On the map, it looked boring.
That was the point.
Aiden watched the tiny K icon drift along Vein Ten with two smaller dots, Suri and Ivo, like any trio running laundry on a grey afternoon.
"Remember," he said into the comm, "you're just checking dryers."
"Very passionate about lint," Suri replied.
"Deeply invested in spin speeds," Ivo added.
Kael's chuckle crackled in his ear.
"We'll flirt with the tumble cycles," Kael said. "Be back before you miss us."
Aiden's fingers tightened on the edge of the console.
"Stay on the main routes," he said. "If anything twitches, you walk away."
"Got it," Kael said.
His icon slid toward a dull square labeled L10.
A small, ordinary laundry.
One of their new nests.
On another screen, Aiden had Laundry Ten's internals up: machine logs, band pings, a crude floor plan Rell had sketched from memory.
He'd overlaid Arcus's patrol schedule.
On paper, nothing special.
Routine passes.
No marked inspections.
He didn't believe in paper.
