Chapter 2 #2
Hannah’s expression softened. “I get that. My grandmother was the same way—she grew up moving around a lot, military family. Said the library was the only place that felt like home, no matter what town they landed in.”
Something loosened in Morgan’s chest. She opened her mouth to respond, to share something real.
“The first library that felt like home to me—I was nine. Bozeman Public, the old building before they renovated.” She shared the exact date.
“It was raining, and the woman at the circulation desk had a green sweater with a button missing near the collar. She let me stay an extra hour past closing because my foster mother was late. I can still see exactly where I was sitting—third table from the window, chair with the wobbly leg.”
Morgan stopped. Hannah’s fork had paused halfway to her mouth.
The silence lasted only a second. Maybe two. But Morgan saw it—that flicker in Hannah’s eyes. The slight pull backward, almost imperceptible.
It wasn’t rejection. Not yet. Just…noticing. The beginning of noticing.
Morgan knew what came next. She’d seen it a hundred times, remembered each instance with perfect clarity. The noticing led to the discomfort, which led to the careful distance, which led to we need to transfer this child to another home.
“I should go,” Morgan said, gathering her untouched sandwich. “There’s a session I wanted to catch.”
“Oh.” Hannah blinked. “Sure. Maybe we could—”
“It was nice to meet you.”
She was gone before Hannah could finish the sentence.
In the hallway, Morgan leaned against the wall and pressed her palms to her eyes. Hannah had been trying. Hannah had been kind. And Morgan had bolted anyway, because waiting for the inevitable rejection was worse than causing it herself.
By five o’clock, she was in her car and pulling out of the conference center parking lot. She’d texted a conference acquaintance that she wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t entirely a lie.
She drove without direction for a while, letting the roads unspool beneath her tires, until she spotted a small used bookstore tucked between a coffee shop and a thrift store on a side street.
A bell chimed when she entered. The owner—white-haired, reading glasses perched on her nose—glanced up from behind the counter.
“Let me know if you need help finding anything, dear.”
“Thank you.”
That was all. No recognition, no article, no curiosity about the memory girl. Just a customer in a bookstore.
Morgan exhaled.
The poetry section took up one wall, spines cracked and faded, arranged in no particular order she could determine.
She browsed with her fingers trailing along the titles, letting the familiar rhythm of book-touching settle her nerves.
Keats. Dickinson. A collected Yeats with a teacup stain on the cover.
She drifted toward the back of the store, past local history and travel guides, until a slim volume caught her eye: Codes and Ciphers Through History.
She pulled it from the shelf and flipped to a random page.
The Vigenère cipher, sixteenth century. Binary had mentioned it once—called it “charmingly antiquated” and then spent three messages explaining why modern encryption had rendered it obsolete.
She’d responded with a sonnet encoded in Vigenère just to prove it still had beauty, if not security.
He’d decoded it in under four minutes and sent back: Point taken. Beauty has value independent of function.
It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting she’d changed his mind about something.
Morgan bought the book. The owner wrapped it in brown paper without being asked—“Protects the spine,” she explained—and Morgan thanked her and meant it.
She sat in her car reading the chapter on Shakespearean ciphers while the afternoon light faded around her, and for the first time all day, the tightness in her chest began to ease. Tonight was nine o’clock. Tonight was Binary.
Maybe she’d finally suggest the voice chat she’d been thinking about for months. Maybe she’d hear his voice for the first time, see if it matched the rhythm of his typing, the precision of his code.
Maybe she’d tell him the dress was actually more navy than sky.
The parking garage was poorly lit and mostly empty. Morgan’s footsteps echoed against concrete as she walked toward the elevator, her new book tucked under her arm and her mind already composing tonight’s opening message.
She was humming. Dickinson, the rhythm of “Hope is the thing with feathers”—da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM—her typing pattern shifting into waltz time without conscious thought.
Like a waltz, Binary had written.
She smiled.
Then she heard footsteps behind her. Heavy. Deliberate.
Her smile faded. She walked faster, but the elevator was still twenty feet away, and the footsteps were gaining.
“Miss Reece?”
She turned.
The man was clean-cut, expensive suit, the kind of polished that came from money rather than effort. He looked like a banker. He looked like someone who’d never raised his voice in his life.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “do I know you?”
“Not yet.” He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. “But we know you. We’ve read that article about you. Very impressive, Miss Reece. A memory like yours is quite rare.”
Movement to her left. A second man stepped out from behind a concrete pillar, blocking her path to the elevator.
This was not a conference attendee. Not a fan of her presentation. Morgan’s body understood before her mind caught up.
She ran.
She made it three steps before hands closed around her arms, professional and firm, not hurting her but absolutely not letting go.
“Don’t make this difficult,” the first man said. He was still smiling. “You’re far too valuable to damage.”
Her mind was doing what it always did—recording, cataloging, storing.
The first man’s face: strong jaw, blue eyes, small scar on his left eyebrow.
His voice: smooth, educated, with the faintest trace of an accent she couldn’t place.
The second man: heavier, silent, hands like vises around her biceps.
A van pulled up. Gray, no windows, sliding door already open.
Holy shit, she was being kidnapped.
She screamed. The sound echoed off concrete and died in the empty garage. She twisted against the hands holding her, kicked backward, felt her heel connect with a shin. The second man grunted but didn’t let go.
“Help!” Her voice cracked. “Someone—”
A cloth clamped over her nose and mouth. The smell was sweet and sharp, filling her lungs before she could hold her breath.
No. No, no, no—
Her mind kept recording even as her body went slack. The van’s license plate as they lifted her inside: Montana, 7-4892B. Her new book, abandoned on the concrete. The second man’s watch—silver, expensive, 7:52 on the face.
“We need your particular talents,” the first man was saying, his voice sounding like it was underwater. “Your coding skills. That remarkable memory.”
“Binary,” she whispered into the cloth, the word barely a breath.
He’ll notice when I don’t show. He notices everything.
The garage lights blurred. Faded.
Her last thought, before the dark took her: Nine p.m. I’m going to miss nine p.m.
Mercury would not rise to meet him.