Chapter 5: Luke Castellan Offers to Help

The thing about being new somewhere is that the room knows before you do.

I had been at my desk for forty minutes when it happened — that particular shift in ambient attention, the way a bullpen full of people who are pretending not to watch you suddenly pretends a little harder. I noticed it the way I notice most things: peripherally, through the accumulated data of small wrongnesses. The analyst two rows over stopped clicking her pen. The guy near the window refreshed his screen without looking at it. The quality of the background noise changed, the way a subway car goes quieter right before someone unusual gets on.

I kept my eyes on the N. Nakamura file and waited.