Chapter 6: Callum Sees Her Name on the Arrival Manifest

The manifest arrived on a Thursday, tucked inside a manila envelope from the consortium's administrative office in Juneau, routed through the weekly supply run. Callum processed the station's incoming documentation every Thursday between three and four in the afternoon — a task he had established during his third month at Naktok Bay as a way of making himself administratively useful enough that no one questioned his other habits. He sat at the narrow desk in the supply room, which smelled of cardboard and machine oil and the particular cold that lived in walls year-round, and he opened envelopes and sorted their contents with the unhurried precision of someone who has performed this action several thousand times.

He was on the fourth envelope when he found it.

Intake roster, October posting. Five names. He read them in order, as he always did — the habit of thoroughness was too old to override — and when he reached the third name he stopped.