Private A Signal Only One Man Will Hear

[Shade]

The cell on Desevro was cold in a way Shade understood instinctively. Not harsh, not biting—simply indifferent, a chill that seeped into the walls and settled there like an old habit. The stone around her carried the dampness of the planet's sulfur fog, dim light catching in narrow seams along the ceiling, humming softly with the cadence of the power restraints. Shade sat with her back straight against the wall, legs folded neatly, her hands resting loosely atop her knees. Her breathing remained unaltered. Nothing about her posture suggested captivity, only calculation.

The hours blurred in familiar patterns of silence. She had grown up in places far less forgiving than this; stillness had never been an enemy. It had always been a tool.

Footsteps broke the quiet—the steady, measured gait she had come to distinguish easily from the others. Lysander. He paused outside the cell, the faint shift in the air signalling the momentary drop in the energy barrier as he stepped inside. Shade did not rise or look away. She simply observed him with the same calm, unblinking precision she used to analyze terrain before a kill.

He studied her in silence, his presence controlled, grounded, entirely unbothered by the oppressive stillness of the confinement chamber. His attention moved across the walls, the floor, the way she held herself—as if searching for the fault lines she refused to show. When his evaluation ended, he turned and left as quietly as he had arrived. The barrier snapped back into place, and the corridor swallowed the sound of his fading steps.

Only then did Shade shift her attention toward the minor irregularity she had been tracking for days—a nearly invisible seam in the corner panel where one inattentive acolyte had failed to reseal properly during a maintenance rotation. She rose soundlessly, crossing the cell with a fluid certainty that seemed out of place in a prison. Kneeling beside the panel, she brushed her fingers along its edge, feeling the faint warmth of the conduit beneath.

From the interior hem of her sleeve, she withdrew a sliver of metal wiring—nothing more than a scrap salvaged during one of Lysander's observation sessions. She had pieced it together carefully over time, scanning the cell's cycles, memorizing the pulse timing of the energy barrier and the secondary grid. Shade only needed a breath of interference, a flicker the system wouldn't register as a threat.

She slipped the wire through the seam and grounded it with practiced precision. The cell lights dipped—barely a heartbeat—and returned to normal. No alarms. No alerts.

Shade withdrew a second object: a transmitter hardly wider than her fingernail, its surface matte, its components scavenged and reconfigured from tiny details no guard had considered worth noticing. Primitive by her usual standards, but more than sufficient.

She encoded the message quickly—compressed, layered, and routed to hitch a ride on the Academy's external maintenance signal. If intercepted, it would burn itself into nothing.

Her thumb hovered for a single second. No hesitation—just acknowledgment of the weight behind what she was about to send.

Then she activated it.

A faint pulse of light vanished into the conduit.

<BEGIN BURST // ENCRYPTION: SHADE-TAL'VOSS>
— Alive.
— Location: Desevro Academy, Sublevel 3 — Holding Bloc C.
— Status: Controlled. Observed. Stable.
— Extraction not advised without planning.
— Stand by.
<END BURST>

Shade dismantled the transmitter with the same care she had assembled it, pushing the remnants back into the seam before pressing the panel flush with the wall once more. The cell became whole. Silent. Undisturbed.

She returned to her place on the slab, posture composed, hands folded once again on her knees. The faint hum of the restraints resumed their steady drone.

In the corridor beyond, Lysander's presence returned—a subtle shift in the air, a shadow lengthening across the floor as he paused outside the cell again. Shade did not acknowledge him, nor did she turn her head. He needed no reaction to confirm that she remained unbroken; the silence itself told him everything.

Her eyes lowered, steady and unreadable.

Patience had always been her strongest weapon.

She closed her eyes just briefly, exhaling with the quiet precision of someone who had already set the next stage of her plan into motion.

Cassian would receive the message. And when he did—everything else would begin.

Cassian Abrantes

 

[Cassian Abrantes]

Shade
​

The air in Moenia carried the muted chill of late evening, dew gathering on the glass façades of the security compound, the faint hum of repulsorlifts somewhere down the hill. Inside the operations room, Cassian Abrantes stood over the comms console, jaw set, the light from the monitors tracing sharp lines along his face. The faint green line pulsing across the monitor marked the passage of time far too precisely. She was late. Not by hours, by a whole day.

Shade Tal'voss never missed her window.

He'd told himself that a dozen times already, like a mantra meant to make the absence reasonable. Weather interference, system lag, encrypted relays taking longer to clear Desevro's storms. Every explanation had a neat, logical shape to it, none of them felt right.

