The week bled by in cold fits and starts.

Skadi spent most of it doing exactly what the Red Stripes quietly hoped she'd do: going where the frost was thickest, the shadows deepest, putting herself between Haven patrols and the people clawing out a new world in Isvann's broken halls.

A few days back, Nika had sent her to bail out one of the smaller cells. They'd tried to take advantage of the power cuts to strike at a Haven relay station.

It had gone bad. Very bad. By the time Skadi arrived, half the crew was pinned under auto-turrets, the rest cowering behind a barricade of overturned crates and shattered conduit.

It took her minutes to end it. Minutes. A ripple of ice through the metal, circuits locking in freezing stasis, a Haven gunner screaming as frost climbed his armor and cracked it like old bone.

When it was done, the Red Stripes said nothing. They kept their eyes down, collected their wounded, and disappeared the way they'd come.

Since then, word had spread. She was the weapon you called when everything else failed. The ice that would smother Haven's hold on Zephara. The monster in the dark no one wanted too close.

Skadi told herself it was worth it. That any blade was ugly when drawn. But alone, later, lying awake on Tala's workshop floor, breath clouding the thin layer of frost that always seemed to find her, the taste it left in her mouth was sour.

Because it wasn't pride that lived there. It wasn't even hate. It was that hollow echo of being needed, again and again, for what only she could do. For what made everyone else step aside.

And every time they sent her out, it got harder to tell who was using who.

Tala's voice cut through the quiet like a scalpel. "You're brooding again."

Skadi didn't look up. She was seated cross-legged on the workshop floor, breath curling around her in small, steady plumes. The frost under her hands had shaped itself into fine crystal filigrees. The motion was unconscious, the result was fragile, and it was already sublimating back into the air.

Tala exhaled, a faint huff of annoyance or amusement. It was hard to tell with her.

"You keep letting Nika set your course. That's fine, for now. Haven's a fat enough target for both your grievances. But if that's all you've got, you'll always be a tool. Her tool."

There was no judgment in her voice. Just clinical observation, cool as the shadows around them.

Skadi's jaw tightened. "What else is there? I want Haven gone as much as she does."

"That's not the point." Tala leaned against her console, arms folded, eyes catching the glow of her displays. "You can want the same ends, but that doesn't mean it's your purpose. Right now, Nika's driving the cart. You're just the hungry beast hitched to it."

"And you think you have a better idea."

Tala didn't answer immediately. Instead, she pushed off the console, flicking a switch. One of the larger displays flared to life, crowded with diagrams that made Skadi's stomach twist.

Arcane runic lines spiraled across schematics she didn't recognize, interspersed with symbols that pulled at her in a way that was almost physical. They were unsettling, but familiar, though she couldn't name why.

"This is from the frigate?" Skadi asked, voice low.

"Some of it." Tala tilted her head, studying the mass of data like she was trying to read a living creature's pulse. "I've been making progress. Even without your help. Not much… it's slow work, and every time I poke the wrong nest, the whole system shifts like it's alive. But alive or not, it has rules. Structures. Power."

Skadi tore her gaze away. The runes seemed to crawl behind her eyes.

"So what, you want me to help again? Let you tear open the sky for your own ambitions?"

Tala gave a soft, near-soundless laugh. "Not tear it open. Not yet. But I think there's something here for both of us. Not Nika's war. Not Haven's boot on your neck. Yours. Your hand on the wheel, your frost wherever you choose to turn it. Not chasing after someone else's need."

Her words settled into the space between them, quiet but heavy.

Skadi didn't trust them. Didn't trust Tala. But under the caution, there was a curl of something else. Something dangerous.

Hope, maybe. Or hunger.

Tala let the diagrams fade, fingers flicking over her console with idle precision. New lines of data streamed across the screen, jittery with fragmented timestamps and spiking energy readouts.

