Day 8 — Night 1/2

Katherine stood beside the dresser in dark slacks and a fitted black top, pulling on a pair of short gloves. The clothing was better than what the Hotel had issued during their first days: practical, close-fitted, and unremarkable. A slim pouch sat beside the lamp, along with a pair of gloves, a narrow tool case, and the little things Katherine kept stashed in her clothing at home and which had, apparently, been delivered along with her other things.

Naomi sat cross-legged near the headboard and watched her check the tool case for the second time.

“You’re worried,” Katherine said.

"Of course I am," Naomi answered. "You look like you have a bad idea."

Katherine glanced over. “Is that an observation or a diagnosis?”

“Both.”

Katherine slid the case into the pouch. “That seems unfairly efficient.”

Naomi picked at a loose thread near the edge of the blanket. “You came back half-frozen the first time. You got chased across a roof. You hurt your shoulder. Then there was the gallery, and the screening room, and whatever else you haven’t told me because apparently I’m safer if I don’t know.”

“That last part is unfortunately correct.”

“I know.” Naomi looked down at her hands. “I still hate it.”

Katherine stopped moving. The room had begun preparing itself for curfew around them. One of the wall lamps had dimmed to amber. The corridor beyond their door had gone quieter as the other contestants settled in. Somewhere farther down the hall, plumbing started and stopped.

Katherine rested one hand on the back of the chair beside the dresser. “The search has become more difficult than I expected.”

Naomi looked up.

It was not a dramatic admission. Katherine said it in the same tone she might have used to report a delayed train or a lock with an unfamiliar mechanism. That made Naomi listen harder.

“I started with the obvious interpretation,” Katherine continued. “A dossier is a physical object, so I looked for the kinds of places one hides physical objects. Locked rooms. Service spaces. Compartments. Routes designed to discourage casual access. That produced exercise, bruises, and a surprising amount of rain, but no dossier.”

Naomi’s mouth tightened at the word bruises.

Katherine continued before she could interrupt. “Then I assumed the clue was the important part. ‘An excellent viewpoint.’ Towers. Balconies. Observation spaces. Places designed to watch rather than be watched. Screens. Portraits. Surveillance positions. I even started treating Verena’s language as authored text rather than instructions, which I dislike admitting because it means I spent several evenings performing literary analysis for a woman I would prefer to interrogate.”

Despite herself, Naomi smiled.

“It has all been reasonable,” Katherine said. “That may be the problem.”

Naomi uncrossed her legs and let her feet touch the floor. “What does that mean?”

“This place isn’t like any other place I've ever been. The architecture changes. Staff seem to move around with no concern for the floor plan. Doors become useful because the Hotel has decided they are useful, then become decorative when it changes its mind.”

She glanced toward the dorm door.

“My profession depends on assumptions,” Katherine said. “Not blind ones. Tested ones. A person has limited time. A building has fixed geometry. Security exists to protect something. If someone creates a hiding place, they generally want the object inside it to remain where they left it. Even deception has rules because human beings still have bodies, schedules, habits, and budgets.”

Naomi gave a small laugh. “And Verena has none of those?”

“I am reasonably certain she has a body.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I do.” Katherine’s expression settled. “I don’t know how to search a place when the place itself may be participating.”

For several seconds Naomi had nothing useful to say.

She had grown used to Katherine knowing what to do. Not always what would happen. Nobody in the Hotel had that luxury. But Katherine usually had a next move planned out before anyone else. Watching her admit she had run out of familiar moves made Naomi feel something low and unpleasant tighten beneath her ribs.

“I don’t know anything about spying,” Naomi said. “But I do know what it feels like when the thing you normally rely on stops working.”

Katherine’s humor faded.

Naomi rubbed her thumb slowly over the side of her knee. “When that happens to me, I usually spend too long trying harder. I tell myself I just need to be more disciplined, more careful, more prepared. Sometimes that helps. Sometimes it means I keep using the same broken tool until I’m exhausted.”

She paused, searching for the words without trying to make herself sound ridiculous giving advice.

“When I finally change something, it’s usually because I make myself do the option I don’t like. Something uncomfortable. Something that doesn’t feel like me. Not dangerous for the sake of being dangerous. Just…wrong enough that I wouldn’t have chosen it first.” Naomi shrugged one shoulder. “That probably isn’t useful spy advice.”

