"No," Alistair said.
Tav looked at him steadily. There was something underneath this conversation that Tav was beginning to feel the shape of — not yet visible, but there. A structure beneath the surface.
"Why were you assigned to Voss?" he asked.
Alistair turned his mug between his palms.
"I was told Voss was laundering funds for a network Ablation had been tracking for two years." He watched the window. "Standard extraction-and-information assignment. Get close to the foundation events, document the financial channels, identify the upstream source."
"That's also my assignment," Tav said.
A quiet moment.
"Yes," Alistair said.
"Ablation doesn't duplicate resources without purpose."
"No."
"Which means—"
"Which means one of us wasn't assigned to Voss." Alistair set his mug down. "Or both of us weren't, and Voss was the cover rationale for something else entirely." He met Tav's eyes directly. "I've been working this out since week two."
Tav had been working it out since week one and hadn't allowed himself to follow the conclusion to its logical end.
"What do you think the actual assignment is?" he asked.
Alistair was quiet. The city outside was grey and overcast, the morning light flat and even.
"There's something Ablation calls the Pairing Protocol," he said carefully.
The words landed.
Tav held his gaze.
"I don't know the details," Alistair continued. "What I know is that it involves placing operatives in high-proximity environments with psychological compatibility profiles and monitoring subsequent behavioral data." He met Tav's gaze. "The phrasing in my brief included terms like 'synchronization assessment' and 'attachment evaluation threshold.'"
The kitchen had gone very quiet.
"They're studying us," Tav said.
"Yes."
"The proximity. The assignment overlap." Tav worked through it. "The engineered discomfort of a shared space."
"And probably the Voss cover, which creates shared operational context without being the primary objective." Alistair leaned on the counter. "I think Voss exists. I think the financial laundering is real.
But I think it's peripheral."
Tav absorbed the weight of this.
"When did you know?" he asked.
Alistair watched him steadily. "I suspected from the first day. The brief had language I'd seen before — the terminology that showed up in one operational context I know about." "What context?" Silence.
Tav watched him.
"Alistair," he said.
