Page 32 of Gym With Benefits

"Which is why you have me." He pushed his glasses up and smiled wide. "I’ve had to do this a few times. Research purposes, obviously. If you’ve reached the point where you’re creating Helen Salisbury, the situation is dire. You’re the most level-headed person in this building. If you’re breaking bad, there’s a reason."

The wordlevel-headedweaseled under my skin. If he knew how I’d begged a man to fuck me twelve hours ago, he’d never offer to help me. And he’d probably call to have me burned at the stake.

"It’s stupid," I said, reaching for the power button. "I’m being childish."

"You’re being human. It’s a foreign concept in this department, I know." He stood, checking the analog watch that seemed too large for his bony wrist. "But you’re also being an amateur. If you do this here, IT will have a transcript of your descent into madness before you even hit the Follow button."

I looked at the damp, gray walls of my kingdom. The basement felt too small, the air too thin, thick with the weight of Constance’s secrets and my own. I needed to move. I needed tobe anywhere that didn't remind me of the girl who got cheated on or the girl who got wrecked in a shower stall.

"I’m not doing it," I said, reaching for my bag. "It’s beneath me. I have a life."

"You have a basement," Walter countered with a lanky grace. "I, however, have a private laptop in my lair upstairs with a dedicated VPN routed through a server in Estonia. It’s the digital equivalent of a clean room. No breadcrumbs. No prying eyes. Just you, the bride, and a secure connection."

He dangled the bait with a tilt of his head. He knew the pull of the itch. He knew that once the seal was broken on a mystery, a true archivist couldn't just walk away.

"Estonia?" I asked, my resolve beginning to fray at the edges.

"It’s lovely this time of year. Very private." He gestured toward the door. "Leave the relics behind, Seymore. Take an early lunch. I’ll get you set up, and then I’m going to go get a sandwich while you ruin your own afternoon in peace."

"This is unethical, Walter."

"The underpinnings of real friendship. And it’s much more productive than staring at a suffragette’s heartbreak."

I looked at the stack of 1920s longing on my desk, then back at Walter’s crooked glasses. The lure of the VPN was the final nudge I needed to abandon my dignity.

"Fine," I said, catching my strap. "But if I get fired, I’m telling the board you’re a sleeper agent who made me do it."

Walter’s lair was a refrigerated sanctuary of high-resolution scanners and ultraviolet lamps. The air lacked the basement’s organic rot, but held the sterile, ionized zing of cooling fans and ozone. Huge monitors dominated the workstations,displaying zoomed-in fractures of artifacts that looked like lunar landscapes.

He pulled a stool out for me at a desk cluttered with external hard drives and a half-eaten bag of salted pretzels. "Helen Salisbury sounds like she smells of mothballs. So we’re definitely killing her."

I sat, the plastic seat cold through my pants. "Fine. Gretchen?"

Walter adjusted his glasses, his gaze fixed on the screen. "The goal is to be the total opposite of yourself, but Gretchen’s a bit of a stretch, don't you think?"

I narrowed my eyes. "Jean."

"You wish."

I stood up, the legs of the stool scraping against the linoleum. "I didn't want to do this anyway. I have love letters to salvage."

"Wait, wait." He caught my sleeve, his expression shifting into a rare, apologetic softness. "I’m done. I'll stop. Let's try a different angle. We build the face first. The name usually finds itself once there’s a soul behind the pixels."

He clicked through a proprietary AI generator, the screen flashing with a montage of composite features. "Logic dictates the opposite of you. Black hair, a sharp pixie cut, brown eyes. And a banging bod."

"Oh, fuck off. My body bangs just fine."

He gave me a once-over, his eyes lingering on the curve of my hip before returning to the screen. "A few more months on that gym membership and that sentence might just be true."

Before I could find a retort, he hit a final key. A woman appeared on the screen. She was striking but generic, the kind of person you’d pass in a grocery store and forget within threeseconds. She had ink-dark hair and a smile that looked like it belonged on a box of organic pasta.

"Susan Jeffries," I blurted out. The name felt right. Unremarkable, and entirely safe.

"Susan Jeffries it is." Walter’s fingers became a blur. He populated a feed in seconds, pulling AI-generated images of rustic sourdough loaves, a cluttered mudroom, and a golden retriever sleeping by a fireplace. "Susan is a homemaker from the Midwest. She has five kids, a husband named Greg who works in insurance, and a passion for slow-cooker stews. She is the least threatening entity in the Western Hemisphere."

He stood, gesturing to the keyboard with a dramatic flourish. The Estonian VPN was active, the digital trail cold.

"The reins are yours, Susan. Happy hunting."