Katherine did not answer immediately.

Naomi watched her eyes move once toward the tool pouch, then away. Katherine’s fingers stopped tapping against the chair.

“No,” she said at last. “It isn’t spy advice.”

Naomi winced. “Sorry.”

“It is considerably more useful than that.”

Naomi looked up again.

Katherine lifted the pouch and settled its strap across her shoulder. “If someone had recruited you a few years earlier, you might have made an excellent operative.”

Naomi laughed. “Absolutely not.”

“You have the most important qualification.”

“What, anxiety?”

“The capacity to recognize when trained professionals are being idiots.”

Katherine checked the door latch, then paused with her hand resting on it. “I will try something less traditional tonight.”

Naomi’s smile disappeared almost at once. “You came through that door wet, bruised, freezing, and laughing while robots were somewhere behind you.”

“They had fallen somewhat behind by that point.”

Naomi pointed at her. “Please don't do that again.”

Katherine’s brows rose.

“I mean it. I’m going to stay awake until you come back, and I would appreciate it if you did not slam through the door with half the Hotel chasing you. I think it took five years off my life last time.”

Katherine opened the door, then looked back and smiled. “No promises.”

Naomi threw a pillow at her.

Katherine slipped into the corridor before it reached the doorway.

—--------------------

Van and Fiona reached the Master Suite with three minutes left before curfew.

The corridor behind them was quiet, warm, and offensively tasteful. Gold light ran along the baseboards. A framed landscape hung across from the Suite entrance, showing some mountain lake neither of them had ever visited. Somewhere behind the wall came the faint pulse of music.

Fiona folded her arms, tension showing in her shoulders and hips.

Van looked at the door, then at her. “You okay?”

She gave him a flat look. “Obviously not.”

“Right.” He put both hands into his pockets. “Stupid question.” He waited a second. “This is probably easier for me.”

That got her attention.

Fiona turned her head slowly. “You think?”

“I mean this part.” He nodded toward the Suite. “The sleeping arrangement. This is your first night going into a room with somebody you barely know. It’s my seventh.”

Fiona scoffed. “My heart bleeds for you. Seven nights sharing a luxury suite with beautiful women. History’s cruelest burden.”

Van’s hand came out of his pocket. He looked at the Suite door instead of at her when he answered.

“I didn’t say it was worse for me,” he said. “I said it was easier because I’ve had six nights to get used to it. And for what it’s worth, people being in my space is hard too.”

Fiona’s arms stayed crossed.

Van rubbed one palm over the back of his neck. “Before this, nobody came to my apartment. I don’t mean almost nobody. I mean nobody. Coworkers knew me, but I always avoided forming relationships. Even casual ones. Nobody came home with me. I didn't allow or accept visitors. I kept the windows shut, usually kept the lights low, and there were weeks when I barely heard my own voice.”

Fiona’s expression changed by degrees, irritation still present but no longer moving forward.

Van kept going before he could lose the nerve. “Then I woke up here and suddenly there are people around me all the time. At breakfast, in classes, in hallways, at night. Half the time somebody is scared of me, angry at me, attracted to me because the Hotel did something to them, or all three. I know that is not the same as what happened to you. I know you were kidnapped into a place built around me. But my privacy got run over too.”

He looked at the Suite door again. “I’m trying very hard not to make this worse for any of you. I was kidnapped too, and I would like some credit for trying so damn hard.”

Fiona’s jaw worked once. “That’s a hell of a thing to ask for while standing outside a room literally called the Master Suite. You know why I hate that title, and I’m not going to pretend this arrangement is normal just because you’ve been decent about it.”

“I know that.”

Fiona exhaled through her nose. “You are very irritating, do you know that?”

“I’ve been told.”

She stared at him for another few seconds, then let her arms drop. “Fine. Your privacy got fucked too.”

Van nodded once.

Fiona pointed at him. “Do not make me say something tender. I’m already at capacity.”

The Suite door unlocked with a soft chime.

Fiona looked toward it. “Cease-fire still stands.”

“Cease-fire still stands.”

She opened the door and they both stopped as a bass line thudded through the Suite with enough force to make the glassware behind the wet bar tremble.

The room had transformed itself into the private fantasy of a man who owned too much black leather and had never learned what moderation meant.

