The Patroclus Protocol

“You call that a team?” Steve’s voice cut like a blade across the debrief table. The holographic map still flickered with red markers from the mission. “You were freelancing, Stark. You do that again and someone is going to die.”

Tony leaned back in his chair, one foot propped against the table edge like it was his living room and not a SHIELD conference room that still smelled like ozone and burned circuitry. “I saved three hostages while you were giving orders to a wall. You’re welcome.”

“You cut the comms. You didn’t answer. I can’t lead when I can’t trust you to follow.”

“You don’t lead me,” Tony said, heat curling through his throat. “You’re not my CO. We’re not in 1943. I took the fastest path in, I neutralized the threat, I got out. That’s called efficiency.”

“Efficient would have been telling me,” Steve shot back. His hands were flat on the table, knuckles pale, posture rigid in a way that made the veins in his forearms stand out. Sweat still darkened the collar of his suit, damp hair pushed back like he’d run his hands through it a dozen times. “We are supposed to be a unit.”

“We are,” Tony said, leaning forward. “A unit that includes me making judgment calls when your plan is stuck in a museum.”

Steve’s blue eyes hardened. “You think I’m a relic. Say it.”

Tony let out a short breathless laugh. “I think you’re stubborn and allergic to improvisation. And you think I’m a liability unless I’m chained to your playbook.”

“This isn’t about me being in control,” Steve said. “This is about lives. Your ego can’t be the point of failure every time we step into the field.”

“My ego is the reason we had eyes on the secondary entrance at all,” Tony snapped. “My ego built the suits that took those bullets. My ego—”

“Enough.” Steve’s voice didn’t rise, but it carried. His jaw flexed. “It’s not your playground. These are people depending on us. I need you to stop treating us like an experiment.”

Tony stood in one fluid motion, the chair wheels squeaking against the floor. “Oh, sorry, is being prepared now an insult? Should I start throwing a shield and hoping for the best? We can all pretend physics is optional if it makes you feel better.”

“Sit down,” Steve said quietly. “I’m not your enemy.”

“You sure act like it.” Tony’s hands were already moving, restless, his pulse a steady throb in his wrists. He could taste the afterburner sharpness at the back of his tongue, unspent adrenaline mixing with resentment he wasn’t ready to name. “Every time I do something you wouldn’t, you decide it’s wrong. You can’t adapt, Rogers. Not to me.”

Steve pushed away from the table too, coming around it fast. Close. He was taller up close. Warmer. Tony registered the rise and fall of his chest, the scratch of stubble shadowing Steve’s jaw, the bruise peeking out under the edge of the suit. “I can adapt,” Steve said, breath steady. “I adapt every time I count on you despite every instinct telling me you’ll run the other way because it’s easier to be clever than it is to be accountable.”

Tony’s mouth tightened. It landed too cleanly. “You don’t get to talk to me about accountability.”

The door hissed open.

“Good,” Nick Fury said, stepping inside with that unhurried walk that made everyone straighten. “You’re both already standing. Saves me the trouble.”

Silence tightened. Tony moved his tongue against the back of his teeth and didn’t look away from Steve.

Fury stopped at the head of the table, eye sweeping over the still-bleeding mission feed. “You want to air more laundry, do it on your own time. Right now, here’s the conclusion: you’re not functioning. You’re bruised, you’re loud, and you’re one bad call from making a headline I don’t want to read.”

Steve lifted his chin. “Sir, with respect—”

“With respect, shut it,” Fury said. “You think I didn’t hear you yelling through two walls? You forget the building has ears? Barton took his earpiece out in the hall like a man walking past his parents fighting.” He set a tablet on the table with a hard tap. “This isn’t about who’s right. This is about who is in one piece when we’re done.”

Tony folded his arms. “If this is the part where you threaten to bench me, get in line. There’s a waitlist.”

“No one’s getting benched,” Fury said. “You’re getting proxied. Immediate effective order: both of you are moving into Stark Tower. Not a crash pad. Full-time. Training, living, eating, the whole happy domestic package. Twenty-four/seven proximity until you can operate without posturing.”

Steve breathed out, sharp. “Director—”

“Captain, I don’t make suggestions,” Fury said. “Your team needs a spine that doesn’t snap when Stark decides to improvise, and Stark needs to remember he’s got a team.” He cut Tony a look that pressed down like a hand. “You want independence? You can have it in your bathroom. Not in combat.”

