Chapter 20: The Undertide Takes Io

The notebook was not in Io's room.

Ren had not been looking for it — he had been looking for the charger cable for Sachi's recorder, which Io had borrowed three days ago and not returned — but the absence registered the way absences did with him, as a texture rather than a thought. The spot on the desk where Io kept current-project materials: a cleared rectangle, slightly dustier than its surroundings, suggesting something had been there for some time and recently removed. The desk otherwise undisturbed. Her chemistry notes still open to the electrolysis page. Her coffee cup still holding the cold ring of last night's instant.

He found the cable coiled in the left desk drawer. He left the room. He did not ask Io about the notebook.