Severance

The door sealed behind Acier. The corridor outside hummed faintly with distant machinery, but no footsteps lingered. No presence pressed against the edges of his awareness. Still, that meant nothing now.

They were watching, and Madelyn's report would already be in motion. He hadn't broken or contradicted himself. That alone made him noteworthy. Not guilty, but not safe either.

Ace rolled up the sleeve of his right arm, there was nothing there. Not to the unsuspecting eye. No scar. No visible mark. Just unbroken skin over muscle. Weeks ago, Lorn Reingard had spoken quietly while prepping the injector.

"Military grade. I can seed it under the skin. He won't feel it. Though if he vanishes, I'll find him. I'm an excellent tracker."

Ace hadn't felt it then, and he felt it now. Not physically, but conceptually, a foreign object inside him. The Covenant had admitted there was a spy. A traitor. This "interview" was just the start, more would follow. Audits. Scans. Internal sweeps.

If someone decided to check deeply enough... well, insurance had become evidence. A liability. A risk.

He crossed to the small wash basin and turned on the light there instead of the overheads. From a compact field kit, he removed a sterilized scalpel and a pair of narrow forceps. He found the approximate insertion point by memory and touch, then made a short, precise incision along the inside of his forearm. The pain was sharp and immediate, but manageable. Blood welled quickly.

Ace worked efficiently. The tracker was small, a smooth capsule no larger than a grain of rice. His metallic fingers brushed it once before he secured it with the forceps and drew it free. It hit the porcelain edge of the basin with a faint metallic tick.

He exhaled through his teeth, and then reached for his lightsaber. The blue blade ignited with a low hum, filling the small space with sterile light. He angled it close to the wound and passed it just over the incision, the flesh sealed instantly. The smell of cauterized skin hung briefly in the air before dissipating.

He extinguished the blade and stared at the tracker resting in the basin. Ace crushed it in his cybernetic, then reduced the broken pieces to molten ruin with a brief, controlled burst of plasma. When the blade went dark again, there was nothing left that could transmit, nothing that could be recovered.

Ace rinsed the blood from his arm and rolled his sleeve back down over newly sealed skin, the last excuse to fail now gone.​