“And I will do this every morning and afternoon, before and after every work shift.”
“Great,” Andrew says. “Fantastic.”
Leah and Roxycome to my office just after midshift.
I hear them before the door, two sets of footsteps and a low conversation. Then the knock, which is unusual in itself. Family doesn’t knock.
“Have you got a minute?” Leah says.
“I do.”
They come in, and Roxy shuts the door behind them and then they stand there looking quiet and uncomfortable.
“What’s wrong?”
They exchange a look. Roxy, who has never been at a loss for words in my presence, examines her own hands.
“Okay,” Leah says finally. “This is going to sound insane, and we’ve been going back and forth about whether to even come down here, and if you tell us we’re being ridiculous we’ll go away and never mention it again.”
“Say it.”
“It’s Andrew,” Roxy blurts out. “We don’t like him.”
Something goes very still behind my ribs.
“Told you it sounds insane,” Leah says. “But…I don’t like him either.”
“It doesn’t. I don’t like that male either,” I admit.
Roxy looks up sharply. “The problem is that I’ve been telling myself these last few diurnals that I’m a scientist and I can’t walk into somebody’s office with afeelingand no data.”
I lean back and cross my arms. “Tell me the feeling.”
“Well, first, he’s different when she’s not there,” Roxy explains. “That’s the thing I keep coming back to. With Mara he’s lovely, honestly. Warm, funny, teasing, the whole devoted-brother thing, and it’s completely convincing. And then she walks out of the room and something changes, like he’s stopped paying full price for the performance.”
“It’s the labs for me,” Leah says. “He turns up constantly in locations that have nothing to do with his grid work. He’s all over the mine, being charming at everybody, which sounds like nothing. Itisnothing. But he’s been on this planet for a week now and he’s got names for people I’ve worked beside for years and never learned.”
“And the questions he asks don’t seem reasonable,” Roxy says.
“The questions,” Leah agrees.
“What questions?”
“Where does mine security actually sit in the org chart? Who reports to Grytel directly and who reports through Admin? Whether the transport manifests get logged planetside or off-world. How the shift rosters get set and who has the authority to change them.” She looks up. “Scar, he’s a grid tech. None of that is grid work. Not one of those questions has anything to do with the power network, and he asks them like he’s making conversation, and every single time I answer him I feel weird afterwards and I can’t tell you why.”
“And the dinner last night was the part that got me feeling truly weird about him,” Leah says quietly.
“And the dinner,” Roxy agrees. “I don’t like his questions being directed at us. Yuck.”
Neither of them elaborates because they don’t need to, every being at that table felt him working his way toward the murder of our parents with a sympathetic face on, and then trying again after Chief was trying to change the subject.
Leah leans forward, and all the lightness has gone out of her. “Mara has no idea.”
“None,” Roxy says. “Not a flicker. She thinks he’s the best brother in the Four Sectors. Welikeher. That’s why this is so awful. He’s working behind her back and she’d defend him to the death.”
“Thank you for coming to me,” I say. “You aren’t insane. But that isn’t proof. A male being strange is not a crime, and I need you both to keep behaving exactly as you have been. Ordinary. Friendly. No change he can read.”
“So youhavebeen thinking about him.”
