DR. LAANA RHEE

Laana worked like sleep was an enemy spy.

For the next three weeks, Ren'ō watched her survive on bitter coffee, nutrient tablets, and spite. She ignored medical warnings, command directives, and at least four evacuation drills. When sirens sounded, she simply increased the volume of her music.

Ren'ō learned the rhythm of her days.

At 0500 she recalibrated the Remnant chamber. At 0900 she insulted the research council through a secure call. At 1300 she remembered she had not eaten. At 1315 Ren'ō placed food beside her console. At 1320 she claimed she was not hungry. At 1340 the container was empty.

She learned his habits too.

He checked every exit twice. He stood with his back to walls. He cleaned his sidearm whenever bad news arrived. He never discussed his family, though the military file on her desk contained a black line where next of kin should have been.

One night she found him asleep in a chair outside the containment room, rifle across his knees.

"You have quarters," she said.

Ren'ō opened one eye. "So do the people who keep trying to kill you."

"That is not medically persuasive."

"Neither is your caffeine intake."

She sat in the chair opposite him. The laboratory was quiet except for the low hum of the Remnant. Golden light reflected in her eyes.

"Why did you join?" she asked.

"The military?"

"No, the traveling theater company."

He almost smiled. "Food vouchers."

"You expect me to believe that?"

"They were excellent vouchers."

She waited.

Ren'ō's gaze drifted toward the sealed chamber. "My district was shelled when I was sixteen. Soldiers arrived three days late. I decided late was still better than never."

Laana looked down at her hands.

"Why science?" he asked.

"Because soldiers arrive after the shell lands."

That answer stayed with him.

Their first field mission came two days later. The Science Division needed a rare lattice mineral from a research depot beyond the capital shield. Ren'ō objected. Laana went anyway. He accompanied her because leaving her alone with six civilian technicians felt like assisting a suicide.

The convoy crossed a plain of red dust beneath a sky crowded with broken satellites. Halfway to the depot, enemy drones erupted from beneath the sand.

Ren'ō was out of the transport before the warning finished. He fired controlled bursts, shattered the first drone's sensor cluster, and dragged Laana behind an armored wheel as plasma carved through the road.

"Stay down."

"The mineral case is in the lead vehicle."

"The case does not bleed."

"Without it, the Remnant destabilizes."

He swore, then moved.

Laana did not stay down. She hacked the convoy's maintenance swarm and turned a cloud of repair machines into a glittering wall of metal. The drones hesitated. Ren'ō used the opening, sprinted through the fire, and planted a shaped charge beneath the lead attacker.

The explosion rolled across the desert.

When it ended, his left sleeve burned and blood ran from a cut above his eye. Laana crossed the wreckage, grabbed his face in both hands, and inspected the wound with more anger than concern.

"You could have died."

"I was under the impression that was included in the job description."

"Not for a mineral case."

"You were going after it."

"I am essential personnel."

"That explains the ego."

She stared at him, then laughed once. Sharp. Exhausted. Real.

It was the first time he heard the sound.

He would remember it for five thousand years.