“Correct. And it means he has not forgotten your area of focus.”
Valen never says her name in these conversations. He classifies it as a variable and keeps the language clean and operational because Valen is precise about what could compromise him if said aloud.
“I know,” I say.
Silence on Valen’s end means he is deciding whether to say the next thing. He says it.
“You spent the night in her room.”
Not a question. Zero’s network setup is comprehensive.
“Yes,” I say.
He is quiet for a moment. “Saint. If Silas pulls the unmanaged feed?—”
“I know.”
“They are looking for a reason, and you are giving them material to work with every time you?—”
“I know,” I say. For the third time, with the weight I put on the things I mean and do not intend to discuss further.
Valen exhales. “Victor is escalating because he is afraid. Afraid men with resources do things in an imprecise way. He is going to make a move soon, something visible, something designed to send a message to the Order about what happens when their attack dog operates off leash.”
“That message will involve her, Saint.”
I look at my hand. “Then he had better move before I do,” I say, raising my voice.
Valen hangs up.
I stand in the stairwell. Three floors below me, she is waking up alone, finding the note, and holding it the way I know she will hold it against her chest. Not reading it again, just feeling the weight of it.
Victor Sokolov is going to find out what happens when you reach for the only thing in years that has made the white room worth leaving.
I take the stairs to my room.
I have a Behavioral Psychology lecture in two hours.
I’m going to sit in the back row and watch the door until she walks through it.
Amy
He is already there when I walk in.
Back row, corner seat, the usual configuration. Hood up. No notebook.
He looks at me when I come through the door.
I glance back.
Something has shifted between us, and I feel it in the way it lands differently than it did a week ago. It carries a different weight and means something that I can’t name.
I take my seat. Sixth row. Middle. I uncap my pen.
I can feel the heat of his stare for the entire lecture.
Professor Harlan is talking about attachment theory today, which is either cosmically hilarious or the universe being efficient. He talks about the neurological basis of secure and insecure attachment, about how the patterns we form in early relationships become templates that the nervous system carries into every subsequent connection. How the body learns what love feels like before the mind can evaluate whether it is good for you. How a nervous system calibrated for fear will sometimes mistake intensity for safety because intensity is what it was taught to recognize.
I write it all down.
