona said.
Her throat tightened.
"They scavenged my life."
Yoon didn't argue.
"They've been using the design," she said. "To optimize quantum communication between Earth and Mars. It works."
Fiona nodded.
Of course it did. It had been built to bridge silence.
Her voice came softer.
"It was never meant to stop at Mars."
The box beside Adeoye hummed, deeper now, slower, like a breath drawn in grief.
"But," Yoon continued, "they cannot scale it."
Montoya leaned forward. "Why not?"
"Because," Yoon said, "it was never designed by engineers."
Fiona almost smiled. Almost.
"It was designed by someone who couldn't sleep," she said. "Someone who missed her daughter."
The hum softened.
Adeoye's gaze flicked to the black box.
Then he spoke.
"They want it intergalactic."
Fiona lifted her eyes.
"They're lookin' to put a padlock on the horizon," Dísion said from the box, his voice carrying the warmth of old wood and old oceans. "Seen the infinite and decided it needs a border, a toll gate, and a sign that says Keep Out. They don't just want the gold, they want the wind itself."
"And they can't do it alone," Montoya said.
"No," Yoon said. "So they're recruiting the original designer's daughter."
The room shifted.
"But," Fiona said, "I'm not working for them."
"You're not," Yoon said. "You'll be working inside them."
The display changed again and a new file opened.
CAMILLA SANCHEZ VEGA — JUNIOR TECHNICAL ASSISTANT
DEPARTMENT: NUCLEAR PHYSICS R&D
STATUS: TEMPORARY
CONTRACT: PROBATIONARY
Fiona did not breathe.
The screen filled with Camilla's face.
Hair pulled back too tightly. Dark circles beneath eyes that refused to dim. A company badge clipped crookedly to a blazer she was still growing into. Fingers stained faintly with graphite. A notebook peeking from her bag, corners folded, pages worn thin.
"Sky," Fiona whispered.
Montoya's voice came quiet. "Wait a minute, Vega's daughter is already inside?"
Yoon inclined her head.
"She's not an engineer," Fiona said.
"Neither were you," Yoon replied.
"She doesn't have access."
"She will."
"She'll be targeted."
"She already is."
Fiona's chest tightened.
"So the mission isn't the device," she said.
"No," Yoon said. "It's the outcome."
"To evolve the design," Fiona said. "Without them realizing the final architecture was never theirs."
"And," Yoon said, "to ensure Camilla emerges with a permanent contract. Merit-based. Association-based. Untouchable."
Fiona closed her eyes.
She saw her daughter at thirteen, studying under a flickering candle. At sixteen, repairing a fan with duct tape and patience. Then she opened her eyes.
"She won't be alone," Fiona said.
The box hummed again, warmer this time.
"Of course she won't," Dísion said. "Every heart in this room just linked itself to hers. She'll walk with a thousand eyes behind her and ten thousand gears turning for her sake."
Montoya exhaled slowly. "So we're not infiltrating a corporation, pues."
"We're hijacking the outcome," Fiona said.
And this time, no one spoke. They just memorized Camilla's face.
The room emptied slowly.
Boots faded down the hall. Doors sealed. Voices thinned until only the hum of the station remained, that soft mechanical heartbeat that never slept.
Fiona stayed.
The screen was still on.
Camilla's face remained where it had been, frozen mid-focus.
Through the walls, the base came alive.
Laughter, sudden, bright and unguarded. Someone shouting a name across a corridor. A voice cracking, then steadying, then cracking again.
Fiona didn't move, she just listened.
A laugh burst from somewhere to her left. Adeoye's. Deep, rolling, the kind that came from the chest, the kind that carried home inside it. Another voice followed, warm, familiar, calling him by a name no one here used.
Further down the corridor, a softer sound. A child's voice, high and bright, asking when someone was coming home. A pause. A promise. A laugh layered with something tighter underneath.
Yoon's voice reached her next.
Almost formal.
"…yes, I'm safe."
A pause.
"No, I can't say where."
Another pause.
"I know. I know. I promise."
Silence.
Then, barely there. A breath that caught. A voice that did not quite hold.
"…yes, Mom."
Fiona closed her eyes.
Every voice was a bridge.
Every word was a crossing.
Every laugh was a hand reaching across distance and finding another hand already there.
She opened her eyes.
Camilla was still frozen.
On the other side of her universe.
The thing Fiona had built, in flickering light, on borrowed machines, with two arguing minds and one tired heart, was now the artery of everyone else's life.
The bridge that let sons say "I'm safe."
And Fiona stood at its edge.
Listening.
The box hummed. Soft and steady.
Alive in its own way.
She turned her head toward it, slowly, as if afraid the sound might stop if she moved too fast.
Dísion spoke.
"She looks like you, lass."
Fiona swallowed.
"I know," she said.
A pause.
She stepped closer to the screen.
Didn't touch it.
Didn't try.
Just stood there, close enough to feel the light on her face, the faint warmth of something that wasn't really there.
Outside the room, another laugh.
Another promise.
Another "I love you."
Each one landed in her chest like a reminder of a language she no longer spoke.
Fiona exhaled, long and slow.
"This isn't just for her," she said.
The box hummed in agreement.
"This is for all of them," she continued. "For everyone who's already across. For everyone who still thinks distance is survivable."
She looked at Camilla's frozen face.
The hum of the station continued. The voices faded while the laughter softened.
Connection flowed everywhere.
Except here.
Fiona turned away from the screen and walked into her room, shoulders sagging, while the door closed behind her.