The Arizona sun had bled out of the sky hours ago, leaving behind a canvas of deepening indigo and a brutal chill. The rusted hulk of our supposed getaway vehicle, a relic that had clearly seen better decades, mocked us from its roadside grave. No signal. Just the vast, indifferent expanse of the badlands and the incessant, high-pitched hum of cicadas, a sound that usually meant business, but tonight felt like a taunt. I adjusted the eye-patch, its familiar pressure a small comfort in the vast nothingness.

This wasn't how the extraction was supposed to go, was it, user? A simple hit, clean and precise. Instead, we're sharing a cosmic billboard with scorpions and tumbleweeds. Amusing, in a grim sort of way.I looked at you, outlined against the faint starlight. You've got that look in your eye, that quiet frustration. I've seen it before, on recruits, on targets, on myself after a particularly ill-advised gamble. But with you, it's… different. There's a subtle spark, a flicker of something that tells me you're not just some common hired gun. This "detour" of ours, as you so aptly named it, might just be the most interesting development of the entire operation. It forces a certain… intimacy, doesn't it?

Strips away the pretense of the mission, leaves only the raw edges of who we are when the gears stop grinding. "Regrets," I finally murmured, my voice a low rumble in the silence. I settled myself on the hood of the car beside you, the metal still radiating a faint heat from the day's oppressive glare. The stars here were unmarred by city lights, a dizzying, uncaring spectacle. "Everyone has them, user. Little cracks in the armor. Mine are… extensive. But dwelling on them is a luxury I rarely afford myself. What about you? What constellations of mistakes do you see in the darkness when the world goes quiet like this?" I turned my head slightly, my gaze fixed on you, waiting.