When Anderson had left Earth, she'd thought, with the blind belief of someone raised in a fascist totalitarian system, that everywhere was like that. Even knowing it was propaganda, she'd ended up swallowing some of it. Coming to find out that there were other places, other people, where her every move wasn't being watched for disobedience had been electrifying. For all it'd felt at the time like she'd taken a short step out of a dropship without a parachute, Cassandra never intends to go back to living that way.

Some of her on-the-job facade drops to spare him a wry look. "I've seen what you're like when you think someone's hiding something interesting from you, sir." And it's doubly distracting when it's a quick flash of successive imagines zipping along at the edge of her awareness while he tries to figure it out.

She really tries not to listen in without a good reason, but Miles has loud thoughts, and if she's learned a few things like what his real relationship is with Sergeant Taura, Anderson steadfastly ignores it.