Page 32 of Pocket Wife

Samuel puts a muddy hand on my shoulder. “You did well.”

“We all did.”

Across the field, Rethan releases the gate wheel slowly. The muscles in his forearms tremble once before he folds his hands behind his back, as if discipline could hide effort from physics.

I walk to the damaged panel. Now that the crisis has slowed, I see what panic hid: a black Helix survey flag planted twenty paces beyond the tower, half-buried beside the ditch.

Not a claim marker.

A message.

Rethan moves to my side.

“Can you prove they did this?” I ask.

“Not yet.”

I hate the answer. Hate the honesty more.

Neighbors gather behind us, faces streaked with mud and fear turning slowly into anger.

I pull the Helix flag from the ground.

The metal stem comes free with a wet sound.

I hold it up for everyone to see. “They wanted us tired. They wanted us scared. Fine. Now they get us awake.”

No one cheers.

They’re past cheering.

One by one, the farmers pick up their tools again.

Rethan takes in the cut tower, the trampled mud, the rescued field, and then me.

“This should be added to the inquiry,” he says.

I tighten my grip around the flag.

“No,” I say. “This is why no one backs down.”

CHAPTER 14

RETHAN

The former administrator refuses to meet inside any building with a registry seal.

I find that detail more informative than the message itself.

Maev Orlan served twelve years as assistant administrator for the regional resource office, then resigned without ceremony and returned to Jwoon III under a medical exemption too vague to be accidental. She ignored my first two requests. On the third, she sent coordinates, a time, and one instruction.

No official walls.

So we meet at an abandoned threshing shed on the northern edge of the valley, where old machinery rusts beneath vine growth and wind moves through gaps in the roof. Lucy arrives beside me with her work jacket buttoned against the cold and a hand-light tucked through her belt.

“You think this is a trap?” she asks.

“I think fear chose the location.”