The operations room remained unusually quiet after everyone returned.
No one celebrated finding Mercer.
No one mentioned the meeting they had uncovered.
The mission had produced answers, but it had also exposed them.
To Jion, that alone was enough to define the outcome.
He closed the operation log on the tablet in front of him before lifting his eyes toward the room.
“The mission failed.”
Nobody argued.
“The objective was intelligence collection without exposure. Zeropoint knows someone reached that meeting. Whatever happened after the transmitter was discovered is lost.”
His gaze settled on Helix.
“You were inside the operation the entire time, yet you never identified yourself.”
Helix remained leaning against the wall, arms folded loosely across his chest.
There was not the slightest hint of apology on his face.
“Because I had nothing the rest of you did not already have. I was listening to the same comms, following the same updates, and making decisions from the same information.”
“You still should have reported in.”
“It would have changed nothing.”
“It would have changed coordination.”
“It would have changed focus,” Helix corrected evenly.
“You would have started coordinating around me instead of solving the problem.”
The room fell silent again.
Neither of them raised their voices, yet the disagreement settled heavily over everyone listening.
Jion believed information existed to be shared.
Helix believed information without value only created more variables.
Neither was wrong.
They simply operated under different rules.
After several moments, Jion spoke again.
“You disobeyed protocol.”
“I adapted.”
Jion’s expression hardened slightly.
“Improvisation without coordination gets people killed.”
Helix met his gaze without hesitation.
“Coordination without results gets them killed slower.”
“And because of that adaptation, Zeropoint knows we are looking at them.”
Helix’s expression never changed.
“The transmitter confirmed our presence. Whatever they believed beforehand became irrelevant the moment they found it.”
Nobody challenged the statement.
Only then did Helix shift his attention toward Linn.
“And you.”
The sudden change caught Linn off guard.
“You should not have planted the transmitter.”
Her brows knitted together.
“Without it, we would have nothing.”
“Instead, we have half a conversation and a compromised mission.”
Linn opened her mouth to argue, but Helix continued before she could.
“The moment you planted that transmitter, you created a problem you had no solution for.”
The words struck far harder than if he had shouted them.
For a moment, Linn simply stared at him.
She wanted to argue.
She wanted to point out that because of her, they had found the hotel, located Mercer, and gotten them inside the meeting in the first place.
As if reading the thought before she could voice it, Helix spoke again.
“You found the hotel. You found Mercer. Then you compromised the operation.”
His tone remained completely neutral.
“I fail to see which part deserves praise.”
A beat.
“If I had not been there, you would have been caught on the twelfth floor.”
“Enough.”
Jion’s voice cut cleanly across the room.
Helix looked at him once.
“No.”
He remained unmoved.
“If she cannot hear this now…” His gaze returned to Linn, cold and unwavering.
“…she will hear it over a corpse.”
Another brief silence followed before he delivered another sentence with the same detached calm he had maintained from the beginning.
“You survived because someone else cleaned up your mistake.”
There was no arrogance in his voice.
No satisfaction.
He spoke with the same detached certainty he used when discussing routes or surveillance reports.
That somehow made it worse.
“Stop mistaking luck for competence.”
Without waiting for anyone to answer, Helix turned and walked out of the operations room.
Linn felt irritation rise almost immediately, followed by something she hated even more.
Doubt.
She carried both with her when she left the operations room, and neither had loosened its grip by the time the night grew quiet.
Sleep refused to come.
The headquarters had settled into its usual midnight silence hours ago.
Most lights outside her room had already been switched off, leaving only the soft glow of emergency fixtures along the corridor.
Linn lay on her bed staring at the ceiling for what felt like an eternity before finally sitting up with an irritated sigh.
“This is stupid!”
A pair of gray ears twitched.
Tetero, who had been peacefully curled into a ball near the foot of the bed, slowly lifted his head.
“Remember the guy who gave you to me?”
Tetero blinked.
“I finally met him.”
Another blink.
“He is awful!” She threw both hands into the air.
“He talks like he is reading an instruction manual!”
She could not help but punch the pillow resting beside her.
“‘Stop mistaking luck for competence. You compromised the operation’—blah blah blah! Who says things like that?! Bastard!”
Tetero merely tilted his head.
“And he did not even sound angry!”
That somehow bothered her more than anything else.
If Helix had shouted…
If he had lost his temper…
If he had called her reckless because emotions got the better of him…
She could have argued back.
Instead, he had spoken with complete certainty.
Calm.
Detached.
As though he had merely pointed out the weather.
She hated that.
“Actually,” she mumbled, shoulders slumping, “I hate that I cannot even say he is wrong.”
The more she thought about it, the more she understood what had bothered him.
She had done almost everything right.
Almost.
Somewhere along the way, she had solved ninety percent of the mission and overlooked the remaining ten.
The part where people got caught.
The part where people died.
She still hated the way Helix had said it—but she hated even more that she had reached the same conclusion on her own.
Tetero climbed across the blanket with lazy confidence before settling beside her leg.
