Vanya has work for me. Real work.
“Sit,” she says, and slides a laptop across the table. There’s an audio file open on it, and a pair of headphones. “Fresh intercepts. Six voices, all women, short clips. You know what the handler sounds like. Tell me if any of these is her. Take your time. Play them as often as you need.”
My hands aren’t quite steady when I put the headphones on. Not fear. It’s that she’s handing me a job only I can do, and we both know it. The pads press against my ears, sealing out the room, and a stranger’s voice comes through so close it could be inside my head.
I listen to the first clip four times. A woman giving what sounds like directions, calm, clipped.
“Not her,” I say. “This one talks to be understood. The handler talked to make you wait.”
“Explain that.”
“She never rushed a sentence. Ever. And her pauses were longer than normal pauses. You’d think the call dropped.” I move to the next clip. Then the next. Number four makes me stop and play it six times, and Vanya watches me do it without a word.
“Not her,” I say finally. “The pitch is close. But this woman says ‘um.’ The handler never said ‘um.’ Not once in months.”
“You’re sure.”
“I’m sure.”
Vanya takes the laptop back and types something. “Then you’ve eliminated four this morning, and two of them mattered.” She glances up at me. “That’s worth having. Same time tomorrow.”
It’s not the sealed findings. It’s not a map with Serenity on it. But I did something with my own ears that a machine couldn’t do, and Marek has to lengthen his stride to keep up with me down the corridor.
Kaylin ambushes me outside the dining hall.
“You’re eating with me. Don’t argue, you’re too thin, and I’ve been saving you from the soup.” She’s already got a hand on my sleeve, towing. “There’s actual chicken in it today. I complained to Alex twice, so he said he’d fix it. You’re welcome.”
“You’ve been fighting the soup for me?”
“I’ve been fighting the soup on everyone’s behalf. You’re just the excuse.” She drops me into a seat and sits across from me and talks with her spoon in the air—about the soup, about a leak in the storage block roof, about a card game I’ve apparently missed three of. Ordinary things. She gives me twenty minutes of a normal life, and I don’t think she knows she’s doing it, which is what makes it work.
Decker comes in halfway through, gets a tray, and sees me. He crosses the room and sits down beside me like it’s the only open chair in the building, which it isn’t.
“Kaylin,” he says.
“Big man.” Kaylin doesn’t miss a beat; she just widens the conversation to fit him. “Tell her the soup’s improved. She won’t take my word for it.”
“The soup’s improved,” he says, and steals a roll off my tray, and Kaylin laughs, and for a minute it’s just the three of us and lunch. He doesn’t touch me. He doesn’t have to. His arm is a warm line an inch from mine, and I can feel it the whole time, and once, when Kaylin says something that makes me actually laugh, I look over, and he’s watching me instead of eating, and his mouth softens at one corner.
Marek collects me before I’ve finished. Vanya wants a second pass on clip four while it’s fresh.
Decker catches up to me in the corridor outside the admin floor. Just steps into my path, easy, like he’s got all day, though neither of us does.
“You look pleased with yourself,” he says.
“I eliminated four voices. Two of them mattered.” I hear how it comes out—proud, lit up. “I was useful today, bear. With my own ears.”
His face softens, and he reaches up and tucks a piece of hair behind my ear, slow, in the middle of the corridor where anyonecould see. “Course you were, sweetheart,” he says, like it was never in question.
My heart kicks. I’m still feeling it when Marek clears his throat. Vanya’s waiting. Decker steps back and lets me go with a look that sayslater, and my heart kicks again.
I carry that look back to the admin floor and through a second hour with the headphones on. The light’s gone gold through the wire glass by the time Vanya dismisses me. Serenity is closer. I made her closer, twice now. The building is thawing.
And the man is mine.
I start a list of things I’ll tell Serenity when we get her out. That the mountains here go purple before dark. That there’s a girl called Kaylin she’s going to love. That I met someone, he’s enormous, and she’s going to laugh when she sees how gentle he is.
That’s where I am when the cold creeps in under the door, and I go to the duffel for my thicker shirt.