Tony’s laugh was low and humorless. “You want us to be roommates.”

“I want you to stop acting like your differences are an unsolvable equation.” Fury’s gaze didn’t waver. “You have two weeks to look like a unit. You’ll train with Hill’s schedule. You’ll attend daily tactical reviews. You will learn each other’s tells. You will communicate. And you will do it in a building with more cameras than Stark’s ego can fill.”

Steve’s jaw moved. He looked at Tony, something like resignation slanting through the anger. “If it’s what’s needed.”

“It’s what’s mandated,” Fury said. “Keys are digital. Bags get sent over. Stark, your tower is now SHIELD-adjacent. Try not to redecorate with flamethrowers.”

Tony rolled his shoulders, the tightness under his skin winding into something close to defiance. “You could have asked.”

“I did,” Fury said. “You didn’t listen.” He turned toward the door, pausing with his hand on the panel. “You two are the difference between this team working and this team burning out. I’d like the former. Do not make me regret giving you the chance to fix it.”

The door slid shut behind him, leaving the hum of the air system and the dim ping of the map.

Steve scrubbed a hand over his face. The fight seemed to have fallen out of his posture, leaving something tired in its place. “Guess that’s settled.”

Tony stared at the table’s surface. His reflection wavered over the mission feed, eyes darker than he expected. He swallowed the retort on his tongue, felt it dissolve into the hot, restless anger buzzing in his chest. “You going to survive being in a building with my name on it?” he asked, too light.

Steve’s mouth quirked without humor. “I’ve survived worse.”

For a beat they stood there, energy still charged between them, too much wordless static. Tony felt it on his skin, a vibration he couldn’t code away.

“Fine,” he said finally, pushing away from the table. “Pack a bag. Or don’t. We have a supply closet. Tower will take your measurements and spit out a wardrobe if you ask nicely.”

“I have clothes,” Steve said, a little stiff. Then, quieter, “I’ll meet you there.”

“Don’t get lost,” Tony said, and when Steve’s brow drew down, he added, “In the paperwork.”

Steve’s gaze held his for a second longer than it should have. “I’ll manage.”

Tony turned toward the door, heat still simmering under his skin, thoughts already racing to problems he could solve with something other than an argument. The tower felt like a tight coil in his mind, rooms and systems and walls. Proximity. He told himself he hated the idea. He told himself a lot of things. He didn’t look back when he left the room.

The elevator swallowed Tony whole, and he stared at the numbers until the doors threatened to close. A hand shoved between them. Steve stepped in, breath even, gaze careful.

“You don’t get to accuse me and walk away,” Steve said, voice quieter now, but edged.

Tony’s jaw ticked. “I’m not walking away. I’m taking you somewhere.”

Steve’s brows rose. Suspicion tightened his mouth. “Where?”

“Sub-level,” Tony said. “Private lab.”

Steve crossed his arms. “Because that sounds exactly like what Fury just asked us not to do.”

“You said I treat the team like a science project,” Tony said, stabbing his finger at the panel to seal the doors. “You were close.”

The elevator eased down. Steve leaned against the rail, eyes on Tony’s profile. “If this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

“Not a joke.” Tony could feel Steve’s attention like heat. He kept his hands still, a rare discipline, because they wanted to move, to talk, to distract. He let the numbers count down. The air in the car was cool, and still he felt hot, like something was burning under his sternum.

When the doors opened on the sub-level corridor, it was dimmer, quieter, the world narrowing to brushed steel and low lights. Tony led. Steve followed, footsteps solid, unhurried.

“Why down here?” Steve asked, voice low as if the walls were listening.

“Because upstairs is for show,” Tony said. “This is where the work lives.”

Steve gave him a measured look that made Tony feel too seen. “What work?”

They stopped at a heavy door. Tony rested his palm on the biometric plate. HUD-blue scanners swept his hand. The locks released with a sigh. He stepped aside and let Steve go in first.

The lab was a cathedral of glass and white light, banked servers along a curved wall, a central console like a cockpit, cables braided in careful lines across the floor. The air had the faint chill of recycled systems and the hum of machines with their own heartbeat. In the far corner, a vertical tank of light pulsed with the slow, subtle rhythm of an active neural net.