A sectional couch dominated the sitting area, glossy and overstuffed, with chrome legs and cushions arranged around a low glass table. Red bulbs glowed behind smoked panels in the walls. The ceiling lights had been dimmed to a reddish amber that made every surface look vaguely illicit. A stripper pole rose from a circular platform near the windows.

Three enormous framed prints occupied the wall where quiet landscape art had hung on previous nights. Van did not need more than one look to decide none of the women depicted had been painted for their personalities.

The Suite smelled like expensive leather, cheap cologne, and something sweet enough to be suspicious.

Fiona stepped inside with the caution of someone entering a crime scene.

Van remained in the doorway. “No.”

Fiona looked at him.

He raised his voice. “Room, change the decor.”

The bass continued uninterrupted.

“Normal lighting. Normal furniture. Remove the pole.”

Nothing happened.

Van searched the wall beside the door for a control panel. There wasn’t one.

Fiona slowly turned in place. “You expect me to sleep in this? Is this your idea of a sick joke?”

Van pointed toward a black velvet painting over the bar. “Fiona, I don’t even know what that is supposed to be.”

She looked.

The painting appeared to involve a motorcycle, two mostly unclothed women, a lightning storm, and an eagle whose presence suggested the artist had panicked near the end.

Fiona stared at it then looked back at Van, seeming to measure the art against the man. “Fair.”

Van moved farther into the room. The wet bar had been stocked with bottles, cocktail glasses, and a silver ice bucket. Beside them sat a bowl of cherries and several small containers whose labels he read once before immediately looking away.

Fiona followed his gaze. “Is that flavored lube?”

The bedroom beyond the open archway was worse. Black sheets. Mirrored side tables. An oversized padded headboard. Rose petals had been scattered across the bed in thick, deliberate handfuls.

Fiona put both hands on her hips. “You know what? I believe you.”

Van looked genuinely relieved. “Thank you.”

“Because this is much too stupid to be your fantasy.”

His relief thinned. “I’ll take it.”

Fiona walked to the bar and inspected the bottles. “The Hotel did this. The others talked about the suite changing, but this is really obnoxious.” She clenched her jaw tightly. “I want a few minutes alone with whoever programmed this place.”

Fiona nodded once and reached for a bottle of whiskey. “Ok, we're doing this. But I need a drink first.”

She found two heavy glasses under the counter and poured herself a measure. The color caught the red lighting and turned copper-dark.

Van leaned one hip against the far end of the bar. “You don’t have to drink because the room is awful.”

“I’m not drinking because the room is awful.” Fiona lifted the glass, smelled it, and took a cautious sip. Her eyebrows rose. “I’m drinking because whoever decorated this place is a huge loser, but men like this always have expensive liquor.”

Van smiled. “Strong endorsement.”

Fiona reached for the second glass. “Want one?”

“I don’t really drink.”

“That explains a lot.”

She poured a smaller amount into the second glass and pushed it toward him. “Have one with me.”

Van looked at it.

Fiona leaned one elbow on the bar. “Come on. Don’t make me drink alone in this nightmare.”

He hesitated, then picked up the glass. “One.”

“One.”

They touched glasses lightly.

Fiona took another sip. Van tried to match her.

The whiskey hit the back of his throat like a controlled burn. He coughed into his fist, turned away, coughed again, and needed several seconds before he could breathe normally.

Fiona laughed.

Van finally managed to say, “I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.”

“I dislike you in a very immediate way.”

“That’s the spirit.”

He stared at the whiskey. “People drink this recreationally?”

“Some people develop a taste for it.” She held the glass up, eyeing the drink consideringly. “I'm a bit surprised that hard liquor wasn't included in your hermit orientation package.”

Van sighed. “I never thought adding clumsiness to my anxiety would help any.”

Fiona lifted her glass toward him. “Then consider this remedial education.”

Van tried again, this time with enough caution to avoid injury.

The bass kept pounding.

Fiona grimaced toward the ceiling. “I cannot have a serious conversation in this place. The furniture looks like it wants to sell me cocaine.”

She left the bar and began opening cabinets along the wall, less because she expected a solution than because standing still seemed to offend her. The first held cocktail supplies. The second contained towels. The third opened onto a narrow shelf of games with titles that grew increasingly questionable as she read downward.

She shut it. “No.”

“What?” Van asked.

“You’re happier not knowing.”

