Zero Drift
Nara Tholren spent three years on a frontier survey world learning to wait. The Integration logged every hour. The day the system finally names her, the trigger pull is hers.
Nara Tholren spent three years on Vassal-7 cataloguing flora and behavior — alone, patient, learning a frontier world by waiting until it told her what it was hiding. The Integration logged every hour of it.
When the survey company collapses, she enlists with the Meridian Enforcement Corps on Arvion Teralune's accurate read of her: the system will name what she already is if she gives it the right institutional context. Her intake notice flags her as a profile anomaly. Signal 13. She has never asked what high Signal means in this context.
Basic training puts a rifle in her hands. A botched corporate operation puts the rest of her in the position the survey work has been preparing her for since Vassal-7. The shot is hers. The designation arrives afterward.
A story about the moment the patient watcher discovers what she has been patient for.