Rico – POV
I noticed it at breakfast.
She was smiling.
That soft, almost shy smile she wore whenever she pretended the world didn't ache so much. She sat quietly in the sunlit corner of the dining hall, a bowl of untouched cereal slowly going soggy in front of her. She stirred it lazily with the spoon, not eating, not hungry—but smiling.
Just like she had the last few days.
But there was something off about it.
Too calm. Too rehearsed.
Like a soldier steadying her hands before pulling the trigger.
Justin wasn't there that morning. He'd left hours earlier—deployment logistics, coordination for extraction squads, and new recruits being smuggled in from the northern sector. The moment the labs discovered she was alive—that Number 12 had survived, had slipped through their fingers after all these years—the hunt began again.
And Justin... he'd gone full war mode.
