Chapter 48: A Knife, An Investigation, And Finn In The Wrong Block!

The cafeteria was loud at breakfast.

Finn sat at the far end of the grey section with a tray in front of him and looked at what was on it.

Porridge. The thick grey kind that had no strong opinion about being food. A piece of bread that was slightly past its best. A cup of something warm that was trying to be tea and not fully succeeding.

He ate it anyway because he was hungry and bottom ten didn’t get options.

Across the cafeteria, through the door that connected to the VIP section, he could hear the sound of a different kind of breakfast happening. Not loudly. Just the particular quality of sound that came from a space where the food was real and the chairs had cushions and the coffee was actual coffee.

He knew that sound.

He had heard it every morning for three weeks from the chair next to Cullen’s, eating whatever had been placed in front of him, warm and full and close enough to touch the most powerful person in the room whenever he wanted.

He stabbed the porridge with his spoon.

He thought about the first time Cullen had called him to the VIP cafeteria. How he had walked in not knowing what to expect and Cullen had looked at him the way Cullen looked at things he had decided he wanted and something in Finn had decided that was enough. That being wanted by someone who everyone else feared was its own kind of safety.

He had built everything around that.

He had lost games on purpose. Carefully. Not so obvious that people would notice, just slightly wrong at the right moment, consistent enough to keep his rank exactly where it needed to be. He had been patient. He had been available. He had been everything Cullen reached for when he reached.

And then Ruaan Calder had walked through the gate on a Tuesday in a silk dressing robe with his hands in cuffs and Cullen had looked at him.

He just looked at him once and everything Finn had spent months building had started cracking from that single look. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

He put the bread in his mouth and chewed and did not look at the VIP door.

He thought about this morning. Standing in that room with the plate offer and Cullen saying ’I’m fine’ and then looking back at Ruaan like Finn had already left. Like he had never been there.

He looked down at the tray.

At the knife sitting on the right side of it.

Regular cutlery. The cafeteria kind, not sharp enough to do serious damage to anything that fought back. But there were other ways to use a thing like this that didn’t require it to be sharp.

A bruise in the right place. A message delivered in a way that didn’t need words.

He picked it up and turned it over in his hand.

He set it back down and picked it up again.

He thought about tonight. About the shower blocks and which ones were empty after midnight and which corridors connected to which.

He slipped the knife into his pocket.

He finished his porridge and waited.

.

.

Harolin’s temporary office was not the same as his permanent one.

It was a smaller room two corridors away from the main officer block, the kind of space that got assigned to visiting staff and had a desk that wasn’t quite the right height and a chair that needed adjusting. He arranged the desk according to his standard operating procedure... every item was placed with intent, leaving the workspace completely transformed from how he found it.

Ruaan pushed the door open without knocking.

Harolin looked up.

"You don’t knock," Harolin said.

"The door was open."

"That doesn’t mean you don’t knock."

Ruaan sat in the chair across the desk and looked at the documents spread across it. Printed schedules. Game logs. A list of names with dates next to them. A separate sheet with numbers circled in red.

"What is this?" Ruaan said.

"Work," Harolin said. "That you’re not supposed to be looking at."

"You’re investigating who gave Cullen the game information," Ruaan said, reading the sheet upside down with the easy confidence of someone who had always been better at this than people expected. "Seven months of games. He wins every time. Someone in the planning room is leaking."

Harolin looked at him.

"The dates on this sheet," Ruaan said, pointing without touching, "match the roster on that one. The same officer is on planning duty every Wednesday night going back to when Cullen started his winning streak." He looked up. "That’s your person."

Harolin looked at the sheets.

He had arrived at the same conclusion but had been cross referencing three different documents to confirm it. Ruaan had done it in forty seconds reading upside down.

"For someone as much trouble as you are," Harolin said, "you’re surprisingly useful."

"I prefer the word smart."

"I said what I said."

Ruaan smiled and leaned back in the chair and looked at the ceiling. "What are you going to do about it?"

"Handle it," Harolin said. "The way I handle things."

"Quietly and without explaining yourself to anyone."

"Correct."

Ruaan nodded like this was perfectly reasonable. He looked back at the desk. At the neat arrangement of documents. At Harolin’s handwriting in the margins, precise and small.

Harolin moved the top document to the side.

And looked at Ruaan.

Not at the papers. At Ruaan. Directly and without the usual pretense of having another reason for it.

Ruaan noticed.

"What?" Ruaan said.

Harolin said, "Let’s meet tonight at the shower block. Come at midnight."

Ruaan blinked. "Why not my room? I have a room now. A good one. With a fridge and an AC unit and a mattress that actually—"

"Are you trying to show off your fridge?"

Ruaan laughed. It came out before he could manage it, short and genuine. "Maybe a little. Is it that obvious?"

"Yes," Harolin said. "It’s very obvious."

"I worked hard for that fridge."

"You got lucky with a partner who shot himself."

"I also worked hard," Ruaan said. "Can’t it be both?"

Harolin looked at him with the expression that wasn’t quite a smile but lived in the same neighborhood.

"Shower block," he said again. "Midnight."

Ruaan looked at him. At the white shirt from yesterday that had been replaced by the full uniform today.

At the glasses that were gone and the hair that was back to its usual state. At the hands on the desk with the careful documents arranged between them.

"Fine," Ruaan said. "Shower block. Midnight."

He stood up.

"And Ru," Harolin said.

Ruaan stopped.

"Good work this morning. At breakfast."

Ruaan turned around. "You know about that already."

"I know about everything."

"That is both impressive and deeply unsettling," Ruaan said, and walked out.

.

.

Ruaan arrived at the shower block first.

He had not planned to be early but he had also not planned to spend twenty minutes in his room looking at the fridge and the AC unit and the very comfortable bed.

So he left.

The officer shower block was empty when he pushed the door open.

He stood in the entrance and listened.

Nothing. Just the faint sound of the facility settling at night, distant and low.

He looked at his watch. Eleven forty-two.

He had eighteen minutes.

He thought about waiting on the bench, fully dressed.

Then he looked at the shower.

He had not had a proper shower since the game. He had been busy with the room and the breakfast and the investigation visit and Seo and the whole day had moved without pausing for personal hygiene. He had Harolin’s soap in his pocket. He had eighteen minutes.

He started undressing.

He was under the water, soap in hand, eyes closed against the warmth, finally feeling the day come off his shoulders, when he heard the block door open.

He stopped and listened, turning off the shower.

He heard footsteps.

It was not Harolin’s. He knew Harolin’s footsteps. Even and unhurried with a specific weight to them that was different from everyone else.

These were different. Lighter. It sounded so careful in a way that sounded like someone not wanting to be heard rather than someone who had nothing to hide.

Ruaan stayed completely still under the shower head.

He looked out through the gap at the side of the shower partition.

A figure moving through the block. Checking stalls. One by one, moving down the row on the left side, looking into each one and moving to the next.

Ruaan pressed himself back against the tile wall.

The figure passed under the light from the corridor gap.

Finn.

Moving quietly with his shoulders forward and his eyes scanning each stall entrance and his right hand at his pocket and as he moved something caught the light.

Metal.

The edge of something thin and flat slipping partially out of his pocket as his hand moved.

Ruaan watched Finn move to the next stall. Check it. Move again.

He pressed his back flat against the cold tile and looked at the ceiling and breathed very quietly through his nose.

’Why the hell is Finn here?’ Ruaan thought.

He said it once in his head.

Then again.

’He’s not looking for me, is he?’

The footsteps got closer.