Alistair watched him.
Between them, something passed that didn't require words — not the trained synchronization of professional partners, but something older and simpler and more honest.
"We'll need to think," Tav said.
"Of course." Lucien reached into his coat and held out a small, flat device. A black data drive.
"For now — this is a copy of a portion of the archive. Enough for you to understand the scope.
Enough to begin making your decision." "And enough that, if something happens to you, the information survives."
Tav took it.
Lucien watched his brother.
"Alistair," he said.
"Not now," Alistair said quietly. "Later."
Lucien nodded.
He looked at them both longer. Then he turned toward the warehouse's far exit, pausing once to look back.
"They'll move on the Final Directive in the next forty-eight hours," he said. "Evelyn Hart bought you some time, but not much." He looked at Tav specifically. "Whatever you decide — decide it together."
Then he was gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
They walked back to the apartment through the rain.
The industrial district at midnight the streets wide and underlit by the city's standards, the occasional van or lorry moving through with the purposeful efficiency of people engaged in work that required this hour. Not dangerous — the kind of neighborhood where the activity was legitimate and the people involved in it were simply too busy to be interested in pedestrians.
Tav walked and let the accounting proceed.
He had learned to do this — the practice of walking after significant events, letting the body's movement do something that sitting still couldn't. The mind processed differently when the body was engaged. Not better or worse; differently. Some things resolved in stillness and some things resolved in motion, and the warehouse and Lucien and everything that had been said there required motion.
Beside him, Alistair was quiet.
This was unusual. Alistair's default in difficult situations was a particular kind of talk — the warm deflecting commentary that created forward motion when forward motion wasn't obvious. He deployed it with the efficiency he knew that momentum was better than stillness when the alternative to momentum was grief.
But not tonight.
Tonight he walked unhurried.
"You're not going to say anything," Tav said.
Alistair glanced at him. "I have many things to say. I'm deciding which of them are true enough to be worth saying."
"That's an unusual filter."
"It's the correct one right now." He studied the pavement. "I spent five years believing my brother was dead."
"Yes."
"And he wasn't."
"No."