His reflection in the duraglass showed a face drawn taut with fatigue and restraint. He'd run missions with her long enough to know what her silences meant, and this one was wrong.

"Still nothing?" a voice asked from the side console. One of the analysts, cautious, respectful.

Cassian's hand rested briefly on the edge of the desk. "No," he said quietly. "Keep the channels open. If she pings, I want priority override."

He turned away before the officer could reply, moving toward the broad viewport overlooking the city.

The seconds stretched. Then...

A soft chirp. One of the analysts sat bolt upright. "Sir, transmission incoming. Encrypted. Origin tag… it's hers."

Cassian was already crossing the room. His hand moved faster than thought, keying in the decryption sequence Shade herself had designed. The holographic projection flared once, static, distortion, and then the coded burst unfolded in compact lines across the air.

— Alive.
— Location: Desevro Academy, Sublevel 3 — Holding Bloc C.
— Status: Controlled. Observed. Stable.
— Extraction not advised without planning.
— Stand by.

He exhaled through his nose, steady but sharp, a soldier's way of forcing the emotion back into discipline. Alive. That single word steadied him, and enraged him in equal measure.

Cassian straightened, gaze sweeping toward the command center beyond the glass. "Get me the Alpha strike team," he ordered. "And patch through to Command. Quiet channel."

"Sir?"

"She's alive," he said, voice low but fierce. "And we're getting her out."

Rain streaked the glass behind him, the sound of it soft but relentless. Somewhere far away, Shade Tal'voss was sitting in silence, trusting him to move. And Cassian Abrantes, was not going to lose her.

 

[Shade]

The cell was silent. Not the kind of silence that unsettled lesser minds, but the familiar, insulated quiet Shade had grown up with on Csilla—cold walls, regulated air, and the soft hum of a power-field that never changed pitch. Predictable. Contained. Almost comforting in its consistency. She used it.

Her day unfolded with the same deliberate precision she applied to everything else.

She woke at the exact moment every cycle—not because they scheduled it, but because she refused to let anyone else dictate the rhythm of her body. She sat on the narrow cot, legs folded beneath her, back straight, breathing slow and controlled. She catalogued the minor changes: the humidity shift when the vents cycled, the faint variations in footsteps outside the door, the way the guard rotation clicked into place every ninety-four minutes.

Information was never insignificant.

Breakfast came—ration bars, soured caf, and nutrient paste. She ate none of it until she had tested the temperature for tampering and compared the composition to yesterday's. Then she consumed exactly enough to maintain physical performance. Nothing more. Hunger sharpened the senses.

Interrogation happened sporadically.

They brought her into a chamber lit too brightly, with floors designed to echo footsteps for psychological effect. It did nothing to her. Shade listened to their questions, calculated their angles, and gave them answers measured down to the syllable. Not resistance, not submission—simply control.

They learned quickly that she did not break.

She learned far more quickly what they wanted.

When they returned her to her cell, she did not pace. She did not sleep. She moved.

Silent drills. Balance work. Micro-movements to maintain muscle memory. Breath conditioning. Stretching. Combat simulations done in stillness, mapping trajectories only in the mind. She imagined the courtyard above—the turning columns, the slick stones, the fog—then traced the angles of every possible escape route over and over until the timing aligned with instinct.

At mid-cycle, one of the newer acolytes passed her door and lingered too long. She didn't look at him. She didn't need to. The shift in air pressure told her his curiosity warred with fear. The faint scrape of his boots revealed that he leaned closer. She waited until he held his breath—then said, calmly, without raising her voice:

"Looking too long at predators is how prey is identified."

He left quickly after that.

The guards did not comment.

Evening—if such a concept existed underground—brought the only reprieve: stillness. The faint quiver in the power field told her they were changing watch. Shade sat on the floor, arms resting loosely over her knees, eyes half-lidded but never closed, mapping the timing of every routine again—every vulnerability.

She did not wonder if Cassian would move. She knew he would. Waiting was simply another discipline.

When the next rotation of boots stopped outside her door, when the metal slid aside, when a voice told her she was being transferred to the training grounds for "evaluation," she rose smoothly, hands bound, posture composed.

A change in routine was an opportunity. She walked without hesitation. And her captors did not notice the faintest flicker of a smile—too controlled to be visible except to someone who already knew her. She had sent her message. He had received it. Now all that remained was timing.

"Lead the way."

Her voice was calm. Her pulse was steady. Her mind was already moving three steps ahead.

As it always did.

Cassian Abrantes