"Sorry," she says, and the word is clipped and perfunctory and her fingers are tapping on the pen at the speed of someone whose pulse just spiked.
"You're fine," I say, which is both a response to the apology and a completely involuntary observation about the state of her body in close proximity to mine.
She goes back to her station. I stare at a line of code that I've already reviewed and pretend the English language didn't just betray me.
Around noon, Sarah stands, stretches, and says she's heading to the communal area for food. Her tone is casual. Her exit is anything but.
She pauses at my station on her way out, and the pause has the quality of a woman who's been composing her opening statement for hours.
"Walk with me."
I follow her into the corridor, and she doesn't speak until we're well out of earshot.
Then she stops walking and faces me with the expression I've seen her use when signals analysis produces a result she didn't want but can't ignore.
"Is your assessment of her technical capability compromised by personal involvement?" Sarah asks, cutting straight to the incision without anesthetic.
"Define personal involvement."
"Tommy."
"Fine." I lean against the cold stone wall and take my glasses off. Clean them on my shirt. Put them back on.
The whole routine, buying time I don't have for an answer I don't want to give.
"My ability to be objective about Dar may not be fully intact."
Sarah absorbs this with the same composure she brings to intercepted communications that carry bad news, processing the new data without judgment or surprise.
"How compromised?"
"Somewhere between 'slight bias' and 'completely screwed.' Leaning toward the latter."
She doesn't smile, but something in her expression softens by a fraction. "Your technical judgment. Can you still assess her work objectively? Whether the code she's producing is sound. Whether her analysis of the Committee weapon is reliable."
"Yes." The answer comes without hesitation because it's true. Whatever my head is doing with fragments of last night, my professional assessment of Dar's capability hasn't shifted.
She's one of the two best signals analysts I've ever worked with—Sarah being the other. That was true before I touched her. It's true now. It'll be true tomorrow when the memory of her biting my shoulder is competing with encrypted traffic analysis for my attention.
"And her loyalty?"
I let the silence sit for a beat. "I believe she's genuine. I can't prove it yet."
Sarah nods once. "Fair enough. Keep the professional evaluation clean, Tommy. We need her. And we need you thinking clearly about what we need."
She turns and walks toward the communal area.
I stay against the wall, letting the cold stone press against my shoulder blades. Sarah asked whether my judgment was intact, accepted my answer, and moved on with the pragmatism of a woman who has navigated her own complicated territory, who understands that the heart's operating system doesn't pause for operational necessity.
I push off the wall and head back. The corridor is quiet, my footsteps absorbed by the stone, and with every step closer to the workspace, the weight of what I just admitted settles deeper into my chest. Saying it out loud made it real in a way that thinking it didn't. There's a difference between knowing you're compromised and hearing yourself confirm it to someone whose professional opinion you respect.
I round the corner. Dar is at her station, backlit by her screens, her fingers moving in a burst pattern. She doesn't look up. She doesn't need to. I can feel the shift in her attention the way I feel anomalies in the network, a change in frequency so subtle that only someone calibrated to the baseline would catch it. She knows I'm back. She's choosing not to show it.
Dar has moved her chair closer to my station. The adjustment is small, the kind that could be accidental, a shift for a better screen angle, a minor ergonomic correction.
Except Dar doesn't do anything accidentally, and I notice because I notice everything about the way this woman occupies my space.
I sit down. Our elbows are almost touching. The warmth of her arm radiates across the gap.
