"And Ablation—" He stopped. "Ablation told me he died in a field accident and gave me a file with photographs and a cause of death and I—" He stopped again.
Tav waited.
"I was twenty-five," Alistair said. "He was twenty-seven. They sent a handler to sit with me for two days and I thought—" He looked up. "I thought that was care. That was Ablation's version of care.
Two days of managed grief, and then you're operational again, and the grief is filed under a professional adjustment and you continue."
"That's what they do," Tav said.
"Yes." He watched the street. "I know that's what they do now. I didn't know it then. I thought the care was real." Something moved in his voice. "I thought Evelyn's presence was—" He stopped. "She knew he was alive. She was sitting with me in a hotel room for two days, keeping me stable enough to return to operations, and she knew he was alive."
"Yes."
"That's— I don't have a word for that."
They walked.
The rain was light and steady, it had been going on long enough to have become ambient — present but no longer noticed. Tav was aware of it, the way he was aware of the city's background sound silent to him.
"He built the archive for Elias," Tav said.
"Yes."
"Five years of it."
"Yes." Alistair was quiet. "Five years of being alive in a context where no one was supposed to know it.
That's—" "That's a instinctive kind of survival. Not just staying alive. Staying alive quietly, without the people who—" He stopped.
"Without you," Tav said.
"Yes." He fixed on the pavement. "Without me. And building toward the only thing he could think of that would matter." "I'm not angry at him. I understand the logic. He was afraid that contact would put me in danger."
"And you were afraid that the truth about the Protocol would put me in danger," Tav said.
Alistair glanced at him.
"Yes," he said. "I'm aware that's the same thing."
"People who love each other protect each other through concealment," Tav said. "It's usually a mistake.
But it's a human one."
Alistair studied him.
"You've said that before," he said.
"It's still accurate."
"It's very—" He stopped. "You're getting better at the true things."
"I have good incentive."
Something warm moved in Alistair's expression despite the hour and the rain and the weight of what they'd learned.
"The archive," he said. "What Lucien built."
"What he wants us to do with it."
