Everything at CGI looked normal. The morning sun streamed through the tall windows, casting long, bright rectangles across the polished floors and reflecting off the rows of parked agent vehicles. The car Becky and I had used yesterday sat among them, still bearing faint dust from the streets, its doors closed and windows dark.

I went in. The first people I ran into in the hallway were Danny and Ernesto, walking side by side on their way out. Ernesto’s blue hair was as messy as ever, catching the overhead lights.

"Morning, Bram," Ernesto said, stopping with an easy smile and raising a hand in greeting. Danny just passed by without a word, his serious face unchanged, eyes forward.

"Morning," I said.

"Has Sherry arrived?" Ernesto asked, glancing back down the corridor. "Been looking for her."

"Can’t say. I just got here," I said, already moving past them.

"Tell her we’ve gone to see Becky," he called after me, voice echoing slightly down the hall. The youngest of all of us.

I reached the mission room and looked inside. No Bala. But the woman who had set up our apartments was there, standing with one hand resting lightly on the table. Our eyes met across the room.

"Good morning, ma’am," I said.

"Morning, Abram." She straightened, smoothing her blouse. "You can call me Pauline."

"Okay." I stayed in the doorway, didn’t go in.

I turned to leave. Nothing was happening here, and I had more than enough of my own threads to pull if I wanted any chance against what was coming in a month period.

"Abram," Pauline called.

I turned back. She came out of the office, heels clicking sharply on the floor. I stopped.

"I was actually waiting for you," she said. "Lord Bala wants you down in the cell to speak with Mary Stam."

"Okay."

She passed me and headed off down the other side of the corridor, her steps fading quickly. She had delivered the message. The rest was on me.

I walked toward the cell block, but my mind stayed on the note still folded in my pocket. Who had sent it. How much of it was true. The weight of those words pressed against my leg with every step.

***

The female wing was barely a room at all. A narrow, sterile box built for two people at most, never meant to hold anyone longer than a night. The walls were plain concrete painted a dull gray, the lighting overhead harsh and clinical, casting sharp shadows in the corners. Whoever designed it hadn’t planned on keeping people the way CGI was keeping Mary now.

Through the thick glass door I could see her sitting in a metal chair, calm as ever, legs crossed neatly, back straight. A doctor with short red hair worked over her arm, white coat open, the hem of her dress stopping high on her thighs as she leaned in to check something on Mary’s skin. I waited outside with the guard, arms folded, watching through the glass.

"You really think you can keep her from walking out of here?" I asked him.

He couldn’t take his eyes off the two women. His gaze stayed fixed on Mary, jaw tight.

"She’s a shadow walker," I said. "She’s here because she chose to be. You don’t need to watch her like that."

He glanced at me, then back through the glass, and after a moment walked off down the corridor without a word, boots echoing sharply against the floor.

The doctor finished and stepped out. We met in the doorway as I was going in. Our eyes caught, and I placed her at once. The same doctor who had looked me over after the Fallen City — short red hair, white dress hugging her figure, stopping high on her thighs.

"Abram," she said, like the name was a small gift. "Must be my lucky day. Didn’t think I’d see you again."

She didn’t move out of the doorway, standing close enough that I caught the faint scent of her perfume mixed with antiseptic.

"Small world," I said.

She caught her lower lip between her teeth for a second. There was something about her I couldn’t quite read. Women had been carrying themselves a certain way around me since Eleanor — easy, drawn, like the air shifted when I walked in. This one was past that.

"You know where to find me," she said, voice low. "Anything you need."

She brushed past me, her shoulder grazing my chest, and was gone down the corridor, heels clicking sharply.

I let her go and stepped inside.

The cell was quiet, the air cool and still. Mary sat in the single metal chair, watching me come in with composure, back straight, legs crossed, hands resting lightly on her thighs like the lock on the door was nothing more than a formality she had agreed to and could undo whenever it suited her.

The overhead lights cast a pale, clinical glow across her face and the bare concrete walls. The thick glass door hissed shut behind me with a heavy pneumatic sound, sealing us inside.

"Abram," she said as I approached, voice even.

"Mary."

"So you’re here about the Bala thing?" she asked, like she already held one piece of the puzzle I was still trying to see.

I closed the distance, boots quiet on the floor.

"No. Why would I be?" I said, watching her work an angle on me before I’d even spoken.

"Because Bala was just here. He told me about a team. You’re on it now."

"And did you join?"

She smiled up at me, small and knowing. "I’ve fought these walls for decades, Abram. I’ll work with anyone who makes the road shorter."

"Okay." I let out a slow breath.

"He wants us choosing the members." She stood smoothly, the motion fluid. "Anyone you’d recommend?"

A name was already in my head. The best fighter I’d ever watched work, and after the conversation we’d had three days ago in quarantine, I knew he wouldn’t take much convincing.

But something about all this was sitting wrong with me. It was moving too clean. Mary already in, the two of us already past recruitment and onto picking names. Things didn’t fall into place this easily. Not for me.

"No," I said. "Nobody comes to mind right now."

"Okay." She straightened her posture. "You said you didn’t come for the Bala thing. So what brought you down here?"

Our eyes met.

"Owen," I said, and her face shifted just enough to tell me she didn’t want the subject. "Was he working for the walls, or against them?"

"Owen was a ghost," she said. "A ghost is never right or wrong. It comes down to who’s holding the contract."

I nodded.

"Anyway." She started toward the door, heels clicking softly on the concrete. "I’m headed to Bala’s office." She left me standing in the glass cell, still chewing on it.

No custody. No restraints. She stopped at the doorway and turned back.

"Abram. Everything can be right. Everything can be wrong." Then she was gone.

[Today will be a revolutionary day inside the walls. The pattern is complete. There is nothing the host can do about it.]

The notification sat in my vision, cold and unfeeling, and the wrongness I’d been feeling since I walked in finally had a shape.

A pattern. Complete. And the system telling me I was already too late to break it.