CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Tav stood in the hallway in the dark and studied the shut bedroom door and confirmed, through the silence behind it, what he'd known since waking: the auditory baseline of an occupied space was absent. The room was empty.
He had not heard Alistair leave.
That was not, objectively, remarkable — Alistair moved quietly when he chose to, as Tav had cause to know. But it was notable in the context of the last two days, in the context of the previous evening's conversation and what had been agreed and left unresolved, in the context of the unknown phone call Alistair had received midway through dinner and his expression when he'd checked the screen and said, with a flatness that stripped all the warmth from his voice: I need to go.
No explanation. No flirtation. No performance.
Just gone.
Tav made coffee and stood at the kitchen window and watched the city below. The streets at this hour were not empty — they never entirely were — but they'd reduced to their minimum: the last taxis, the early deliveries, the solitary figures who had reasons to be out at three in the morning that didn't bear examination. He catalogued them automatically.
He was aware that what he was experiencing, standing here in the kitchen waiting for the sound of the apartment door, was not operationally motivated.
He was aware that it was worry.
The apartment door opened at 2:47.
Tav didn't turn immediately. He heard the sound of it, heard the lock click, heard the careful movement of someone entering a space they believed unoccupied. Then: "I know you're awake," Alistair said.
Tav turned.
Alistair stood in the entryway in his jacket, rain-damp and slightly pale, and the first thing Tav's eyes found — the automatic cataloguing of injury, the trained prioritization — was the dark stain spreading through the left sleeve of his jacket just above the wrist.
He crossed the apartment before he'd made a decision to move.
"What happened?"
Alistair looked down at himself. The weariness in him was genuine — the kind that came from sustained effort rather than ordinary tiredness, the flatness of someone who had been running on professional adrenaline and was now depleted.
"Small knife graze," he said. "I'm fine."
"How?"
"Someone followed me from the rendezvous point." He looked at Tav with the steady face of someone recounting facts rather than seeking comfort. "I lost them three streets over. The graze is from a defensive block — caught the blade on the outside of the forearm."
Defensive, not offensive. He'd been protecting himself, not fighting.
"You were followed," Tav said.
"Yes."
"From where?"
A pause.
"Alistair."
"I was meeting a contact," he said. "An external contact. Someone outside Ablation's structure." He held Tav's gaze. "That's as much as I can tell you right now."
Tav watched him steadily. Noted the care in the partial answer, the deliberate limitation. Not deflection — calculation. Protecting something.
"Come here," Tav said. And then, more quietly: "Please."
The word was unfamiliar in his mouth in this context — he used it rarely and with deliberate weight.
Alistair registered it. Something shifted in his expression.
