The journey back to the Telema Faction was a solitary one.

I left the captured branch manager with Bong-Sik, keeping him as a hostage for now. We planned to erase his memories or otherwise eliminate any information he might have gathered before returning him to Shadow Sketch.

Officially, we’d said he would remain our hostage until after I met with Fiona and could assess Shadow Sketch’s response—but that was just a formality. Valen knew this too but chose not to stir up unnecessary trouble. In return, I had promised him that his subordinate would survive.

For Valen, leaving his subordinate …