The next cabinet was wider and deeper. Fiona went quiet as she reached for it.

Van moved closer. “What did you find?”

“A record player.”

It sat on a sliding shelf in a handsome wooden case, absurdly normal against the red lights and black leather. Below it, dozens of vinyl records stood in neat rows.

Fiona pulled one free.

The cover showed a crowded city street painted in soft blues and browns. She turned it over, scanning the song list.

“These are old.”

Van looked over her shoulder without crowding her. “Jazz?”

“Mostly.”

She found the switch, set the record carefully onto the turntable, and lowered the needle.

The instant the needle touched vinyl, the club music cut off so cleanly that the last bass note seemed amputated.

A soft crackle filled the Suite, followed by piano, brushed drums, and a horn line warm enough to make the red lighting seem suddenly ridiculous rather than threatening.

Van looked toward the ceiling. “So it can hear us.”

Fiona watched the turntable. “Apparently it just didn’t respect you.”

“That tracks.”

She lowered herself to the floor beside the cabinet instead of using the leather couch. Van did the same on the other side, leaving a comfortable stretch of rug between them.

The second song began.

Fiona’s hand stopped halfway toward another album.

Van noticed. “You recognize this song?”

She listened for several bars. “I know the sound of it.” Her voice had changed, quieter without becoming fragile. “My grandfather used to play this.”

She picked up the sleeve and searched the print. “‘A Man Has Many Hearts.’” Fiona read the title again. “I never knew what it was called.”

Van tilted his head, listening. “It’s good.”

“It sounds exactly like his house.”

He looked at her.

Fiona didn’t look back. She pulled another record from the cabinet and stared at the cover instead. “He had a cabinet like this. Not the same one. Same kind of mess, though. Records shoved in wherever they fit. Half of them were older than my mother.”

Van smiled slightly. “My apartment was near a jazz club.”

Fiona glanced over.

“I never went in,” he said. “It was downstairs and across the block. On quiet nights I could hear it through the windows even with traffic. Half the time I couldn’t tell whether they were playing standards or making something up. I just liked the sound.”

Fiona returned to the records. She pulled one out and frowned at the cover. “He had this one too.”

Another followed. “And this.”

She stopped trying to read titles. Instead she sorted by cover art, setting a growing pile on the carpet.

“The bluebird one,” she said, holding up a sleeve with a painted bird in flight. “I remember that because my sister thought it was a children’s record and got mad when it wasn’t.”

Van leaned close enough to see. “How old were you?”

“Little.” Fiona set it aside. “Mama would leave us with my grandparents sometimes. Overnight if she was working late or needed help. I loved it. My sister hated staying there.”

“Why?”

Fiona smiled into the record cabinet. “She said the whole house had old man smell.”

Van laughed softly.

“It did,” Fiona admitted. “Aftershave, coffee, old books, whatever he used on the wood furniture. I thought it was great.”

The record turned between them, the horn carrying the melody through a room the Hotel had built to be crude.

Fiona reached for another sleeve.

Van let her talk.

—--------------------

Claire waited until curfew had sealed the dorm door before showing Evelyn the picture.

She had saved it to her phone before leaving the malt shop. That decision had seemed practical at the time. Evidence, she had told herself. Something worth documenting because the Hotel had taken her face and turned the result into advertising without asking.

Now she stood beside Evelyn’s bed holding the phone in both hands and wondering why evidence felt so much like contraband.

Evelyn had changed into a dark robe and was sitting against the headboard with a book open across her lap. She marked her place with one finger when Claire approached.

“What happened?”

Claire held out the phone. The poster filled the screen: Claire on the Starlite counter, red-and-white uniform, legs spread around the carefully positioned milkshake, cherry held toward the viewer beneath MEANT FOR SHARING.

Evelyn read the slogan once.

“Cassie has already made every possible joke,” Claire said while groaning.

“I wasn’t going to make a joke.”

“That somehow makes me more nervous.”

Claire sat on the edge of the opposite bed. “How would you feel if the Hotel did that with you?”

Evelyn handed the phone back. “Annoyed.”

Claire stared at her. “Annoyed.”

“Deeply annoyed.”

“That is all?”

“No. But it wouldn’t be novel.” Evelyn closed her book. “There have been photographs of me for most of my adult life. Professional portraits. Magazine shoots. Charity calendars. Event photography. Advertisements I approved. Advertisements my agency approved and I barely noticed. Then there are the things I did not approve of.”