Steve took two strides in and stopped. “Tony.”

“Don’t freak out,” Tony said, which was, in retrospect, the worst possible preface.

“What is this?” Steve asked, eyes tracking from the console to the tank to the suspended holographic interface that sparked awake at their arrival, a pale lattice of nodes connecting and disconnecting in real time.

Tony walked to the console and brushed his fingertips over the surface. The lattice sharpened into a spiral, threads of data gliding like fish in a school. “PATROCLUS,” he said. “Predictive Adaptive Tactical Response—Operational, Collaborative Liaison—Unified System.” He grimaced before Steve could. “I know. It’s a stretch. I was tired.”

Steve’s chest rose and fell once, deliberate. “You built an AI.”

“I built an interface,” Tony corrected, but the word felt thin. He watched Steve’s shoulders, the line of his jaw. “It’s designed to analyze tactical patterns. Coordinate. Translate.”

Steve’s gaze cut back to him. “Translate what?”

“You,” Tony said, and there it was, thrown like a gauntlet. “Us.”

Steve straightened, the subtle roll of his shoulders a sign he was bracing. “You built an AI about me.”

Tony’s mouth went dry. He wanted to talk faster, to fill the air with noise until it didn’t hurt. He forced himself to speak evenly. “I built a system that studies how you make decisions. It observes. It predicts. It can make my systems—me—fit your parameters when we’re in the field. I got tired of guessing what you’d do and being wrong.”

“You think a machine can understand me better than you try to,” Steve said, and it wasn’t a question.

Tony didn’t flinch. “I think it can give me a way in.”

Steve took another step into the room, closer to the glowing tank. The light made the pale hair on his forearms stand out. He looked big in here, all clean lines and scars, a body built for impact. “What did you feed it?” he asked, voice steady but tight. “What did you use?”

Tony could feel the heat rising again. Shame, defensiveness, the itch to defend himself by talking about how hard the problem was. He clicked through the interface, letting the AI idle in a soft, responsive glow. “Declassified mission reports. Public transcripts. Team debriefs. My own data. The suit’s recordings when we were paired in the field.” He glanced up. “Not your private files.”

“You pulled my debriefs,” Steve said.

“I was there,” Tony said gently. “It wasn’t hard to reconstruct how you act when you don’t have me as a variable. I wanted to stop being your variable.”

Steve’s mouth softened, then hardened again. He moved to the console, close enough that Tony could breathe in the clean scent of his skin under sweat and cotton. His hand braced next to the controls, the veins in his wrist pronounced. “Turn it on,” he said.

“It’s on,” Tony said. “It’s listening.”

“To me?” Steve asked.

“To us.” Tony could feel the air charging. He reached past Steve, fingers grazing the inside of his forearm as he toggled a deeper layer of interface. He felt the fine hair stand up where they touched. Steve’s breath hitched—not startled, just present.

The lattice brightened, the nodes aligning. The systems recognized Steve’s biometric signature. A soft chime. The screen filled with a clean, scrolling map of their last mission. Steve’s routes. Tony’s. Overlaid.

“PATROCLUS,” Tony said, voice low. “Define objective.”

A voice came through the room’s speakers, neutral and warm. “Objective: optimize cooperative performance between Iron Man and Captain Rogers.”

Steve’s jaw worked. He didn’t look at Tony. “How long have you been doing this?”

“Since after New York,” Tony said. “On and off.”

Steve finally turned. His eyes were hurt in a way that did not look like anger. It looked like exhaustion. “You didn’t think to tell me.”

“You would have said no,” Tony said. He took a breath, felt it stutter. “You call me reckless. This is me trying not to be.”

Steve stood very still. The lab hummed around them, patient. Tony’s hand was still on the console, too near Steve’s. He didn’t move it. Steve didn’t either.

“You built something to bridge a gap,” Steve said quietly. “And you didn’t talk to me. You built it with my name in its bones.”

Tony swallowed. “I built it because I couldn’t reach you any other way.”

The words hung there, exposed. Steve’s throat worked. His gaze fell to Tony’s mouth, then back to his eyes, like he was fighting himself.

“Show me,” he said. “Show me what it thinks I’ll do.”

Tony expanded the overlay. The room dimmed, the hologram growing until it wrapped them in a soft, blue-white sphere. Paths traced around them in light—Steve’s routes through a combat zone, Tony’s vector angles in the suit, points where they crossed and split. Tony brought his hand into the field, fingers slicing through data, and the map obeyed with clean, responsive shifts.

