Chapter 10
VI
The work hub is loud and familiar with the usual tedium of sorting, stacking, and the hum of labor that keeps the Rot alive. I take my position and fall into the rhythm with hands moving, eyes forward, using the muscle memory of doing stuff without thinking.
Except, I am thinking. Mara’s words are circling. Unsent letters. Names and dates I haven’t seen. A father who was scared and tried to leave a trail.
And Alice’s offer, the older woman from the work hub who told me she has some of my father’s papers, just like Mara. Two sources, two collections, both heading in the same direction, figuring out what my father when through before he disappeared.
I’m sorting filters when she appears. I’d been looking around for her.
“Alice,” I say.
Alice with her badass shaved head and scar across the cheek. The older woman materializes beside me without announcement, without disrupting the room’s flow. She’s just suddenly present at my elbow.
Her eyes check the room. Quick left, right, behind. “Keep sorting,” she says. “Don’t look at me.”
I keep sorting.
“It’s time to show you what your father left with me before he disappeared. I’ve been holding it too long.”
My hands don’t stop moving. “Why now, Alice?”
“Because you’re bound to men who can actually do something with them and because I’m tired of carrying this alone. And… most importantly, because I think you’re ready. You’re committed to this place and aren’t going anywhere. I feel like I can trust you.”
She gives me a location to meet. Third floor, east wing, behind a service door marked with a faded red A. Tomorrow, after the second shift change.
“Come alone or with your men,” she says. “But come.”
“I’ll be there.”
Then she’s gone. Back into the flow of bodies and noise, her shaved head disappearing between two taller figures before anything else can be said.
I stand at the sorting table with a filter in each hand and my heart hammering in my chest.
Two touchpoints. One personal, letters and notes in my father’s hand, hidden outside the Rot in Mara’s possession.
The other one official, memos and documents hidden inside the Rot in Alice’s possession.
Together, they might be enough to rebuild a picture of what my father actually was and what happened to him.
The evidence is close. It’s converging.
And now, I have to go to three men who believe my father got what he deserved and ask them to help me prove he didn’t.