She adjusted the robe over one knee. “Old publicity images get edited. Costumes get removed, changed, made tighter, made transparent. Faces are attached to other bodies. There was an artist online years ago who did colored-pencil drawings of professional heroines in compromising situations. Very traditional medium. Extremely nontraditional subject matter.”

Claire’s eyebrows rose.

“He was talented,” Evelyn said, “and prolific. That didn’t improve matters.”

“You saw them?” Claire's face was stricken.

“One of my assistants made the mistake of asking whether I wanted them taken down.”

“Could you?”

“Some. For a while.” Evelyn folded her hands over the closed book. “Then another appeared somewhere else. Another person copied it. Someone altered the alteration. Eventually you learn an unpleasant lesson about scale.”

Claire looked down at the picture on her phone.

Evelyn continued more quietly. “Once enough people know your face, you cannot control every use of it. You can control your official work. You can object when laws are broken. You can protect your name commercially. You can decide what you participate in. But you cannot stop strangers from imagining you according to their tastes.”

Claire’s thumb hovered over the screen without touching it. “I never thought about that.”

Evelyn watched her. “Which part?”

“All of it.” Claire searched for a better answer. “I knew people would look at me if I became a real heroine. I wanted that, in a way. Not this.” She tilted the phone. “I wanted people to know who I was because I had done something worthwhile. I never followed the thought past interviews and cameras and maybe children wearing my symbol.”

“Claire.” Evelyn's tone was a bit cold. “Did you never know you were desirable,” Evelyn asked, “or did you never realize that people would notice?”

Claire opened her mouth then closed it. “That is an unfairly Evelyn style question.”

“I will assume that means useful.”

Claire set the phone face-down beside her. “I knew I was attractive. I’m not an idiot. Boys asked me out. People flirted. I just…” She rubbed both palms together once. “That was always somebody. A person. One set of eyes. Even a crowd at a competition was still a crowd in a place I could see.”

Evelyn waited.

Claire looked toward the dark window. “If we win here, that changes, doesn’t it? We don’t go home as a few new Empowered people who had a terrible two months. If we actually beat him...” She stood and began pacing the narrow strip between the bed and the vanity. “We go home as the people who beat the Architect. Every country knows our names. Every news service, every government, every hero organization—and every person with a computer and too much free time.”

Evelyn’s answer took longer. “If we beat him, then yes. We may be among the most famous people on Earth.”

Claire picked up the phone again, but she didn’t turn it over. “The Hotel changes our lives either way.”

Evelyn did not try to soften it. “Yes.”

Claire’s fingers tightened once around the edge of the phone. She sat again. “Do you think we can beat him?”

Evelyn leaned back against the headboard. “I think we have been given reasons to believe it is possible,” she said. “That is different from believing we currently know how.”

Claire nodded once. “What do we actually know about him fighting?”

“Personally?”

“Yes.”

Evelyn reached for the glass of water on her bedside table and turned it slowly between her fingers. “Very little. We have accounts of his forces. Alters. Campaigns. Cities damaged or destroyed. Defensive failures. People who fought what he sent. But as far as we know, he has never personally taken the field against Earth’s heroes.”

Claire frowned. “That’s strange.”

“It is interesting.”

“You don’t think it means he can’t fight.”

“I think that would be a reckless conclusion.” Evelyn took a sip. “A commander does not need to duel personally to be dangerous. A man with an army of monsters may be physically weak, overwhelmingly powerful, or simply unwilling to expose himself. Those are different possibilities with different consequences.”

Claire folded one leg beneath herself. “Verena keeps talking like eventually we may have to fight him directly.”

“She also speaks as though the transformations are preparing us for things we cannot currently survive.”

“So maybe she expects us to become strong enough.”

“Perhaps.” Evelyn set down the water. “If she is engineering an actual confrontation rather than simply preparing us to survive his forces, then our power growth may matter in ways we haven't seen yet.”

Claire thought about the Archive. Shelves of curated histories. True information selected by someone else. “We never found where Alters came from,” she said. “The Archive has records about seasons, worlds, failures, all kinds of things. But nothing that actually explains the first Alter.”

“Nothing we found.”

Claire caught the correction. “You think that matters.”

“Yes.”

“You think Verena is hiding it.”