“You are not allowed to agree with him, okay?”
The cat answered by rubbing its head lightly against her arm.
“Good. Do not take his side.”
A soft knock interrupted the conversation.
Linn looked toward the door.
“Come in.”
The handle turned only after she spoke.
Jion stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind him.
His gaze swept across the room before briefly settling on Tetero, who remained comfortably seated beside Linn as though he had every right to participate in the conversation.
“I did not see you in the cafeteria.”
Linn managed a small shrug.
“No appetite.”
Silence settled between them.
Jion walked over and placed a paper take-out bag on the bedside table.
“I brought you dinner.”
She looked at it before lifting her eyes back to him.
“Thanks. You did not have to.”
“I wanted to apologize.”
She frowned slightly.
“For sending you in alone.”
A faint smile appeared despite herself.
“We did not have a choice.”
Another quiet pause followed.
The room remained still except for Tetero, who had already begun sniffing curiously around the paper bag before deciding it contained nothing interesting.
Jion rested one hand inside his coat pocket.
“Do not take Helix’s words to heart.”
Linn remained silent.
“He has been chasing Zeropoint for years,” Jion said quietly.
“The longer it continued, the more singular his thinking became.”
He let out a slow breath through his nose.
“And his obsession is exactly why he keeps barging into missions alone without informing anyone. The man has absolutely no sense of self-preservation.”
Linn let out a quiet laugh before she could stop herself.
It disappeared almost as quickly as it came.
“I did not know what to say to him.”
“You were not supposed to.”
She looked at him.
“He was not trying to win an argument.”
The words lingered for a moment before Jion continued.
“He was reminding you that mistakes become expensive in our line of work.”
“And he chose the worst possible way to do it,” she added.
Jion neither agreed nor disagreed.
“He has never been good with people.”
Linn lowered her gaze.
“…Still.”
She glanced toward the untouched take-out before looking back at him.
“Thank you, Jion.”
This time, her smile was genuine, though faint.
Jion gave a small nod.
“Get some rest.”
His eyes briefly shifted toward the food on the bedside table.
“And try to eat.”
Without waiting for an answer, he turned and walked toward the door.
A quiet click followed as it closed behind him, and the room fell silent once more.
She stared at the untouched dinner for several seconds before finally pulling it onto her lap.
The following morning felt strangely ordinary.
After the previous day’s operation, Linn had expected the headquarters to remain heavy with tension, conversations lowered into whispers and everyone already buried beneath preparations for whatever came next.
Instead, Crossline carried on with the quiet normalcy of people long accustomed to failed missions, close calls, and sleepless nights.
Life simply moved forward.
The smell of breakfast greeted her the moment she pushed open the cafeteria doors.
She had only intended to grab something to eat before disappearing into a corner by herself, but the sight that met her made her pause.
For the first time since joining Crossline, almost everyone was gathered around the same table.
Sean sat lazily with one arm draped across the back of his chair, looking far too relaxed for someone whose job involved getting shot at on occasion.
Across from him, Jayden was eating while absentmindedly scrolling through architectural drawings on his tablet.
Beside him sat Jace, enthusiastically explaining something no one appeared particularly interested in hearing.
Niel occupied the next seat, stirring his coffee absentmindedly while watching Jace with the expression of someone patiently waiting for an opportunity to make fun of him.
Soren remained exactly as she had expected—quiet, composed, eating breakfast with enough discipline to make it resemble another military exercise.
Her eyes then wandered toward the serving counter—Jion stood there speaking with one of the cooks, his tray still empty as they appeared to discuss something about the morning’s menu.
One person was missing.
Helix.
As usual.
Sean noticed her, then smiled easily before lifting one hand.
“Parallax, over here.”
Linn hesitated for a second, then made her way over.
Somehow, sitting with them no longer felt awkward after everything they had survived together.
She slid into the empty chair beside Sean.
Nobody said anything important.
Coffee was poured.
Toast disappeared.
Someone quietly stole bacon from someone else’s plate before pretending innocence.
Sean had clearly been waiting for her.
“Forget what Helix said yesterday. You were not wrong. His standards are just unique.”
Jace nodded.
“Helix is not a bad guy. He is just…”
“…a stubborn, arrogant jackass who does not think before he speaks,” Jayden finished flatly.
Niel nearly inhaled half his drink.
Jace whipped around so fast his chair squeaked against the floor.
“Hey!” he protested.
“I was going to say ‘complicated’!”
Jayden did not even bother pretending to feel guilty.
He merely shrugged before calmly taking another bite of breakfast.
“Come on. Don’t act like you don’t call him worse every time he calls you ‘Drama King.’ I just uncensored what you actually wanted to say.”
Linn’s attention shifted toward Jace almost immediately.
“…Drama King? Helix calls you ‘Drama King’?”
Jace looked personally offended.
He straightened so abruptly it looked less like sitting upright and more like preparing to defend himself in court.
“I AM NOT A DRAMA KING!”
Jayden slowly looked Jace up and down before turning toward Linn with complete seriousness.
