Page 152 of What We Become

A video file appears beneath the message.

I open it.

The angle looks down over a florist counter. The timestamp reads 8:01 a.m. A man walks into frame wearing jeans, a dark jacket, and a baseball cap pulled low over short brown hair. He isn’t Stephen. He’s taller, broader, and at least ten years older. The camera catches enough of his face when he turns toward the cashier for me to know I’ve never seen him before.

He pays cash.

The florist passes him the bouquet.

He leaves carrying the sunflowers.

A second file arrives.

This one comes from a pharmacy camera two streets from our house. The man crosses the top-right corner of the frame at 8:34 with the bouquet tucked beneath one arm.

At 1:24 p.m., he walks back in the opposite direction.

Nothing in his hands.

Nobody speaks.

The back of my eyes starts to ache, the same way it did in the server room. Not now. Take a number and get in line behind the man with the sunflowers.

I take a still of his face and run it through every database I can reach—police records, licenses, public profiles, and the archive of known Kennel members Fenrir has shared with me. Fenrir is doing the same thing from the other end.

Nothing comes back.

ME:

Do you know him?

FENRIR:

No match.

ME:

Kennel?

There’s a longer pause this time.

FENRIR:

Unknown. Routing architecture remains consistent. Do not assume identity or affiliation.

“I don’t know who he is,” I say. “Fenrir doesn’t either.”

Sage steps closer to the screen. Holden stays behind her, one hand resting against her hip.

“That isn’t Stephen.”

“No.”

“Then maybe Stephen didn’t send them.”

“Maybe.” I enlarge the stranger’s face. “But a man we don’t know bought these eleven miles away, carried them to within two streets of our house, waited for hours until the coast was clear, and then somehow got them onto our kitchen counter without appearing on our cameras or touching a monitored entrance. At the exact time someone using the same routing pattern as the first probe knocked against our security controller.”

“So either Stephen sent him,” Eli says, “or this is connected to the Kennel.”