I was counting files. Running a damage assessment the way I’d been trained to do in a different life, when the things at risk were lives instead of sentences.
Twenty-seven percent. That meant most of it was still there. Still recoverable.
I reached for the laptop. My father’s hand came up, not quite touching mine, a barrier more symbolic than physical.
“Jai,” he said. “We’re trying to help you.”
I looked at him. Really looked. The lines around his eyes had deepened since the last time I’d seen him. His shirt was pressed. His tie was knotted with the same precision he’d used my entire childhood, the kind that said I am a man who believes in order, and you are a problem I am solving.
Behind me, Ashe hadn’t moved. I could feel him there, a presence as steady as a bulkhead.
Denise’s nail file clicked against her cuticle. She hadn’t looked up once.
The screen glowed blue. The progress bar inched forward.
Everything else stopped.
I crossed the room fast, my hand closing around the edge of the laptop before my father could react. He stood up, chair scraping loud against the floor, but I’d already pulled it free and turned it toward me, fingers already moving across the trackpad.
The trash folder was still open. Twenty-nine percent complete. I clicked cancel, then opened the folder proper and started scanning.
Manuscripts. Drafts. Outline documents I’d spent months building. The novel I’d been working on when Grace showed up—forty thousand words, halfway done, the file time stamped three days before the alley. All of it, queued for deletion like it was junk mail.
My chest did something I didn’t have a name for.
I kept my breathing even.
The files were still there. The system had been deleting in order, oldest first, which meant most of the active work was still intact. I selected the first folder—manuscripts—hit restore, and watched the progress bar fill. Then the next. Then the next.
My father’s voice rose behind me. “This is exactly what I’m talking about, Jai. You’ve buried yourself in this—this fantasy world, and for what? Denise’s father has connections at the firm. He can get you a real position, with benefits, with a future—”
I restored another folder. My hands were steady. My pulse was doing something else entirely, hammering against my ribs like it was trying to escape, but my fingers moved with the same precision they’d had in Kandahar, checking a weapon in the dark.
Some muscle memories you don’t lose.
“—throwing away everything we’ve built for you. Everything we sacrificed. Your mother and I did not raise you to—”
The last folder restored. I closed the laptop, tucked it under my arm, and turned around.
My father was standing with his fists clenched at his sides, his face flushed the particular shade of red that meant he was three sentences from something he’d regret.
My mother had gone still by the bookshelf, one hand still resting on a paperback she hadn’t quite decided to throw away. Denise was, remarkably, still filing her nails. The scrape of metal against keratin was the only sound in the room for a long second.
I looked at Ashe in the doorway. His expression hadn’t changed. He was watching the room the way a man watches a neutral zone, alert but not engaged.
“Call your boss,” I said.
Ashe pulled out his phone and dialed without hesitation. No questions. No raised eyebrow. Just the flat efficiency of a man who’d been given an order and intended to execute it.
The phone rang once. Twice. Braham picked up on the second ring, his voice low and rough through the speaker. “Wilson.”
Ashe held the phone out to me. His face was diplomatically, almost heroically neutral—the most neutral face I’d ever seen on a living person.
I took the phone. “It’s Jai.”
There was a pause. I could hear the shift in his breathing, the way the air changed when he recognized my voice. “Jai.”
“I need immediate extraction. Four men, armed. Cardboard boxes.” I kept my voice flat, even, the way you’d read coordinates over a radio. “You’re getting a roommate.”