Evelyn’s fingers rested against the closed cover of her book. “I think the Archive is curated. We already know omission can be as deliberate as inclusion. The absence may mean the information is restricted, unavailable, difficult to verify, or simply not where we looked.”

Claire gave her a look. “That was a very long way of saying you think Verena doesn’t want us to know yet.”

Evelyn’s expression softened into something almost apologetic. “That is my suspicion. I do not have evidence strong enough to promote it to fact.”

Claire leaned back on both hands. The phone lay between them on the blanket, its dark screen hiding the poster. “Everything here is like that,” Claire said. “We get enough truth to make decisions, but never enough to feel like we understand the board.”

“Then we should be disciplined about the difference between what we know and what frightens us.”

Claire smiled faintly. “That sounds like something you would put on a poster.”

“Mine would be less revealing.”

Claire laughed before she could stop herself.

Evelyn picked up her book again. “For the record, the photograph is quite attractive. It's better than some of mine out there.”

Claire’s laughter died. “Evelyn.”

“Some of mine were worse.”

Claire grabbed the nearest pillow and hugged it against her stomach. After a few seconds, she turned the phone face-up again.

—--------------------

Fiona had built a small tower out of record sleeves by the time she found another one she remembered. She held it up by the edges. The cover showed three men in suits beneath a painted streetlamp.

“This one.”

Van looked over from the pile he had been sorting by labels he could actually read. “Another grandfather record?”

“Yeah.” She turned it toward herself again. “He played it on Sundays sometimes. Usually while cooking breakfast.”

“What did he make?”

“Everything. He was a terrible cook, but he loved making big meals.”

Van smiled.

“I’m serious. He could ruin anything. Give him a skillet before noon, and suddenly basic chemistry would stop applying.” Fiona set the record with the others. “Eggs burned at the edges. Bacon either nearly raw or turned into roofing material. Pancakes shaped like states nobody had discovered.”

“You loved it.”

Fiona glanced at him.

Van lifted one shoulder. “You’re smiling.”

She looked down at the records again. “Yeah. I loved it.”

The song on the turntable changed. Piano rolled beneath a slow horn phrase. The Suite’s red bulbs still glowed around them, the stripper pole still stood by the window, and the black leather furniture still looked as if it expected a camera crew and a nervous co-ed. Sitting on the rug among old record sleeves made all of it easier to ignore.

“My sister hated mornings there,” Fiona said. “She wanted cereal and cartoons. Grandpa wanted everybody at the table. Said breakfast didn’t count if half the family was wandering around.”

“Sounds strict.”

“He was. About stupid things.” Fiona’s hand paused over another sleeve. “Shoes off the furniture. No swearing around Grandma. Call if you’re going to be late. Finish what you start. If you borrowed something, it came back cleaner than you got it.”

Van nodded. “I think I would have liked him.”

Fiona stopped sorting. She looked at the record in her hand for long enough that Van wished he had phrased it differently. “He died when I was little,” she said.

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago.” Fiona slid the record into the pile with more care than the others. “It was not long after I empowered.”

He stayed quiet.

Her mouth tightened. Whatever came next never reached it. Instead she reached for her whiskey, discovered the glass nearly empty, and set it down without pouring more. “You said you worked at the Hero Academy.”

Van accepted the turn. “Yeah.”

“How did that happen?”

He leaned back against the side of the couch. “After I aged out, there were programs. Housing assistance, work placement, people whose entire job was trying to stop kids like me from disappearing into the cracks.”

Fiona rested her forearms on her knees.

“I was not an impressive client,” Van continued. “The job counselor asked what I wanted to do. I told him I didn’t care. He asked what I was good at. I said nothing. He asked whether I was reliable. I said yes. That was apparently enough to build a career plan.”

Fiona snorted. “Strong, quiet, does what he’s told.”

“Pretty much.” Van rubbed one hand over his thigh. “The Academy had a loading operation that always needed people. Equipment came in, and equipment went out—training gear, relief supplies, uniforms, maintenance parts. I was strong, docile, and showed up on time. Apparently that was enough to make the loading dock a sensible placement.”

“Docile is a shitty word.”

“It was accurate at the time.”

Fiona watched him.

Van looked toward the record player rather than at her. “I had people trying to help me. More than I understood at the time. Counselors. Doctors. Therapists. Supervisors who found excuses to check whether I had eaten. People tried to treat me like I was normal.”

