Chapter 18: The Subbasement Has Its Own Rules

The badge number came back at 7:14 AM.

I know the exact time because I was watching Griffin's face when his phone screen lit up, and I had trained myself over seventeen years to note timestamps the way other people note emotional reactions — as raw data, prior to interpretation. His expression didn't change. That was the tell. Griffin Lorne has a very good face for someone carrying very bad information, and the specific stillness that settled over his features in the moment he read the result was the stillness of a man confirming something he had already suspected and had been hoping, quietly and without much conviction, was wrong.

He turned the phone toward me.