Chapter 18: Drift Goes Partially Deaf

The first sign was the coffee.

Drift did not drink coffee — had never, as far as Elliot knew, expressed any interest in coffee — but on the Monday of the eighth week he appeared at the breakfast table with a full mug of it wrapped in both hands, and he drank it the way you drink something you have decided to use rather than enjoy, in steady methodical swallows that had nothing to do with taste. He looked like a man operating machinery. He looked, Elliot thought, watching him across the long table while the refectory filled with the ordinary noise of morning, like someone who had not slept and had decided to treat that fact as a logistical problem rather than a physical one.

Sable sat down across from Drift, looked at the mug, looked at Drift's face, and said nothing. She picked up her fork and ate her eggs in a careful, even way that meant she was also watching.