And somewhere in an office or a monitoring room or a vehicle, a person with authority over the Final Directive was making calculations.
"Alistair," Tav said.
He looked up.
"Who do you trust inside Ablation?"
A beat.
"Not many people," Alistair said. "Evelyn Hart was my handler. She was—" "Professional. I don't know where she stands on this."
"Anyone else?"
He was quiet. Then: "There's someone. Not Ablation exactly. Peripherally connected." He looked at the window. "I need to think about whether it's safe to approach."
"We don't have time for long thinking."
"I know." He stood. "Make coffee. Let me work out the contact."
Tav studied him — barefoot in the morning, in Tav's hoodie, the same person who had been pressed warm against his side thirty seconds ago, now assembling the professional competence that lived underneath all of his other qualities.
Beautiful, Tav thought, for what was probably not the last time, and got up to make the coffee.
• • •
• • •
— LUCIEN —
The night Alistair confirmed Lucien was alive was the night the texture of the assignment changed permanently.
Tav was at the kitchen table when Alistair came out of his room at one in the morning with the way someone who had reached the end of a long private argument and was ready to have the next part of it with another person.
He sat down.
He told Tav everything.
The library terminal. The monitoring ghost. The access point he'd been using to try to signal through.
The confirmation, three days ago, that the signal had been received — the echo in the access point's response pattern that meant someone on the other end had read it.
He told Tav about the file he'd found in the Ablation secondary network two weeks after arriving at the placement — a misfiled operational document that had been scrubbed but not completely, a ghost of a record that was enough to confirm: Lucien Keaton was alive and had been for five years.
Tav listened. When Alistair finished, the kitchen was very quiet.
"Four weeks," Tav said.
"Yes."
"You've known for four weeks."
"Yes." He held the look. "I know we discussed this. I know I'm doing it again." He held the look.
"I was afraid that telling you would — accelerate something I wasn't ready to accelerate."
"The decision to release the archive."
"Yes." He fixed on the table. "Because if Lucien is alive and has the archive and is waiting for us to move — then knowing changes the operational situation completely. It means we're not just two people managing an assignment. We're three peoplemoving toward a specific outcome." "And I wasn't — I wanted more time."
