“You’re quiet,” Kat says finally, her voice low enough to be swallowed by the rattle of the train.
“Just thinking.”
“About the target?”
I don’t answer.
She studies my profile for a moment, and I’m afraid she sees all. “You’ve gone soft, haven’t you?”
“I haven’t gone anything.”
“Mia...” she says in a warning tone. “I’ve known you for six years. I can see it. The way you check your phone. The faraway look in your eyes. The way you say his name.”
“I don’t say his name in any particular way.”
“You say it like it means something. Something more than it should.”
The train lurches around a curve. A twenty-something with oversized headphones stumbles against me and mumbles an apology. I wait until he’s moved away before responding, barely moving my mouth as I speak.
“And I’m telling you, it doesn’t.”
Kat doesn’t push. That’s one of the things I’ve always appreciated about her. She knows when to press and when to let the silence do the work. We ride the rest of the way without speaking, transferring twice more until we emerge in a part of Brooklyn I don’t recognize, the kind of neighborhood that gentrification forgot, filled with industrial buildings and empty lots.
“This way,” Kat says, leading me down a side street.
The building we stop at looks abandoned, with graffiti on the walls, plywood over the windows, and a chain-link fence with a gap just wide enough to slip through. But when Kat pushes open a rusted door at the back, the interior tells a different story. Here, it already feels lived in, with stairs leading downward and emergency lights that cast everything in red, giving it an eerie glow.
“Dead zone’s in the basement,” she says. “Bayo’s contact runs it. Former NSA analyst who found religion after the Dark Decade. Now, she helps people disappear.”
We descend three flights into a space that feels carved out of the Earth itself, with low ceilings, concrete walls, and the particular silence of a place where signals go to die. No data hum or electromagnetic buzz here. My phone went dark the moment we crossed the threshold, making me feel both on edge (because who are we without our phones?) and secure at the same time.
The room is larger than I expected. Maybe a dozen people are scattered throughout, most of them at individual workstationssurrounded by lead-lined privacy screens. The fashion is striking—colored sunglasses, nanotech makeup that blurs facial features, hats and hoods and carefully styled hair designed to defeat recognition algorithms. It’s like a costume party for the surveilled.
“Counter-surveillance chic,” Kat murmurs. “Very underground Brooklyn.”
A woman approaches us—mid-sixties maybe, close-cropped grey hair. She seems kind of featureless in a strange way, and my memory is trying hard to latch on to something to remember for the future. “You’re Bayo’s friends.”
“That’s right.”
“Call me Evil-Lyn. This way.”
“Evil-Lyn, like from He-Man?” I ask.
She gives me a quick smile but doesn’t say anything. She leads us to a corner booth enclosed by more lead-lined panels and gestures for us to sit. “There are some ground rules. No recording devices. No real names unless absolutely necessary, pseudonyms preferred. Payment was already handled through your mutual friend. You have thirty minutes.”
Then, Evil-Lyn is gone, and we’re alone with our contact.
He’s younger than I expected, maybe mid- to late-twenties, with the hollow cheeks and darting eyes of someone who hasn’t slept properly in months. His skinny hands shake slightly as he pulls a tablet from his bag, the screen protected by a film that makes it visible only from directly in front.
“You’re looking into Global Dynamix,” he states.
“We’re looking into a lot of things,” I say.
“Don’t bullshit me.” My eyes widen at his unhinged tone. “Bayo said you wanted the Kozlov connection. I have it. But once I give it to you, I’m gone. New identity, new continent. This information has a body count, and I don’t plan on adding to it.”
Kat and I exchange a glance. Okaaaaay.
“We’re listening,” I say, trying to sound reassuring.
