CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
— NAOMI —
The borrowed flat in the hour before dawn.
Three people at the kitchen table. Two laptops. A spreadsheet and a drive and the full weight of what had been learned in the last seventy-two hours arranged between them on the table.
Naomi's hands were flat on the paper in front of her. She had been still for approximately three minutes — unusual for her, who moved through information with a continuous, active quality. The stillness was of someone doing a very large integration.
"All right," she said.
"All right?" Alistair said.
"All right, I've processed the relevant information and I have questions and I need you to answer them honestly because I'm going to be involved in what happens next whether you want me to be or not."
She looked between them. "The Pairing Protocol. It's not a cover story or a Ablation euphemism. It's literal — they placed you in proximity and studied whether you'd form an attachment."
"Yes," Tav said.
"And you did."
"Yes."
"And they're going to kill you for it."
"They've tried twice," Alistair said. "The results have been mixed."
Naomi studied him.
"That," she said, "is not a reassuring statement."
"It's an accurate one."
She took a breath. "And Lucien — your brother who has been dead for five years — is alive and has built an archive of everything they've done, which we are going to release, which will expose the whole—" She gestured at the drive on the table. "All of this."
"Yes," Tav said.
"And that's why Cain deployed a strike team."
"Yes."
"And why the node situation requires us to go back to your apartment." "Yes."
"While Cain's people are likely still positioned in the area."
"Also yes."
She studied the drive.
"I have one more question," she said.
"Ask it," Tav said.
"The photographs." She looked up. "The ones in Voss's office that I told you about. The ones that weren't of Voss." "Someone has been watching you both since before your placement. Since before Ablation's monitoring began." She held the look. "Who?"
Tav and Alistair glanced at each other.
"We don't know," Alistair said.
"But you have a hypothesis."
A pause.
"Phase Two," Tav said.
Naomi looked at him.
"We've been referring to it as that internally," Alistair said. "Someone who knew about the Protocol from the beginning. Who wanted the archive released. Who has been — positioning us toward certain outcomes."
"Like Cain, but not Cain."
"Yes."
"A competing interest."
"Or a parallel one," Tav said. "Someone who wanted the same result — the archive public, Ablation's operations exposed — but for different reasons."
"Or someone," Alistair said, "who wanted to know what the Protocol produced. What two operatives who'd fully synchronized were capable of." "And wanted them to be free of Ablation's oversight when they found out."
Naomi absorbed this.
"So you release the archive," she said slowly, "and destroy Ablation's operational capacity, and become—"
"Available," Tav said.
"To whoever has been watching."
"Yes."
"That's—" She stopped. "That's a very complicated situation."
"We're aware," Alistair said.
"Are you worried about it?"
They looked at each other again.
"We'll deal with it the same way we've dealt with everything else," Tav said.
"Together," Alistair said.
Naomi looked at them with the journalist's full detail — the one that gathered information and filed it and found pattern.
"You're not afraid," she said. Not accusatory. Wondering.
"We're cautious," Tav said. "Afraid is a different thing."
"What's the difference?"
Tav thought about this.
"Afraid is diffuse," he said. "It spreads across everything and makes everything seem impossible.
Cautious is specific. It keeps the variables distinct and manageable." "I was afraid for a long time. I'm not, now."
Naomi held his gaze.
"What changed?" she said.
Tav glanced at Alistair.
Alistair glanced back with the warm expression.
"Incentive," Tav said.
Naomi was quiet.
Then she opened her laptop.
"Right," she said. "I need to brief you on the publication timeline.
I've been working with three outlets — I trust all of them, and the simultaneous publication means no single one can be pressured to withhold.
" She pulled up a document. "I need the complete archive transferred to me in a format I can work with before six a.m. I need eight hours to structure the initial release.
And I need you both to confirm what you're willing to be named as — as sources, as subjects, as witnesses. "
"All of it," Alistair said.
She watched him.
"We want our names on it," he said. "Not for any reason — not to protect ourselves, not for leverage.
Because it's our story too. And Elias's." "And Lucien's."
Naomi looked at Tav.
"Yes," Tav said.
She typed something.
"The story I was promised," she said.
"Yes."
"Everything."
"Everything," Tav confirmed.
She watched the drive. Then at the clock on her laptop. Then at both of them.
"You have four hours before I need the full archive," she said. "I recommend using them to rest." "I'm saying this as someone who is going to be sitting here working for the next eighteen hours. Rest now.
You're going to need it."
They looked at each other.
"She's right," Alistair said.
"She usually is," Tav said.
Something briefly personal crossed Naomi's expression — warm and quickly managed. She returned to the laptop.
"Four hours," she said. "Then we burn it down."
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