Fiona smiled faintly.

“I see it now,” Van said. “At the time, I thought everybody was wasting effort.”

“Because you thought you were going to die.”

His gaze settled on the spinning record. “Not exactly.” Van put his glass on the carpet beside him. “The therapists thought I had survivor’s guilt. Trauma. Depression. They were right, obviously. But I was terrible at being a patient because I never told them the part that mattered.”

“You didn’t trust them?”

“I didn’t think there was anything to discuss.”

He folded his hands together loosely. “There was a thought in my head all the time. Not every second, maybe, but close enough. It was the explanation for everything.”

Fiona’s posture changed by a fraction.

Van spoke the words quietly. “‘It would come back.’”

The horn on the record stretched one note until it thinned into the crackle beneath it.

“The Alter that killed my family, the things like it. I was certain whatever happened wasn’t finished. Adults died. People helped me and then disappeared from my life. So in my head, the answer was simple. It would come back eventually, and when it did, it would kill me too.”

His thumb moved over the side of one finger. “That made everything else feel temporary. School. Therapy. Friends. An apartment. Why build something if you’re waiting for the thing that destroyed the last version of your life to find you again?”

Fiona’s voice came out rougher than before. “And nobody knew.”

“I’m sure some of them guessed pieces.” Van gave a small, tired shrug. “I wasn’t subtle. I was unhealthy, barely slept properly, worked, went home, repeated. But if somebody asked what was wrong, I gave them whatever answer ended the conversation fastest.”

“Sounds familiar.”

He glanced at her.

Fiona looked away first. “Don’t make that face.”

Van let the accusation go.

“The loading dock helped,” he said. “More than I admitted. It was small, but it was something. Every day I went there was a day I did something other than wait. We moved equipment for people who were actually fighting Alters. Relief teams, training crews, field units. I wasn’t a hero. I wasn’t even trying to become one. But sometimes I could look at a crate I had loaded and think maybe something in it would help somebody survive.”

“That mattered enough to get me out of the apartment,” Van said. “Some days that was the whole victory.”

“You know Tessa kept trying because she liked you,” Fiona said.

Van groaned softly. “Please don’t restart that investigation.”

“I’m not.” Fiona nudged one record sleeve into alignment with another. “I mean people were reaching out. You see that now.”

“Yes.”

“And you still spent years acting like a condemned man.”

“Yes.”

“Idiot.”

Van looked at her.

Fiona’s expression had no mockery in it. “That’s not a moral judgment. Trauma makes people stupid.”

He barked a short laugh. “That may be the most Fiona version of sympathy possible.”

“I told you I’m bad at this.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“Do not encourage me.”

Van leaned his head back against the couch. “Sorry.”

Fiona pointed at him immediately. “No. We are retiring that one.”

“What?”

“The automatic apology. You didn’t do anything.”

He considered it. “Right.”

“See? Growth.”

“Terrifying.”

Fiona sat back on her hands and looked toward the stripper pole. “This place puts a heroine in your room every night anyway.”

Van followed her gaze. “Are we back to that again?”

“I’m making a practical point.”

“That would be a first.” He gave a half smile, robbing the comment of its barb.

She ignored him. “If you’re still waiting for Alters to come through the wall, sleep. I’m here.”

Van turned toward her.

Fiona seemed to hear herself a second too late.

She straightened. “I mean tonight. Obviously. If something attacks the Suite, I can kill it before it gets to you.”

A smile started at one corner of Van’s mouth.

“Do not.”

Van closed his mouth, still smiling.

Fiona pointed at him. “That face is enough.”

Van laughed.

Fiona tried to glare at him and failed halfway through. A laugh escaped her too, short and unwilling at first, then real enough that she had to look away.

The record reached its final track. When the laughter faded, Van gathered the empty glasses and stood. “It’s late.”

Fiona looked toward the open archway leading to the bedroom. The amusement left her face by degrees. “Yeah.”

He carried the glasses back to the bar while Fiona began returning the records to the cabinet. She hesitated over the small stack she had identified from her grandfather’s collection and put those back last.

When she straightened, Van looked toward the bedroom. Fiona followed his gaze. “We’ve put it off long enough.”

“Yeah.”

In the sitting room, the record player clicked softly as the needle reached the end of the groove.