The polished concrete floors of Monolit felt alien under his boots. Each step echoed in the sterile artery corridor, a sound that had once meant order but now felt like the ticking of a clock counting down to zero. He was moving against the current, against the flow of off-duty personnel heading to evening rations, their faces blank and disciplined. His purpose was a single point of heat in the cold, recycled air: Colonel Morozov’s office. He did not have an appointment. He did not have permission. He had only the fresh memory of a wall of dust and the cold certainty of the council’s blindness.
He reached the door, a slab of heavy steel with a small, brass tri-spoke symbol gleaming under the flat panel lighting. The emblem of Order, Duty, and Memory felt like a lie pressed into the metal. He did not knock. He keyed the access panel with his own code, an act of insubordination in itself, and the door slid open with a pneumatic hiss. He entered, and the door slid shut behind him, sealing him in with the only man in the Citadel he still trusted.
The room was steel, concrete, and discipline. Colonel Ivan Morozov sat at his desk, but his attention was on the pieces of his sidearm laid out on an oil-stained cloth. The sharp, clean scent of solvent cut through the usual ozone smell of the office, a smell of honest work and tangible things. Morozov did not look up. He was using a small pick to clear carbon fouling from the pistol’s slide, his movements slow and meticulous. The quiet scrape of steel on steel was Sineus’s invitation to speak.
Sineus stood before the desk, his posture straight from years of training, but his presence was a violation. He waited. The silence stretched, measured by the rhythmic wipe of an oiled rag against the pistol’s frame. Morozov was a man who understood that silence was a tool, and he was giving Sineus room to use it.
— They are going to let it happen, — Sineus said finally, his voice flat, stripped of accusation. It was a simple statement of fact. — The council has declared the attack an anomaly. They see the losses of Union 9 and the River Commons as a strategic gain.
Morozov paused in his work. He set the slide down, the click of metal on metal unnaturally loud in the quiet room. He picked up the frame of the pistol and sighted down its empty length, as if checking its truth. He still did not look at Sineus.
— I cannot obey an order to wait for death, — Sineus continued, the words coming easier now. — Theirs, or ours. I am going after the source.
There it was. Treason, by the letter of Federation law. A declaration to abandon his post, to defy the council, to act as a single, fragmented will. He expected a reprimand. An argument. An order to stand down.
Morozov set the pistol frame down. With one hand, he reached under his desk and pulled out a dark grey rucksack, its straps neatly buckled. He slid it across the polished steel. It stopped inches from the edge of the desk, a silent, irrefutable answer. It was packed, ready. Not for a standard patrol. For a long journey. Morozov had known he would come. He had anticipated the choice.
The old man’s action was a quiet act of rebellion that dwarfed Sineus’s own. He was not just permitting it; he had prepared for it. He was choosing this bond, this shared purpose, over the rigid, fragmenting logic of the council.
Morozov finally looked up. His eyes were the color of worn leather, and they held no judgment, only a deep, weary understanding of the cost of things. He picked up a small, sealed box from his desk and pushed it next to the rucksack. New water filters. Military grade, the kind reserved for deep reconnaissance missions. A promise of life in the wastes, a practical blessing.
— A man is his purpose, Sineus, — Morozov said, his voice a low gravel, the words not a platitude but a law of physics. — Not his rank.
This was the permission he had come for. Not an order, not a sanction, but a release. The price was his name, his history, his place in the only world he had ever known. He would be a deserter. A ghost. But he would be a ghost with a purpose.
Sineus stepped forward. Morozov met his gaze and stood. They clasped forearms, the grip hard and brief. A soldier’s goodbye. It was a transfer of trust, a silent, binding agreement.
Sineus released his arm and shouldered the rucksack. The weight was a comfort, a reality. It was filled with rations, a medkit, spare power cells, and the filters. Everything needed to survive. Everything but orders. He took one last look at the office, at the pieces of the gun on the desk, at the brass tri-spoke symbol on the Colonel’s collar. The symbol seemed smaller now, a piece of ornamentation on a man whose true allegiance was to the future, not the past.
He turned and left without another word.
The heavy door slid shut, leaving Morozov alone with his decision. The Colonel picked up the pistol’s slide and resumed his cleaning, his movements as steady as before. He was now providing cover for a deserter. He had broken the system to give it a chance to survive.
