CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
— LUCIEN —
They stayed at the borrowed flat for two days.
Two days of sleeping in shifts. On the first evening, Alistair called Lucien.
Tav sat at the window while Alistair spoke in the bedroom — he could hear the low cadence of it, not the words, just two people being careful with each other across a distance that was more than physical.
When Alistair came out, he sat at the table and was quiet for a while, and Tav let the quiet run.
"Lucien said Elias was the one who figured out what the Protocol was," Alistair said. "Before Ablation told them anything. He put together the monitoring patterns, and the assignment overlap and came to Lucien with a list of evidence and said: "I think they are studying us. I think they built this." "And Lucien said: does that change anything? And Elias said—" He stopped.
"What?" Tav asked.
"He said: only if it changes how you feel about me." Alistair studied the table. "And Lucien said it didn't."
The weight of that sat in the room.
"And then Ablation killed him," Tav said.
"Yes." Alistair was quiet. "Lucien said the last time he saw him, Elias was working on a crossword.
Complaining about seven across and asking Lucien to help and Lucien was annoyed at him for the noise and—" He stopped. "And then the mission happened and Elias didn't come back."
Tav said nothing.
"He never found out if Elias got seven across," Alistair said.
It was the specific detail that made grief real — not the large losses but the small unfinished things.
"Lucien's been building the archive for Elias," Tav said. Not a question.
"Yes." Alistair studied him. "He said: I can't give him his name back. But I can put it on the record."
"Which is why I want to release it. Not just for us. For that."
Tav looked at him.
Then reached across the table and covered his hand.
Two days of sleeping in shifts and eating whatever Naomi procured from the shop two streets over and working through the contents of the drive with the careful attention that something that had cost several years and two lives deserved.
Lucien's archive was comprehensive in the way of something built by someone who had nothing to lose in the building.
Financial records. Operational files. The full structural history of the Pairing Protocol, including its theoretical basis, its funding structure, the identities of every person involved in its design and execution. The names of the pairs — not just Lucien and Elias, but two earlier, smaller attempts that had ended less dramatically but no more ethically.
The names of the people who had died.
Alistair read those pages very quietly and set them down and was silent for a while, and Tav sat beside him and said nothing.
"He built all of this," Alistair said eventually.
"He had five years," Tav said.
"He was alone."
"Yes."
