Holt’s jaw tightened. “That’s desertion. That’s execution.”

“You left me, Mommy,” Lily said. “You died in the crash. But you didn’t stay dead. They put you in a machine. And you never came back.”

Voss studied her. “Your last sync cycle logged a 0.7-second anomaly. Explain.”

“How long will it take?”

Lily. I’m coming home.

Not emergency lights. Not combat floodlights. Soft, yellow lights. The kind in a kitchen. The kind over a dining table.

Instead, she said: “Thermal fluctuation in the cognitive matrix. I’ve run a self-diagnostic. No actionable faults.”