Chapter 13: She Asks Him Directly

The instrument room is at the end of the east corridor, past the gear lockers and the laminated emergency protocols that nobody reads because everyone has already memorized them. It is small and poorly heated, the kind of room that exists at the back of every research facility I have ever worked in — the room where the actual calibration happens, where someone has to hold a probe steady in cold water while someone else reads numbers off a screen. There is a window the size of a paperback book. There is no comfortable place to stand.

I knew Callum would be there because Dmitri had mentioned it without meaning to, the way Dmitri mentioned most things — at full velocity, on his way somewhere else. Something about the conductivity sensors needing a zeroing check before the next cast. Something about Tuesday mornings.

It was Tuesday morning.