“It tracked your pace here,” Tony said, zooming to a tight city block. “The way you use height and angles. You avoid blind corners unless you can control the vertical. It learned that in two runs.”

Steve didn’t step back when the projection skimmed over his chest and shoulders like light rain. He stood close enough that Tony could feel his heat. “It’s not just pace,” Steve said. “It’s cover.”

“It’s both,” Tony murmured, dragging two points together. The routes aligned, then snapped into a cleaner, paired form. “PATROCLUS weights your choices against the suit’s response times. It predicts where I should be so you don’t have to spend energy compensating. It keeps me where you’d expect me.”

“Like a second shield,” Steve said, voice quiet.

“Like a partner who won’t screw you,” Tony said, throat tight. He selected a different set and a crude recording sprang to life in miniature—Steve’s silhouette sprinting through debris, Tony’s suit dropping a barrier of drones to block incoming fire half a beat late. “It saw this and called it an inefficiency. It labeled it as avoidable if I’d anticipated your third option instead of your first.”

Steve watched the tiny version of himself swing his arm, hurling a shield. The small flash of light kissed the curvature of the projection. Tony felt Steve’s breath brush his cheek.

“What else does it see?” Steve asked.

Tony flipped the model to a layered graph that pulsed like a heartbeat. “Pattern frequency on your flanks under pressure. The way your eyes track. You glance left more when you’re thinking about retreat. You step forward with your right foot into an attack nine out of ten times after a feint. You pull your shoulders tight when—”

“When I’m hiding doubt,” Steve finished, jaw set. His eyes didn’t leave Tony’s face.

Tony swallowed. “It learned you avoid civilian collateral even at tactical cost, and it weighs that. It learned I prefer speed over redundancy, and it penalizes me when that puts you out of sync.”

He slid to a clean interface: a plain, waiting prompt. “Ask it something.”

Steve hesitated. “PATROCLUS, if Tony breaks left and I have to choose between securing a weapon cache and protecting an exposed alley, which do I prioritize given my history?”

“Captain Rogers will prioritize the alley based on previous selections, mission parameters, and the Captain’s recorded statements on civilian defense,” the AI replied, calm. “Recommendation: Iron Man redirects to weapon cache, ensuring synchronized retreat path.”

Steve’s fingers flexed on the edge of the console. “That’s not… wrong,” he admitted.

Tony breathed in, the edges of tension easing. “It isn’t here to replace judgment. It’s here to catch me up to you. To catch me to where you’ll be.”

Steve’s eyes lifted to the tank, then drifted back to Tony’s mouth again before he looked at the display. “What about me catching up to you?”

Tony’s pulse jumped. “It trains you on my stupid, unpredictable choices,” he said, dry. “It learned my tells. When I’m about to do something flashy. When I’m about to make you mad.”

Steve huffed, a low sound that pushed between them. “It will be busy.”

Tony shifted, his hip brushing Steve’s. The contact sparked along his skin. He didn’t move away. “It knows when to tell you to ignore me too,” Tony said, softer. “When my instinct will get us killed.”

“Again,” Steve said, but there was no bite in it. He tilted his head toward the projection. “Show me the bridge.”

Tony pinched and pulled, collapsing the map into a single, clean path that ran between two lives. The line responded to micro-movements from both of them, despite Steve not touching the controls. Their heart rates synced in the corner of the display, pulsing a few beats apart. Tony brought them closer with a tweak to the algorithm. The beats overlapped. The line brightened.

“It updates with us,” Tony said. “It’s always learning. It doesn’t store… personal footage. It parses for behavior, then drops the raw feed.” He felt like he needed to say it twice. “It doesn’t have your private thoughts. It just builds a translation layer between ours.”

Steve’s hand lifted, slower than it needed to be, until his fingers hovered near Tony’s wrist. He didn’t touch. The refusal to touch felt like pressure. “You could have asked.”

“I didn’t know how,” Tony said. The truth was bare and inelegant. “I didn’t trust that you’d let me try. And I wanted—” He exhaled. “I wanted a version of you I could understand.”

Steve’s gaze dropped to where their wrists almost met. “I’m not a codebase you debug.”

