Another nod.
"They said..." I swallow. "Retrieval protocols.”
He looks at me for a long moment. I wait for the lie, the deflection, the careful phrasing that protects me from the truth. That's what handlers do. They manage information. They decide what you can handle and feed you the rest in pieces.
Jace doesn't do any of that.
"If I don’t comply, they’ll send a team to recover you by force," he says. "Sedate you, transport you, return you to circulation."
"And if you don't report to the Ministry?"
"Then the team comes for both of us."
He says it flat, no inflection. Like he's reading weather data. Like the prospect of violence doesn't register as a threat.
Maybe it doesn't. Maybe he's been violent for so long that the idea of more violence is just background noise.
Then it dawns on me.
Why he’s not afraid.
"You're going to fight them."
It's not a question. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his weight shifts forward, the subtle loosening of his hands.
"Yes."
"You could die."
"I could." He tilts his head, studying me. "Does that bother you?"
The question catches me off guard. I open my mouth, close it, try again.
"I don't want you to die for me."
"That's not what I asked."
I look at him. Really look, for the first time since he walked in. The flat grey eyes, the hard line of his jaw, the controlled stillness that makes him seem more statue than man. He's not handsome, not in the way the handlers at the pens were handsome, all polish and practiced charm. He's something else. Something carved out of stone and sharpened to a point.
"Yes," I say. "It bothers me."
He processes this. I watch him do it, watch the micro-shifts in his expression as he files the information away.
"Why?"
Because you're the first person who's been kind to me in ten years. Because you gave me food and water and a bed and you didn't touch me. Because you left me alone with knives and trusted menot to use them on myself or you. Because you look at me like I'm a problem to be solved instead of a thing to be used, and I don't know what to do with that, but I know I don't want it to stop.
I don't say any of that. The words are too big, too raw, too likely to make him realize I'm more trouble than I'm worth.
Instead I say, "Because you came back."
He's quiet for a moment. Then he nods, takes the card from my lap, and walks to the kitchen.
I watch him pull a lighter from a drawer, hold the card over the sink, and set it on fire. The paper curls, blackens, disintegrates into ash. He runs the water until every trace is gone.
"They'll send another," I say.
"Probably."
