“Where are they now?” I ask.
“Hidden. I didn’t bring them in. I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into.”
Smart. Even in crisis, the woman plans.
I want those papers. I want to hold my father’s handwriting and read every word he tried to leave me. But right now, I have a work shift to get to, a face to keep neutral, and a building full of people who’ll notice if I don’t.
10
VI
The work hubis loud and familiar with the usual tedium of sorting, stacking, and the hum of labor that keeps the Rot alive. I take my position and fall into the rhythm with hands moving, eyes forward, using the muscle memory of doing stuff without thinking.
Except, I am thinking. Mara’s words are circling. Unsent letters. Names and dates I haven’t seen. A father who was scared and tried to leave a trail.
And Alice’s offer, the older woman from the work hub who told me she has some of my father’s papers, just like Mara. Two sources, two collections, both heading in the same direction, figuring out what my father when through before he disappeared.
I’m sorting filters when she appears. I’d been looking around for her.
“Alice,” I say.
Alice with her badass shaved head and scar across the cheek. The older woman materializes beside me withoutannouncement, without disrupting the room’s flow. She’s just suddenly present at my elbow.
Her eyes check the room. Quick left, right, behind. “Keep sorting,” she says. “Don’t look at me.”
I keep sorting.
“It’s time to show you what your father left with me before he disappeared. I’ve been holding it too long.”
My hands don’t stop moving. “Why now, Alice?”
“Because you’re bound to men who can actually do something with them and because I’m tired of carrying this alone. And… most importantly, because I think you’re ready. You’re committed to this place and aren’t going anywhere. I feel like I can trust you.”
She gives me a location to meet. Third floor, east wing, behind a service door marked with a faded red A. Tomorrow, after the second shift change.
“Come alone or with your men,” she says. “But come.”
“I’ll be there.”
Then she’s gone. Back into the flow of bodies and noise, her shaved head disappearing between two taller figures before anything else can be said.
I stand at the sorting table with a filter in each hand and my heart hammering in my chest.
Two touchpoints. One personal, letters and notes in my father’s hand, hidden outside the Rot in Mara’s possession. The other one official, memos and documents hidden inside the Rot in Alice’s possession. Together, they might be enough to rebuild a picture of what my father actually was and what happened to him.
The evidence is close. It’s converging.
And now, I have to go to three men who believe my father got what he deserved and ask them to help me prove he didn’t.
11
STING
Vi tells us over breakfast,if you can call it that. Canned fruit and stale crackers on the table in the Skylight Room, the four of us arranged in the positions we’ve worn into habit with Armen at the head, me to his left, Rogue sprawled in the chair across from me, Vi between us. Mara is elsewhere, settling in, or trying to.
I’d kill for eggs and bacon once in a while.
Vi spills it fast. There’s a meeting today with the older woman, Alice, after second shift change, third floor, east wing, behind a service door marked with a faded red A. There will be documents, memos, and other things her father supposedly left behind.
