"Then let me out."
"No."
The stalemate resets.
She stares up at me. The height difference is significant. She has to tilt her head back to meet my eyes. The angle exposes the long, elegant line of her throat. The steady, rapid beat of her pulse against the delicate skin.
Touch is noise. For eight years, any physical contact with another human being felt like radio static dialed to maximum volume. A screeching, unbearable interference that short-circuited my nervous system. I avoided crowds. I avoided handshakes. I avoided women.
But looking at the pulse jumping at the base of her throat, I do not anticipate noise. I anticipate silence. I anticipate the exact opposite of chaos.
I bury the urge to reach out. I lock it down behind layers of iron control. It is too soon. The environment is unstable. The threat level is too high.
I adjust the weight of the tactical rig strapped across my chest. The Kevlar plates press against my sternum. The familiar pressure usually grounds me. Today, it feels restrictive. It feels like an obstacle between my skin and hers.
"You have a routine down here?" She asks. Crossing her arms again. Trying to normalize the extreme abnormality of the situation. "You just stand in the dark and brood? Or do you occasionally do something useful?"
"I secure the perimeter."
"The perimeter is a steel box. It's secure."
"I analyze the data."
"You destroyed the servers."
"The physical hardware is disabled. The network logs are stored on my encrypted drive." I point to the reinforced laptop sitting on a secondary table. "I have the full routing history of the Bellanti ghost signatory trust. Decades of transactions."
"So analyze it." She gestures toward the table. "Give me some space. Let me breathe without you hovering like a heavily armed shadow."
The description is accurate. I am hovering. I am tracking her every inhalation.
I nod slowly. I turn and walk to the table. I open the laptop. The screen illuminates, casting a harsh, blue-white glare across my face. I enter a thirty-two-character alphanumeric passcode.The operating system boots. The data streams across the screen in cascading columns of green text.
It is my native language. The numbers. The timestamps. The IP addresses. The digital architecture of money laundering and murder.
For years, this screen has been my world. It was safe. It was predictable.
I stare at the data. I try to read the first line of the transaction log.
I cannot process the numbers.
The sequence is meaningless.
My peripheral vision is locked on Imani. She walks back to the crate. She sits down. She wraps her arms around her knees and rests her head against the cold concrete wall. She closes her eyes.
The amber scent wraps around my throat. It pulls tight.
I close the laptop.
The blue light vanishes. We are plunged back into the dim amber glow of the emergency system.
She opens her eyes. "Finished already?"
"The data requires total concentration." I tell her the truth.
"And?"
"And you are a distraction."
