“Take me to the others,” I tell Ivennie. She rushes to obey, leading me to the stairwell. This outpost was built to house a much larger unit than ours if necessary, and it takes a while to traverse the stairs. I can feel Ivennie’s eyes on me as we walk, practically hear the questions on her tongue.

We haven’t spent much time together, just the two of us, since she arrived. Moments of one-on-one time, like solitude, are rare here. Our team is expected to spend every moment together: eating, training, showering, sleeping. We’re expected to share everything. Privacy leads to secrets, secrets to jealousy, and jealousy is a disease of the soul, a common Titan saying goes. I try to respect Titan customs, I truly do, but some I can’t bring myself to follow. Just as Momma always told me, no matter how hard I try, I’ll never truly be a Titan.

Though I suspect I’ve been avoiding Ivennie for other reasons, as well. Knowing I may be leaving soon makes me loath to add another name to the list of people I care about here. Especially so with Uwe’s loss still so fresh. The rest of my team has been hesitant to welcome the rookie as well.

The shock of Uwe’s death lingers in all of us. Before that, it had been over three months since we lost someone. We had fallen into a rhythm, a strong team dynamic, and now everyone is struggling once again to figure out where they fit, trying to adjust themselves around the missing piece my off-worlder customs leave.

We shouldn’t have lost Uwe. It was a stupid, senseless death. I’ve replayed the day a thousand times over, running through all the ways I could’ve prevented it.

We were in Niivya, a border town freshly liberated from the enemy. Drunk on victory, newly armed with information Daniil had extracted from a captured Isolationist sergeant. The townspeople were eager to celebrate with us. Feeding us, filling our mugs when they were empty. Putting us at ease.

Everyone but me was very intoxicated when word arrived that a child had fallen into a sewer. I should have gone alone. But I couldn’t carry both a child and a light in the darkness of the sewers, and so someone needed to come with me. Since Uwe lost the hand of cards, it fell to him. He was drunk—staggering, singing drunk. He nearly fell on his face when we dropped down into the sewers to look for her.

When we found the child, she wasn’t injured at all. Instead, she was clutching an explosive device in her hands. When Uwe raised the light, she ran at us.