Page 42 of Signal No. Us

Traitor. But, good. Eat well. Get some sleep. You’ll need the energy tomorrow.

For what?

So you can find out what you want.

Then, so you can fly home. There’s two of us waiting here, me and Oryo.

Allan fell asleep smiling at his phone, the old apartment building and the crack in its window and the whole compressed weight of who he used to be finally, quietly, settling into the past tense where it belonged.

CHAPTER 24

Conference Room 4B, it turned out, had gotten new chairs. Everything else, the fluorescent lighting, the framed motivational print about synergy, and that particular corporate hush that made everyone speak twenty percent quieter than necessary, was exactly as he’d left it.

“Allan!” Ms. Padilla stood to shake his hand, warm and professional, completely unaware of or unfazed by the fact that this was the same room she’d handed him his exit paperwork in less than seven weeks ago. “So glad you could make it. You’re looking well.”

“Thank you,” Allan said, sitting where he was directed, noting with distant, clinical interest that his hands weren’t shaking this time.

The pitch, when it came, was polished, generous, and exactly as advertised. Director, Regional Operations. A team of twelve. A salary that made Tita Gemma’s whole kitchen budget look like a rounding error. Full benefits, a car allowance, and a corner desk with an actual window this time, as if that detail alone was meant to erase everything that had happened in this room weeks ago.

“We made a mistake letting you go,” the regional director said, midway through, leaning forward with practiced sincerity. “Someone with your instincts and your ground-level experience, we need that kind of thinking at the leadership table.”

Allan listened to all of it. Really listened, something he hadn’t let himself do two weeks ago, hiding behind the ticket booth answering emails in secret. He let the number sit in the room. Let the title sit there too. Waited to feel the old relief, the old proof-of-worth adrenaline.

It didn’t come.

What came instead, unbidden, was the mural, two small painted figures under a storm, hand in hand, unafraid. Cora’s voice: alive first. Robby’s voice, steadier now than it had any right to be after everything: I want you to be honest with yourself.

There was a half-second, before he opened his mouth, where the old instinct rose up anyway. Swallow the question. Don’t make it harder for someone with more seniority than you. Hiya, he thought, recognizing it now for exactly what it was, a full room away from Tita Becky’s kitchen table. He let it rise. Then, for maybe the first time in his life, he didn’t obey it.

“Can I ask something,” Allan said, when the director paused for water. “If I accept this, what happens to your current teams in the regional field offices? The people taking on roles like mine before, who don’t get absorbed the way I’m being absorbed now?”

The director blinked, recalibrating. “That’s, a separate conversation, honestly. Different budget line.”

“You said you need ground-level thinking at the leadership table,” Allan said. “But the ground level, doesn’t that stay the same? It’s like, I’m just one person, brought up into a Director title, but the structure that burned me out in the first place, is that still there?”

“We’re always improving our⁠—”

“That’s not a question meant to make things hard for you,” Allan said, and found, surprised, that he meant it plainly, without the old bitterness. “I’m asking because I actually need to know before I decide.”

The room went quiet in a way conference rooms rarely did: no one, evidently, had expected the meeting to turn into an actual conversation.

He thought about the version of himself who’d sat in this exact seat seven weeks ago, calmly resigning, calmly walking away, and how much of that calm, in hindsight, had actually been panic wearing a very convincing disguise. He thought about the version of himself who’d almost taken this offer without telling anyone, hiding behind a ticket booth, mistaking a number for proof of a life well lived.

And he thought about a wall, half-painted, two thousand kilometers away, waiting for him to finish it.

The director tried once more, sliding a folder across the table just like Ms. Padilla had slid the performance plan seven weeks ago, except this one was glossier, heavier, and clearly meant to impress rather than wound.

“Take the weekend,” she said. “Talk it over with your family. This is a significant opportunity, Allan. Not everyone gets a second chance at a role like this.”

Something about the phrase “second chance” landed strangely in the quiet of the conference room, close enough to the truth to almost tempt him into hearing it the way she meant it.

“I already have a second chance,” Allan said slowly, half to her, half working it out loud for himself. “It’s just not this one. I already went looking, and I already found it, somewhere else, before this offer even came along. The only thing I got wrong was thinking I had to turn this down first to know if the first one was real.”

“I’m not sure I follow,” the director said, polite, professionally lost.

“You don’t really need to,” Allan said, not unkindly. “It’s personal.”

“Thank you for the offer,” Allan said finally, standing, and this time his voice didn’t shake at all. “But I won’t be accepting it.”