Chapter 12: Oskar Teel's Confession

The chalk mark was there when I checked at six in the morning — a thin horizontal line through a circle, low on the support column at the Canter Street underpass, the kind of mark that looked like nothing if you weren't looking for something. Drift's hand. Drift's signal. I'd taught him that particular cipher three years ago and he'd improved on it, the way he improved on everything I gave him: quietly, without acknowledgment, until it was better than what I'd started with.

I didn't respond immediately. You don't respond immediately to a chalk mark. You go home, you sleep three hours, you eat something that qualifies as food by the most generous available definition, and then you walk back out into the city looking like someone who has somewhere else to be.

The shrapnel near my spine had opinions about the three hours of sleep. I took two analgesics and ignored it.