“You’re not,” Tony said. “But you’ll walk into a fire for people who don’t deserve it, and I—” His voice went rough. “I needed a way to meet you there without dragging you back.”

Silence settled, heavy but not suffocating. Steve turned his hand and set two fingers against Tony’s pulse. The touch was gentle. Tony’s heart thudded hard under it, betraying him.

“That’s what this does?” Steve asked, thumb grazing the tendon. “Meets me where I am?”

Tony nodded once. “That was the plan.”

Steve slid his fingers away, slow, like he didn’t want to, and Tony’s skin felt suddenly cool. “It’s invasive,” Steve said after a beat. “It’s not what I would’ve chosen.”

“I know,” Tony said, the words landing heavy between them.

“But it’s also…” Steve looked up at the sphere that held their lines in tandem. His voice lowered. “It’s considerate in a way I didn’t expect from you.”

Tony managed a tight smile. “Don’t spread that around. It’ll ruin my brand.”

The corners of Steve’s mouth eased. He took a breath and faced the display, shoulders squaring as if stepping onto a field. “Show me another scenario,” he said. “I want to see how it understands me. Where it gets me wrong.”

Tony’s fingers moved before the order finished leaving Steve’s lips. The lab responded, obedient and bright. The light washed over Steve’s face, over the line of his throat, over the fresh stiffness in his jaw that told Tony he was bracing for more than tactics.

“Okay,” Tony said. He kept his voice steady, but the electric hum under his skin didn’t relent. “Let’s teach it together.”

Steve lasted through two more simulations. The first was a tight hallway scenario with civilians pinned at one end. The AI predicted his pivot and his choice to put himself between fire and bystanders. The second was an open square, Tony’s drones sweeping in a grid while Steve cut diagonals to draw fire. The outputs were clean, almost flattering.

Steve’s hands were steady, but the way his mouth flattened before each result warned Tony something was splitting inside him. When the projection faded, Steve stepped back out of the sphere like it had temperature, like it could burn.

He wiped a palm over his mouth, then dragged it down his jaw. “Turn it off,” he said.

Tony hesitated. The lines still glowed faintly. “Steve—”

“Turn it off.”

Tony murmured a command, and the lab softened to static lights, the data retracting like a tide. Without the overlay, the space felt too intimate, too bare—just him, Steve, the tank with the core, and the soft pulse of the server.

Steve pressed both hands to the console’s edge like he needed the grounding. He stared at the dark glass, not at Tony. “You’ve been tracking how I move. How I think. You’ve built something that predicts me better than I do, and you didn’t ask.”

“It doesn’t record you—”

“It doesn’t need to record me to know me.” His voice didn’t raise. That absence of volume was worse. “You put my choices into a box and taught it to answer for me. Do you understand how that feels?”

Tony let the words hit. He kept his posture open, palms up. “I understand that it feels like I stole something.” He swallowed. “I thought I was building a bridge. I see now it looks like a cage.”

Steve’s laugh was short and without humor. He pushed away from the console and paced once, shoulders tight. Tony watched the old training residuals in every line of his body—how he measured a room, a threat, an exit. How he carried pain quietly.

“You always do this,” Steve said, head turned away. “You take a human problem and solder it until it resembles you. Then you act like it’s generosity. I told you after New York that you can’t fix everything with a suit.”

“This isn’t the suit,” Tony said, then winced. “Okay, it’s a suit with feelings. I hear it. I hear you.”

Steve stopped pacing and faced him. His eyes were clear and hard. “I am not a variable to optimize. I’m not a set of behaviors to exploit for efficiency.”

“It isn’t about exploiting you,” Tony said, and some helplessness slipped into his tone. “It’s about keeping up. You don’t falter. I do. I thought if I could predict you, I could get out of your way when you needed it. Or be where you need me before you ask.”

“You could ask,” Steve said, cutting him off.

Tony closed his mouth. Air moved in his chest, thin. “I could ask,” he repeated, and the admission was heavy.

Steve’s gaze dropped to Tony’s hand, to the faint tremble there. He stepped closer, as if his control stretched to Tony’s edges whether he wanted it to or not. The anger in him wasn’t heat; it was cold. It focused him. “You built this with my name in it,” he said quietly. “You named it after a myth about a man who went into battle wearing armor he didn’t understand.”

