Janus and Colonel Mirai — Vantage Station, departure processing level, Gate 7-C — Standard Date 2843.280, the day Janus's separation from the Corps is processed

Gate 7-C was a transit junction, not a ceremony. A corridor junction with a security desk and a biometric clearance terminal and a yellow line on the deck plates where civilian-side began. Janus had been on the military side of yellow lines long enough that crossing one would feel like stepping off something.

He had a kit bag. He had the TAP-7, which he was not supposed to have, in the bottom of the kit bag under a change of clothes. He had his separation documents on a physical chip, which was how the Corps did separations — nothing networked, nothing that could be contested in a connected system. The chip was in his breast pocket. He had not looked at it again after signing it.

He was three metres from the yellow line when he heard her behind him.

He did not turn around immediately. He recognised the footstep pattern — Mirai had always walked like she owned whatever floor she was on. He had observed this for four years and found it useful intelligence and then found it something else and then stopped thinking about what else it was.

He turned around.

She was in full dress uniform. Not duty kit — the formal service dress with the rank insignia on full display and the campaign bars in the correct order and the scar across her jaw that she had also not had treated, which he noticed because he had watched her not have it treated for three weeks and had not said anything because there was nothing to say that she did not already know.

She was standing at parade rest. This was the part that told him the most — Mirai at parade rest meant Mirai had decided something was going to be formal, which meant she was going to say it out loud in the specific Vanguard register that put everything on record even when nothing was recording.

He waited.

"Vantage Station separation processing," she said. Her voice was at command volume in a corridor that did not require it. A passing administrative officer glanced over and then made a decision not to be present for whatever this was. "Serial seven-seven-four, Janus. Separation classified voluntary-administrative. Effective today."

"I know what day it is."

"I'm noting it." She had not moved from parade rest. "I want it noted somewhere, even if it's just the air in this corridor, that on this day, Vantage Station processed the voluntary separation of the commanding officer of the Cinder-7 operation, who will leave this facility with a clean record and full discharge status and the Corps' formal appreciation for his service."

Janus said nothing.

"Voluntary," she said again. The word had a specific texture in her mouth, like something she was deciding how hard to bite down on.

"That's what the documents say."

"I know what the documents say. I read them before you did." She let that land. "I was in the room when they were written, actually. Did you know that? They had me review the language. A courtesy, they said. A way of ensuring the framing was — accurate." A pause. "I did not change the language."

He looked at her. The scar. The parade rest. The campaign bars.

"Mirai—"

"Colonel." It came out flat and immediate, not angry — which was worse than angry. "While you are in this facility, under this uniform, you will use the rank."

A long moment.

"Colonel."

She nodded once, as if this confirmed something. "You made the right call," she said. "I want you to know that I know that, because I don't want you to spend time wondering if I know that. You made the right call. I would have made the same call." A beat. "I have thought about this every day for eleven weeks and I would have made the same call."

He had not expected this. He had expected volume. He had prepared for volume.

"Then—"

"Then three of my people are dead," she said, "and you are walking out of that door with a clean record and a TAP-7 you are not supposed to have in that bag, and I am staying." She said it without accusation, which was somehow the hardest version. "I am staying because someone has to stay and because if I leave I will become the person doing this outside the system, and if I do it inside the system I can at least pretend there is a process." She looked at him directly. "There is not a process. There is just me. And when I have found what I am looking for, you and I are going to have a different conversation than this one."

Janus stood on the military side of the yellow line.

"I'll be in the outer ring," he said. "Under my own name. I'm not hiding."

Something moved in her face and then was gone. "I know. That's the only reason I'm telling you this instead of filing it." She finally broke parade rest — reached up and adjusted a campaign bar that did not need adjusting, a gesture he had seen her make exactly once before, at Cinder-7, in the nine seconds between the call and the explosion. "Go," she said. "Get out of this station. Don't come back until you're ready for that conversation."

He picked up the kit bag.

"For what it's worth," he said.

"It isn't." She had already turned back toward the main corridor. "Not yet."

He crossed the yellow line.

Behind him, her footsteps were already moving away — the specific rhythm of someone who has said what they came to say and is now doing something else. He did not look back. He knew what the corridor behind him looked like. He had stood in it for four years.

The civilian side of Gate 7-C was not different from the military side in any physical way. Same deck plates. Same overhead lighting. Same faint vibration from the station's rotational compensators.

He walked toward the transit hub and did not look at the yellow line.

See also: Colonel Mirai · Janus · Timeline — 2843