The kitchen. The living room. The floor-to-ceiling windows showing the city below in predawn grey.
Tav crossed to the section of wall beside the kitchen island. There was a panel there — standard building maintenance access, plastered over except for the edge that Lucien's instructions had indicated. He pressed it.
The node was behind it.
Small. Humming.
He reached for the drive.
"Tav," Alistair said.
His voice had a quality Tav had learned to attend to: the flatness of someone managing something very significant.
He turned.
Alistair was standing in the living room. Looking at the apartment. At the kitchen island and the couch and the window with the city behind it.
The first morning. The coffee. The burned butter.
"I know," Tav said.
"It's—" He stopped.
"I know." Tav held the drive. Looked at the node. "When this is finished," he said carefully, "none of this will be required to end."
Alistair found his face.
"The apartment was theirs," Tav said. "What's in it—" "What's in it is ours."
Alistair was very still.
"Okay," he said softly.
Tav pressed the drive to the node.
NODE 7: COMPLETE. DISTRIBUTION ACTIVE. ALL NODES CONFIRMED.
RELEASE: TOTAL.
The drive's indicator light went from amber to steady green.
Tav held it. The small flat weight of it. The years in it. The drive that had cost Lucien everything and might cost them still, and had cost Elias everything already.
He looked at it.
Then met Alistair's eyes.
"It's done," he said.
Alistair studied him.
Then, across the city skyline visible through the windows, the first grey light of pre-dawn was beginning at the eastern horizon — not sunrise yet, but its precursor. The sky lightening by degrees the way it always did, indifferent and beautiful.
"Let's go," Alistair said.
• • •
• • •