“…He literally just proved Helix’s point.”
“I DID NOT!”
“You yelled.”
“I RAISED MY VOICE!”
“Exactly.”
Sean quietly reached over and slid his coffee a little farther away from Jace before he accidentally knocked it over during the next outburst.
Linn laughed.
Actually laughed.
Yesterday’s conversation with Helix had weighed on her far more than she wanted to admit, yet somehow this ridiculous argument over a nickname was steadily dissolving the remaining tension.
Then another thought occurred to her.
She turned toward Jayden with unmistakable curiosity.
“What about you? Why does he call you ‘Engineer Jayjay’?”
Jayden froze.
His chewing stopped.
Slowly…
Painfully…
He looked at her with the expression of a man who had just been reminded of his greatest personal tragedy.
“…I am warning you.”
A grin spread across Linn’s face before she could stop it.
“So, it is true. You are Engineer Jayjay.”
Jayden closed his eyes, and the table erupted.
Sean leaned back in his chair, shaking his head.
“That,” he said between laughs, “is genuinely the one thing Jayden despises the most.”
“I spent years earning my engineering license,” Jayden muttered.
“Years.”
“And now?” Niel prompted, grinning.
Jayden looked like he wanted to resign from life.
“And now, one emotionally constipated psycho insists on calling me ‘Engineer Jayjay’.”
The laughter only became louder.
Niel leaned back in his chair.
“Trust me, Parallax. Helix grows on people.”
Her face immediately soured as though she had accidentally bitten into something rotten.
“With that personality?”
She visibly shuddered.
“Ew!”
A beat.
“Absolutely not!”
Another.
“Never!”
Almost on cue, a tray settled onto the table.
Jion calmly pulled out the other remaining chair.
“You look like you just bit into a lemon or something.”
Linn rolled her eyes so dramatically they nearly disappeared.
“Worse than a lemon!”
Jion merely shook his head once before quietly beginning his breakfast.
Niel, however, was not about to let Jion escape so easily.
“What about you? You have known Helix the longest. No contribution about his attitude?”
Jion calmly picked up his fork.
“…He has strengths.”
Everyone stared.
“…”
“…”
“That was not the question.”
“It was the safest answer.”
Niel eventually gave up trying to drag Jion into the conversation and instead looked farther down the table.
“What about you, Soren?”
“I don’t see the need to add anything,” Soren calmly replied.
Niel looked unamused.
“You are no fun.”
Soren simply continued eating.
Niel sighed dramatically before pointing his spoon toward Soren.
“Soren is the second Helix!”
Jace immediately chimed in, “Right! They are both cold and expressionless, but Soren is no attitude! That is their difference!”
Jayden pointed his fork toward the empty chair that usually belonged to Helix.
“That psycho will glare at you and insult you if you say something he does not like.”
Niel nodded, turning toward Soren.
“But if Soren disagrees with you…”
Soren silently looked back at Niel.
“…he does that face.”
Soren just stared at him.
Expressionless.
The entire table burst into laughter again.
“See? Exactly that!” Jace pointed triumphantly.
“And during missions,” he continued, warming to the comparison, “Helix has a habit of abandoning the safest plan if something gets under his skin. Soren is always cool and in control.”
“They are like night and day,” Sean agreed.
“But at least Soren is more approachable.”
Linn nodded so enthusiastically that a few loose strands of hair bounced around her face.
“I agree, I agree!” She was openly laughing now.
“Soren is likeable!”
Soren inclined his head ever so slightly.
“Thank you.”
Linn smiled at Soren before her gaze naturally drifted toward the one empty chair that had remained untouched throughout breakfast.
Another opportunity presented itself—she pointed dramatically toward that chair.
“And Helix is a jerk!”
“…Interesting conclusion.”
The voice came from directly behind her.
Every conversation at the table stopped.
Linn froze.
Very, very slowly, she turned her head.
Helix stood there carrying a tray with breakfast in one hand, looking exactly as emotionless as ever.
“So, this is where the morning briefing is.”
Linn shot everyone else a “none of you warned me” look.
Sean immediately looked away, pressing his lips together.
Jayden calmly buttered another piece of toast, clearly amused.
Jace was already biting the inside of his cheek.
Niel had both hands over his mouth, shoulders shaking violently as he fought a losing battle against laughter.
Even Soren had quietly lowered his gaze toward his breakfast.
Jion just sighed, shaking his head.
Traitors!
“I appreciate the peer review.” Helix pulled out the empty chair beside Soren and sat down as though this were the most ordinary conversation in the world.
“…Unfortunately, your sample size consists of exactly one unpleasant conversation.”
He continued with complete seriousness, “I recommend collecting more data before publishing your findings.”
Linn could only stare at Helix.
“…Did you just compare my opinion to a research paper?”
“Yes.”
Linn opened her mouth.
Closed it.
Opened it again.
“…I hate you.”
Helix calmly picked up his coffee.
“I’ll document that as your second data point. You’re welcome.”