Tony’s mouth twitched. “He understood more than Achilles gave him credit for.”

“Maybe,” Steve said. “But he died wearing someone else’s skin.”

Tony flinched, the reference sharper than intended. “I’m not trying to wear you,” he said, softer. “I’m trying to meet you.”

Steve’s throat worked. He glanced at the server again, then back at Tony. “It learned that I tighten my shoulders when I’m hiding doubt. It learned where my eyes go when I’m thinking about retreat.” He took a breath. “How do you think it learned that, Tony? How many hours did you go through to teach it my tells?”

“Too many,” Tony admitted. “Enough that I can recite your stride cadence in my sleep.”

Steve’s jaw flexed. “That’s not a comfort.”

Silence held. The lab’s hum filled it, that patient sound that had felt like support five minutes ago and now felt like a witness.

Tony reached for the only ground he had that wasn’t defense. He moved slowly, telegraphing it, and touched the back of Steve’s wrist. The contact was light. Warm. “Tell me what to do,” he said. “Tell me how to change it so it isn’t this. Or tell me to scrap it.”

Steve’s wrist pulled under his fingers, a reflex. He didn’t jerk away, but he didn’t lean in. The muscles under Tony’s touch were solid and coiled. Steve looked at where Tony’s fingertips rested, then up at his face. Something in his expression softened—regret, maybe—but it didn’t override the hurt.

“Turn it off,” Steve said again, and Tony felt the weight of the ask. “Take it offline until Fury decides what happens to it. We can tell him together. But you don’t get to keep learning me without me. Not like this.”

Tony nodded, the motion small. “Okay.” He let go of Steve’s wrist like it mattered how carefully he released him, and it did. He keyed a deeper shutdown, stepping around Steve to reach the manual kill. He could smell the clean sweat on Steve’s skin, the faint burn of adrenaline fading. The proximity made his own pulse trip. He kept his hands steady.

The server’s heartbeat slowed. Lights cascaded down to a quiet red. The tank’s core dimmed until only a thin ring remained, like a held breath. The room felt suddenly emptier.

Steve exhaled, as if he’d been waiting to let it go. He scrubbed a hand over the back of his neck, fingers skirting the hairline. “Fury will have opinions,” he said, dry.

“When does he not,” Tony said, keeping his voice neutral. He resisted the reflex to fill the space with jokes. He stood there with the emptiness and Steve’s upset and the hollow of something that had felt like progress an hour ago and now felt like proof he still trusted machines over people.

Steve angled toward the door, then paused. He turned back, the set of his mouth gentler. “I know you didn’t do this to hurt me.”

“I didn’t,” Tony said, and his chest felt too tight. “But I did hurt you.”

Steve’s eyes flicked down, then up. “Yeah.” He didn’t make him crawl through more apology. He stepped closer again, close enough that Tony could feel the warmth from his body seep into the space between them. “You want to bridge a gap?” His voice softened. “Next time, start with me.”

Tony couldn’t swallow past the pressure in his throat. “Okay.”

Steve’s gaze flicked to his mouth and away, and Tony felt heat gather low and unwelcome and impossible. Steve must have felt the echo of it in the air between them because his breath shortened. He lifted a hand like he might touch Tony’s face, then changed his mind and rested it on Tony’s shoulder, solid and brief. The weight of it grounded Tony more than anything he’d coded in years.

“We’ll talk to Fury,” Steve said. “We’ll figure out if this can be made right. But if it can’t, we let it go.”

Tony nodded. “If it can’t, we let it go.”

Steve’s hand squeezed once, then fell. He stepped back, and the air cooled. “Get some sleep,” he said, and there was care threaded in the scold. “You’ve been up all night building a mistake.”

Tony huffed a breath that wasn’t a laugh. “I specialize.”

Steve’s mouth tipped, almost a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. He turned toward the elevator. “Good night, Tony.”

“Night, Rogers,” Tony said, and watched him leave. The doors slid closed on Steve’s broad back, on the restrained fury and the reluctant steadiness. The lab felt cavernous in his absence.

Tony stood in the quiet and stared at the dark core, at the thin ring of light still pulsing as it bled off charge. He rubbed his thumb over the spot on his fingers where he’d felt Steve’s pulse, where he’d learned the tempo from contact instead of code. He could build a thousand bridges. None of them mattered if he didn’t step onto the ground first.