He takes a break around ten. Walks the neutral zone. Talks to people. Not the same people every day. He rotates. Monday, it’s the woman who runs the textile station. Tuesday, it’s one of the north corridor traders. Wednesday, it’s a couple of Rotters I don’t know, younger guys who do maintenance. He gives each of them the same thing: five to ten minutes of friendly conversation, a question about their work, a joke, a nod, then he moves on.
He’s not making friends. He’s maintaining a network. Spreading his attention wide enough that nobody feels special but everybody feels seen. That’s a skill. I’ve seen politicians work rooms that way and that’s how Tommy works the Rot.
I’d say he was brilliant if he wasn’t a fucking crook.
Rogue confirms this from his afternoon work shifts. “He’s smooth,” he told me last night. “Doesn’t overdo it, doesn’t linger, he’s in, he’s friendly, then he’s out. Everyone I asked about him said the same thing. Nice guy, helpful, can’t remember much else.”
Can’t remember much else. That’s the whole game. Be present enough to be trusted. Be forgettable enough to be invisible. It’s a tightrope, and Tommy walks it perfectly.
Armen’s been tracking his movements on a rough map. Nothing fancy, just a layout of the Rot with dots marking where he goes and when. After three days, a pattern is clear. He covers the whole building. Supply room in the morning, neutral zone midmorning, trade hub after lunch, west corridor in the evening. He moves through every section of the Rot on a loose but consistent rotation.
It’s not a logistics clerk’s schedule. It’s a surveillance pattern. He’s monitoring the Rot the same way I do, quietly and consistently, keeping track of who’s where and what’s changing. The difference is I do it to keep the place safe and Tommy does it to cover his ass.
The question is why. If he’s Fischer from the city’s documents, he’s been doing this for a long time. Before Vi showed up, before the papers surfaced, before anyone had a reason to dig into Rothwell’s corruption. That’s who he is, a man who survives by knowing everything about his environment. He’s a man who keeps track because the day he stops paying attention is the day someone notices him and his past surfaces to bite him in the ass.
I respect the discipline. I hate that I respect it, but I do. This man has been operating under a false identity in a building full of people for years without a single slip, people who’ve lost everything and had to create new lives because of his actions. He’s surrounded by the very people he fucked over, and walks among them with a friendly smile.
No one’s ever looked at him and thought,That guy doesn’t add up. He’s managed his cover the way I manage the Rot, carefully and thoroughly.
There’s one deviation in his pattern, one place he may just have messed up. Befriending Mara. He’s either gotten lazy, assuming he was home safe, or gotten desperate enough that’s he’s broken his usual patterns.
The man talks to a lot of people, but with Mara, it’s different. The conversations are longer. More personal. He asks her things, not just small talk, but intrusive questions. That’s what’s going to be his downfall, if the guys and I have anything to do with it.
Rogue overheard one of these on his afternoon watch sitting two tables away eating his lunch. He listened to Tommy spend fifteen minutes drawing Mara out about Vi’s state of mind. Mara, trusting as ever, gave him everything. “She’s frustrated. The papers don’t have the whole story. She feels like something’s missing.”
Fuck me. I always knew that woman would become a liability.
If Tommy is truly Fischer, the information Mara just spilled will change his risk assessment. He’s been sitting comfortably for years, hidden, embedded, untouchable. Now, someone is not only looking at the Rot’s downfall but also digging into it. Hard.
If he’s Fischer, he’ll also know what’s in that six-week gap before Vi’s father disappeared. He was in the room. He was part of it. Whatever happened to Renner in those missing weeks, Fischer either saw it, caused it, or helped cover it up.
I sit with this in the Skylight Room after everyone’s gone to bed with Armen’s map tracing Tommy movements.
We need to move soon. Armen was right about that. Every day we wait is another day Tommy has to adjust, to cover, to decide whether running is safer than staying. I want him in a room answering questions. I want to know what happened to Renner. I want to know what’s in those six weeks.
But I need something more than handwriting. I need him to make a mistake.
Everyone makes mistakes. Even the careful ones. Even the ones who’ve been invisible for years. You watch long enough, you catch them slip.
I’m watching.
53
STING
Day four.It happens in real time in the neutral zone, midday. I’m on the second-floor, observing from my usual vantage point where I can see the whole communal area without anyone noticing.
Tommy is at his usual table. Mara walks in, sees him, and waves. He waves back. She sits down across from him with a bowl of whatever the kitchen made today. It’s easy and natural, just two friends meeting for lunch.
Except one of them isn’t a friend.
I need to get closer.
I take the stairs, cross the atrium floor, and grab a cup of water from the station near the west wall, which puts me about twenty feet from their table. Close enough to catch fragments if I stay still and the room noise cooperates.
It does.
“—must be under so much stress,” Tommy is saying. His voice is warm and concerned. It’s the voice of a man who givesa shit. “All that stuff with her father. The papers. I can’t imagine carrying that around.”
