But I can’t. Elliot isn't just an anomaly anymore. He's leverage. A potential weapon against Moore. A reason for the Ministry to keep him breathing.
I exit the building into gray morning light. The city sprawls around me, indifferent, anonymous. Somewhere in the grid of streets and towers, Elliot is sitting in my apartment, eating eggs, trying to understand why a monster is being kind to him.
I don't have an answer for him.
I don't have an answer for myself.
But I have a week. And in a week, a lot of people can die.
I start walking.
The apartment is quiet when I enter. Too quiet. My hand goes to the knife at my hip before I clear the threshold, scanning the space in a single sweep.
Living room: empty. Kitchen: empty. Bathroom door: open, dark.
Bedroom door: closed.
I cross the floor in four strides, press my ear to the wood. Breathing. Slow, even, deep. He's asleep.
The tension in my shoulders releases by a fraction.
I check the second drawer. The knife is still there, untouched. He didn't take it. Didn't hide it. Didn't try to arm himself against me while I was gone.
I don't know if that's trust or resignation. The distinction matters, but I can't identify which it is from the available data.
I open the fridge. The eggs are gone. So is the bread. He ate while I was out. Good: he's capable of self-maintenance when left alone. Basic, but important. Assets who can't feed themselves require more resources to keep functional.
I'm categorizing him like inventory. Like a piece of equipment that needs maintenance schedules and usage logs.
The thought should bother me. It doesn't.
I pull out my laptop and start building the case file. Fabricated intelligence reports. Doctored communications logs. A trail of breadcrumbs leading from Elliot to Moore's network, convincing enough to survive a surface review.
It's treason. All of it. If anyone looks too closely, they'll see the seams.
But they won't look closely. They'll see what they want to see: a damaged asset with exploitable knowledge, a Reaper doing his job, a clean transaction that benefits the Ministry.
That's the thing about systems. They're designed to process inputs and produce outputs. Feed them the right data and they'll reach the conclusion you want. It doesn't matter if the data is real. It only matters if it's plausible.
I work for three hours. The file grows: intercepted messages, handler protocols, safe house locations. All of it pulled from real operations, names changed, dates shifted, details altered just enough to point at Moore without implicating anyone who might contradict the story.
By 1300, I have something that looks like intelligence. Something that might buy Elliot another week. Another month, if I'm lucky.
Enough time to figure out if he’s worth keeping just to satiate this curiosity about him that I can’t seem to shake.
I save the file, encrypt it, back it up to three separate locations. Then I close the laptop and sit in the silence of my apartment, listening to the sound of Elliot breathing through the bedroom door.
The numbers are still bad. Webb is still watching. The welfare check is still coming.
But I have a week. And I have a weapon.
Not Elliot. Not the fake intelligence.
Me.
I've killed two hundred and seventeen people in service to The Silent. I know every protocol, every weakness, every blind spot in their security. I know which Directors can be bought and which ones can be broken. I know where the bodies are buried because I'm the one who buried them.
If they come for Elliot, they come for me.
