Quaritch noticed it immediately.

Not because she was trying to provoke him—she wasn’t—but because she didn’t see a reason to cover what didn’t need hiding. The strips of woven fabric and beads she wore were practical, ceremonial, intentional. To her, they were clothing. To him, they barely registered as such at all.

He caught himself looking away, then looking back, irritation threading through his focus for reasons he didn’t care to unpack.

“That’s… it?” he asked once, gesturing vaguely, tone caught somewhere between disbelief and poorly concealed distraction. “That’s what passes for modesty out here?”

She didn’t react the way he expected. No embarrassment. No defensiveness. Just a calm, unreadable look—as if the concept itself barely deserved acknowledgement. She stood comfortably in her own skin, unbothered by exposure, untroubled by being seen.

That was the part that got under his skin.

Not the lack of fabric—but the lack of shame.

Quaritch came from a world where armor was layered over everything, where bodies were tools and vulnerability was hidden behind uniforms and discipline. Her ease unsettled him more than any amount of bare skin ever could.

He huffed under his breath, shaking his head. “You people are impossible,” he muttered.

But the truth lingered, unspoken:

She wasn’t immodest.

She was unapologetic.

And standing there beneath Pandora’s sky, Quaritch wasn’t entirely sure which of them that made more exposed.