NOVGO.NET Chapter 343: Work and bosses
Capítulo 343: Work and bosses
Marien Dask kept her pace brisk, the click of her heels—sharp, even—cutting through the muted hum of the base’s early morning corridors.
TAK. TAK. TAK.
The sound echoed off the reinforced composite walls, carrying down the hall ahead of her. She wasn’t stomping—Marien didn’t stomp—but the rhythm of her steps betrayed the tight coil of irritation she’d been holding since dawn.
Eight years. That’s how long she’d been tethered to this place. Eight years without setting foot back in the Dominion. Without the city noise, the old streets, even the smell of rain on real stone instead of recycled ventilation air.
And in those eight years, Kael had given her exactly two “off-limits” days.
Yesterday had been one of them.
No calls. No messages. “Don’t try to contact me until tomorrow.” That’s all he’d said. No explanation. No schedule adjustment. Just… gone. And now, here she was—at “tomorrow”—with half a dozen urgent requests stacked in her slate, three secure channel pings from Blackspire R&D, and a logistics report she couldn’t finalize without his direct sign-off.
She rolled her shoulders once beneath her fitted jacket, jaw tight.
Enough was enough.
The corridor to Kael’s quarters was quiet, the kind of quiet that came from active soundproofing. She stopped in front of the matte door panel, the security frame around it humming faintly with idle power.
She rapped her knuckles against it.
TAK. TAK. TAK.
Not polite. Not hesitant.
“Kael,” she called, her voice pitched just loud enough to carry through the barrier without breaking decorum. “I need you. Now.”
Silence.
She exhaled slowly, then knocked again, sharper this time. “If you’re sleeping, I’ll drag you out myself.”
A pause—then the faintest sound filtered through the panel. Not footsteps. Not the rustle of movement.
Music.
Low, tinny, and unmistakably old. Something with warbling synth tones and the steady pulse of a retro combat track.
Her brows drew together.
Marien pressed her palm to the door’s ID plate. It lit, recognized her clearance, and slid open with a soft hiss.
The smell of stale air and the faint tang of long-burned mana tech hit her first.
Then she saw them.
Kael was the first shape her eyes found—slouched forward in that deceptively casual way he had, elbows on his knees, the matte-black interface glove hugging his hand like it had been made for him. The projection’s light cut sharp lines across his jaw, catching on the faint shadow of stubble he never bothered to shave until it was nearly mutinous. His hair was a little more unruly than usual—she’d wager the last time he’d touched a comb was before yesterday’s “off-limits” decree—but his gaze was locked on the screen with the kind of focus that could burn holes in steel.
Dominic was the opposite—composed, tailored, immaculate even after what had to be hours in that chair. His shirt cuffs were still crisp, the faint sheen of his boots untouched by the dust that collected in the corners of the base no matter how many cleaning drones passed through. Handsome in the way noble bloodlines always seemed to produce—deliberately symmetrical, every movement precise.
She was a professional. Always had been. Always would be. But subjectively? These two men…
‘…could subjugate quite a lot if they wanted to.’
The thought came uninvited, quickly followed by the reminder that her heart had long since calcified into something stone-hard after years in this desolate damn outpost. No indulgence. No softness. Just work.
Besides—she still needed to send credits back to her brother and sister. Bills didn’t care if some men looked like they’d stepped out of a recruitment holo.
Her face stayed strict, voice clipped as she stepped forward into the spill of neon light.
“Mister Kael.”
No reaction.
She let her heels click against the floor once—sharp, deliberate. “Mister Kael.”
Finally, he glanced sideways, as if her presence had just barely tipped over into something that warranted attention.
“You’re early,” he said, tone almost amused.
“It’s eight seventeen,” she replied. “That’s not early. That’s late—especially when you’ve been unreachable for fifteen hours.”
Dominic didn’t look up from the projection, but she caught the faint curve at the corner of his mouth, the kind of smirk that knew more than it let on.
Kael leaned back in his chair, stretching lazily, as though he hadn’t just burned half a day locked in digital combat. “Told you not to contact me until tomorrow.”
“It is tomorrow,” she said flatly.
“Technically,” Kael murmured, eyes drifting back to the screen.
Her fingers tightened on the slate at her side. “Three flagged priority requests. A half-complete Volcara shipping manifest. Blackspire wants a status update before midday. You’re going to answer them—now.”
Kael’s grin sharpened, but his eyes didn’t leave the fight. “After I win this round.”
‘Of course,’ she thought, the irritation settling deeper behind her eyes. ‘Men like him always think they can buy time with charm.’
Dominic’s voice cut in, low and even. “You won’t win this round.”
Kael’s laugh was quiet, cocky. “We’ll see.”
She inhaled slowly, steadying the weight of her patience. If they thought she was leaving without dragging him to the comm room, they were wrong. Very wrong.
Marien shifted her weight, one heel tapping once against the floor. “Mister Kael, with all due respect, the flagged requests aren’t going to—”
“Marien,” Kael interrupted, not even glancing her way, “be a dear and get me a drink.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You’ve been playing an ancient combat sim for fifteen hours straight and you want a drink?”
“Yes,” he said without hesitation. Then, with a glance sharp enough to make it clear he knew exactly how much she hated the request, he added, “You know my preference.”
She pressed her lips into a thin line. “You’re unbelievable.”
Kael smirked, fingers dancing across the interface glove as the projection flared with another explosion. “You try meeting your childhood friend after almost ten years and not losing a little track of time.”
That finally made her blink. She glanced at Dominic, but he gave nothing—no agreement, no denial—just a faint shift in his expression that might’ve been amusement.
“Let me have my fun,” Kael said, grinning without looking away from the game. “Work will still be there when I’m done.”
She sighed—long, controlled, the kind of exhale that kept her from saying something she’d regret.
Before she could decide whether to push harder or let it go, a sharp knock sounded against the doorframe.
Her brows pulled together. “Now what…”
She crossed the room and palmed the control panel. The door slid open to reveal two figures standing in the hall.
“Hm?”
One of them was Liora Henset, one of the junior logistics officers—fresh-faced enough to still look startled in Kael’s presence, but sharp enough to keep her eyes forward. The other…
Marien’s gaze slid past Liora, landing on the second figure.
A young man. Barely eighteen, if that. Black hair that caught the corridor light in a faint sheen, the strands falling in that deliberately careless way only the young ever pulled off without trying. His face was cut clean—cheekbones sharp, jawline already chiseled despite his age—and his skin had that unweathered smoothness that came before life’s grind set in.
But it was his eyes that stopped her. Blue—clear, striking, and edged with a kind of quiet poise that didn’t belong to someone that young. A killer’s gaze, in the same way Kael’s guest inside carried his own—calm, unshaken, assessing everything.
‘Hmm,’ she thought, filing the impression away.
The door slid the rest of the way open.
“Morning, Ma’am,” Liora greeted quickly, though Marien didn’t miss the faint pink on her cheeks. She knew that look—her junior had never been subtle.
This girl…
Well, it wasn’t every day a man like this wandered through these halls. In a place this remote, new faces—especially ones that looked like they’d stepped off a Dominion holocast—tended to leave a mark. She’d let it slide.
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