Voices drift through the vent sometimes, muffled but distinct enough to pick out tone shifts and name fragments.
“—not your call?—”
“—he’ll skin us if we screw this up?—”
“—node access is still unresolved?—”
“—Alliance—”
That last word always tightens the air.
Always drops voices half an octave.
Always makes somebody swear quietly.
Good.
I don’t need to know everything.
I just need to know where the fault lines are.
They bring me out twice a day now.
Not for interrogation.
For “conversations.”
That’s what the bald one with the expensive boots calls them, like we’re coworkers hashing out a budget over bad coffee.
They sit me in the same concrete room with the sweating walls and the single metal chair bolted to the floor, and different men cycle in to ask the same questions with slightly different phrasing.
Where is Tur.
How involved is he.
How much do I know about the node.
What codes do I have.
Who else is helping me.
They’re careful.
They don’t hit me anymore unless I get sarcastic.
They don’t shock me at all.
They hurt me just enough to remind me that they can.
I answer everything with partial truths and strategic ignorance.
I tell them I don’t have codes.
True.
I tell them I don’t control the node.
Also true.
