The park didn't feel like a park.
It was a rectangular patch of engineered soil inlaid into the apartment courtyard, surrounded by clean pathways and polite lighting. Real grass tried its best under the station's managed air and artificial day cycles. Trees grew in careful symmetry, their leaves a little too perfect, as if each one had its own supervisor.
Elias liked it anyway.
Because it was open.
Because there were no bulkheads close enough to make the air feel borrowed.
Wide green places did something to him. Unclenched a grip he hadn't noticed.
He dropped to the ground and started.
Hands on the grass. Body straight. Down. Up. Down. Up.
Slow enough to stay perfect. Clean enough to be cruel.
Mike dropped beside him and started too, trying to match pace as if it mattered.
It didn't.
Elias wasn't doing this out of pride.
Pride required an audience.
Pride required a working reward relay.
A small timer glowed in the corner of his wrist terminal, dimmed to the lowest brightness. Next to it, a line of text he'd written days ago, when it finally sank in that he didn't have a livable ship with a gym anymore.
[UPPER CIRCUIT: 16:00]
[STOP ON LIMIT.]
He could have gone until his body locked up. Pain wasn't a reliable brake for him.
So he built a leash out of numbers.
Mike's elbows started shaking around rep thirty. Around forty, he was breathing like he'd swallowed a bag of nails.
Across the grass, Susan sat on the bench near the playground fence, one hand on a water bottle, the other half-raised like she might wave or might just be ready to catch a tiny human before it hit escape velocity.
The kids climbed a plastic tower and yelled like they owned the station.
Mike's gaze kept flicking to her, then snapping away, as if eye contact could refill his lungs.
A couple of other parents noticed.
Not the whole park. Just the normal little gravity shifts. A mom paused mid-conversation, eyes sliding over, then back to her kid too fast.
A dad glanced once and gave Mike a tiny nod that said, You're getting cooked, brother.
Mike wheezed, "You could… back off a little… you know."
Elias didn't break rhythm. "Why."
Mike's laugh came out bitter. "Because some of us are trying not to die in front of our wife."
Elias's hands pressed into the grass. Up again. Controlled. Unbothered.
"She's watching you," he said, voice even. "Not me."
Mike dropped to the ground on his back, defeated.
Elias kept going until the terminal chimed. Not a rep over.
He tapped his wrist terminal once. A new interval lit up.
[CORE CIRCUIT: 08:00]
Elias shifted into a forearm plank, elbows under his shoulders, body straight as a board. Ugly precision.
Mike rolled his shoulders, sucked air, and dropped down with him.
"You seem… kinda… tense."
"Do I." Elias's voice stayed flat. Controlled.
"Yeah," Mike forced out. "Like you've been bothered the last few days."
"Waiting on pay." Elias didn't look up. "Need my ship cleared to sortie."
"That… reminds me…" Mike collapsed out of the plank like gravity finally won. He lay back in the grass and stared at the station's artificial sky. "I've got a transport run coming up. Four-day run. Longblood territory. I could use an escort, if you're cleared by then."
Elias held the plank. "I'm in."
Mike blinked, then squinted like he was trying to read the punchline off the ceiling. "That was easy."
"You asked."
Mike hesitated. "Thought I'd have to convince you since it wasn't a fleet job."
Elias's breathing stayed even, but his forearms pressed a little harder into the grass.
"I've rested too long."
Elias held the plank until the timer hit zero. Then stopped. Immediate.
The terminal pinged, sharper than the timer. Different voice.
[IMPERIAL MERCENARY GUILD]
[DEPOSIT RECEIVED]
[+15,000,000 CR]
His face didn't change.
But his eyes did.
The park went distant, like someone had turned down its volume.
He stood, brushed grass from his forearms, and shouldered his bag. The sabot-driver came last, strapped on with practiced precision. Its weight settled at his hip. Familiar. Final.
Across the grass, Susan had been half-smiling at something one of the kids yelled. The smile died quietly when Elias stood.
Not because of the weapon.
Because of how fast the man disappeared inside himself.
Her gaze tracked him for two steps, reading posture and pace like a warning sign. Then she looked at Mike.
The look wasn't teasing.
It was a question.
Mike pushed himself up on an elbow, watching Elias walk away like he'd done it a hundred times. He swallowed, then gave Susan a small shrug that wasn't really a shrug at all.
"Hey," Mike called, louder now. "Dude. Where are you going?"
Elias lifted a hand without turning. His voice came out flat, already gone.
"Work."
Mike watched him leave, not angry, not quite disappointed. Like he'd already lost this argument a hundred times.
"Damn crimson drug," he murmured.
"I want my friend back."