"This is the real puzzle. I've pulled everything I can from the frigate's residual logs. If you can even call it that. It's more like… magical echoes layered over structural pings. Something deep. Almost like it was talking."

Tala squinted at the mess of symbols. "Or being talked to. Hard to tell. But there are three spikes. Three spatial and temporal concentrations. All stronger than anything else in the data."

She pointed with a stylus, highlighting rough coordinate stamps. "Here, here, and here. All on Zephara. All clustered inside a two-day window before everything fell apart."

Skadi's breath stuttered. Her magic drew tight, frost rippling faintly over her shoulders.

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The first set of coordinates. That was… home. Before it all spiraled. Before she truly understood what bringing Akiko into their little world meant. She'd thought she was protecting them, fencing off the chaos by keeping it close.

The second. That narrow maintenance corridor. Where she'd left Akiko behind, convinced the kitsune would only drag more ruin down on them all if she followed. She'd gone home alone, trying to be cautious, only to have to fight off Karn's men, her mother ripped from the world while the kitsune chased her own ambitions.

And the third… that distant flow station that had lit up with fire and falling sky, where the mech had come down like judgment.

Tala kept talking, oblivious to the way Skadi's pulse thundered in her ears.

"I thought it was just random noise at first, but it lines up too clean. The energy patterns match the same runic flows I picked out of the compensator logs last week. Meaning whoever was on the other end, or whatever, it was reaching down here. Repeatedly."

She sat back, shrugging one shoulder. "I'm still digging. Could be nothing. Could be the key to the whole damn thing. I don't have enough context to say."

Skadi couldn't answer. Her hands had curled into fists, cold sinking to her bones in a way that felt older than her magic. If the frigate had touched those places, if it had been part of it all along, what did that make Akiko? Just another victim? Or something far worse?

Tala's eyes cut back to her, sharp beneath the shadows of tangled cables. "Anyway. Thought you'd want to see. Doesn't hurt to know who, or what, might really be responsible for all this."

Skadi pulled in a breath that scraped her throat raw. "I need to think," she said at last, words grinding out like ice cracking underfoot.

Tala just leaned back in her chair, eyes half-lidded, as if Skadi's turmoil was already old news. "Do what you need. You'll be back."

Skadi didn't trust herself to answer. She turned and left the workshop, the heavy hatch rolling closed behind her with a thunk that echoed up her spine.

She walked. Trying to clear her head, to outpace the coil of thoughts tightening in her chest. Maybe if she just kept moving, she could chase down the shape of this. What Tala had shown her, what it meant. What it might demand of her.

Because even with the power thrumming cold in her veins, the thought of facing Akiko, truly facing her, sent a shiver down through every scar.

Would she even stand a chance?

She didn't get far.

"Skadi," a voice called, sharp and purposeful. Nika stepped from a side corridor, her hand resting easy on the grip of the sidearm strapped to her thigh. Her gaze swept Skadi from boots to eyes. "Good. I was hoping I'd catch you."

Skadi stilled. Let the frost inside settle back into its steady, bitter flow. "What is it?"

"There's a warehouse two sectors over," Nika said. "Haven's been stockpiling rations and equipment, taking their sweet time to move it. We have a window to make sure it doesn't make it out of Isvann. Core team only. I'm leading it. I want you there. Not trailing behind to clean up someone else's mistakes this time. At the front."

The words lodged somewhere deep in Skadi's ribs, hot enough to sting. A place. A purpose. Not just a monster to unleash when the situation was already falling apart.

She swallowed. Nodded once, curt. "When?"

Nika's smile was thin, almost approving. "Gear up. Thirty minutes."

It didn't smother the slow burn of Akiko's name in her thoughts. But it was something she could aim at now. A target close enough to strike. And that was easier to hold onto than old ghosts.

The cell's main staging area was tucked behind two heavy doors, half-buried under exposed conduit and salvage crates. Skadi ducked inside, pulse quickening despite herself.

