“It told me what I needed.”
Flint bristled. “You don’t get to?—”
“I do,” I interrupted quietly. Not raising my voice. Not looking at him. “Because everything in this room is already in motion.”
Mallory’s lips curved slightly. “Meaning?”
I held her gaze. “Meaning there are forces at play whether you acknowledge them or not. The only choice left is how deliberately we use them.”
Her eyes sharpened. She understood that language.
Flint didn’t.
“I don’t like what you’re implying,” he said.
“I know.”
Mallory studied me for a long beat. “You’re very sure of yourself.”
“I’m certain of patterns,” I corrected. “People, pressure, response. Right now, you’re all behaving exactly as expected.”
“And where does that put us?” she asked.
I paused. Just enough.
“At a fulcrum,” I said.
The word landed differently thanleveragewould have. Mechanical. Impersonal. Necessary.
She didn’t flinch, but Flint did.
Mallory nodded slowly, like she’d just been handed a sharper tool than she’d known existed. “Then I suggest you don’t slip,” she said. “Because I won’t.”
She turned away, ending it on her terms.
Flint stayed where he was, staring at me like he was finally seeing the shape of the threat.
He wasn’t wrong.
I watched them both—one drawn forward by curiosity, the other straining backward by instinct—and factored the third presence into the equation.
The man who had written about relevance. About noise. About attention.
Three forces.
One pivot point.
If I was careful—if I paced it right—I could keep them all moving exactly where I needed them. Best of all, none of them would realize it until it was too late.
Mallory broke the moment herself.
“I’m going to shower,” she said, sudden and decisive, like the thought had just crystallized. “And change. I’ve been in these clothes since before dawn.”
She bent, scooped up her duffel, then paused and gathered the rest—laptop, charger, phone, notebook—tucking everything under one arm.
Flint frowned. “You don’t need to take all that?—”
“I do,” she said lightly. “I don’t know what the plumbing situation looks like, and I don’t leave my things unattended.”
