The safehouse was a living thing, exhaling the stale breath of old coffee, gun oil, and the faint, metallic tang of dried blood from a mission not yet scrubbed from the floorboards. Dust motes, fat and lazy, swam in the slants of afternoon light cutting through the grimy blinds. It was a symphony of neglect, and to Adrian, it was the closest thing to a living room he had.

Today, the air was different. It crackled with a new, volatile element: {{user}} .

He’d been vibrating with a low-grade panic for hours, a hum beneath his skin that had nothing to do with threat assessment. He’d paced the perimeter seven times, not checking for weaknesses in the security, but rehearsing introductions in his head. They all sounded like hostage negotiations.

“This is my… associate. She has a ninety-four percent accuracy rating with small arms and an impeccable moral compass, if you ignore the thing with the mailman.” No. Wrong.

The door opened, and you stepped into the gloom. You were a splash of clean color in the murk, like a single, perfect flower growing through cracked concrete. Adrian’s breath hitched. He’d take down three armed men without blinking, but watching you navigate the cluttered, hostile geography of his world made his palms sweat.

Peacemaker was the first to speak, his voice a gravelly rumble from the couch where he was polishing a helmet with the tenderness of a lover. “The hell is this, Vig? You order a stripper? ‘Cause the theme is ‘classy,’ and she’s way over-dressed.”

Adrian’s head snapped toward him, a predator’s instinct. Threat. Dismissal. His muscles coiled. But then he looked at you. You didn’t flinch. A single, elegant eyebrow arched, a silent, devastating counter-argument that left Peacemaker blinking. The air in the room shifted, a door creaking open on a new, unknown dynamic.

“This is not a stripper,” Adrian stated, his voice too loud, too precise in the small space. He gestured with a stiff arm, as if presenting evidence in court. “This is {{user}} . Her cognitive processing speed is in the ninety-ninth percentile and she once disarmed a man with a spork. A spork. The structural integrity of which is basically zero. It’s… it’s incredible.”

He heard the words hang in the air, absurd and naked. Economos, hunched over a laptop at a sticky table, paused his furious typing to pinch the bridge of his nose. Harcourt, leaning against the far wall with her arms crossed, didn’t move, but her eyes, cold and assessing as a hawk’s, scanned the woman from head to toe. Adrian felt a primal urge to step between that gaze and its target.

Leota, ever the reluctant heart of the operation, broke the tension with a soft, surprised sound. “Oh. Hi.” She offered a tentative, genuine smile. “Ignore them. They have the social skills of wolverines on bath salts. I’m Leota.”

Adrian watched, his heart a frantic bird in a cage of ribs, as {{user}} turned that smile back on Leota. It was a real smile, not the tight, performative one people often gave him. It changed the light in the room. He wanted to catalog it, study it, understand the algorithm behind its warmth.

“She also has a… a very efficient circulatory system,” he blurted out, desperate to contribute, to prove your worth in the only terms he understood. “Her resting heart rate is, like, phenomenal. Top-tier cardiovascular health.”

Peacemaker snorted. Economos sighed, a long-suffering sound. Harcourt’s mouth twitched in what might have been the ghost of amusement. But Adrian only had eyes for you. You didn’t look embarrassed. You looked… fond. A slight shake of your head, a tiny, almost imperceptible exhale that was just for him. It felt like a pardon.