It was cramped, lit by overhead strips that hummed faintly under the Hold's unstable power draw. Old lockers lined one wall, their doors painted with stripes of red that were already flaking. Makeshift benches and storage bins crammed the rest of the space, every surface littered with tools, spare magazines, lengths of coiled cable.

Harvin and Tovan were there, checking gear in the low light. Harvin stood by a workbench, dismantling a bulky sidearm with the ease of long familiarity. Tovan crouched near an open crate, sorting through small sealed charges, his rough hands surprisingly careful as he set them in orderly rows.

Skadi hesitated near the door. For a heartbeat, neither man acknowledged her. Then Harvin's eyes flicked up, dark under the weight of a heavy brow.

"You here for the warehouse run?" he asked, voice flat.

Skadi nodded once.

Tovan gave a short, humorless laugh. "Didn't think Nika would actually bring the ice witch. Guess desperate times."

Skadi didn't flinch. Let the frost behind her ribs tighten instead, easy to retreat into. "What do I need?"

Harvin's expression was hard to read. He reassembled the sidearm with a decisive click, set it aside. "Helmet. Rebreather. Spare cells for whatever Haven decides to throw. Otherwise? Don't haul more than you can fight with."

He paused, then gave her a long, measured look. "And unless someone gives you the nod, keep your tricks on ice. Last thing we need is half the Hold flooding or freezing because your temper got loose."

Tovan grunted agreement, hefting a sealed charge into his kit. "We'll pull you in when the shooting starts. Until then, stay close. Watch. Don't get clever."

It was a quiet humiliation, standing there under their half-curious, half-wary stares. Skadi found herself gripping the edge of a locker door to keep from clenching her fists.

They didn't know what it was like to have all that power coiled in your lungs, in your pulse, pressing outward like it needed to spill or it'd tear you apart.

She swallowed it back. Nodded again. "Understood."

Tovan gave a curt shrug, as if that was all he'd hoped for. Harvin went back to sorting his sidearms.

Skadi moved to the lockers, pulling one open. Inside hung a few pressure jackets in Haven's old dark blue, their insignia scrubbed off and replaced with bands of red paint. They smelled faintly of oil and metal, a scent that settled at the back of her throat.

She picked through them. Found one that wasn't torn or crusted with old sealant. It was too broad across the shoulders, meant for someone with a miner's heavy build. When she slid her arms in, the stiff fabric bunched under her arms and the high collar brushed her jaw wrong.

Her fingers found the inner seals, checked the rebreather socket. Functional. That was enough. A helmet sat on a shelf nearby, scuffed to hell with a deep gouge along one side.

When she turned it over, she caught the faintest swirl of old water damage.

Probably from the same pipeline failures that had torn through half the Hold weeks ago. Her stomach twisted once, then settled. It still powered on. That was all that mattered.

Tovan glanced over from his crate, eyed her with a look that hovered somewhere between grudging amusement and mild suspicion. "Not much for conversation, are you?"

"Not much to say," Skadi replied, adjusting the helmet under her arm.

Harvin gave a small snort. "Long as you don't try to prove something out there, that suits me fine."

Skadi didn't answer. She busied herself checking the rebreather coupling again, anything to keep from snapping something defensive. Her breath ghosted in small puffs as she worked, colder than it should be in this room.

She realized with a start that the frost was starting to creep across the locker's inner panel. She pulled her hand back fast. The chill retreated, leaving only a faint rime that would melt soon enough.

Focus. Keep it sealed in. Keep it small.

Across the room, Tovan and Harvin moved with practiced ease, loading their packs, slotting spare cells into old webbing. They didn't look at her again. They didn't have to. The message was clear. She was power, not a partner. A weapon waiting for the order to be drawn.

And some quiet part of her… accepted that. Maybe even needed it. Being pointed at Haven, at least, meant she didn't have to figure out what she wanted beyond seeing those bastards driven back.

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