Chapter 26: What Vasquez Tells Carol at 2 A.M.

The map room was the coldest part of the facility at night, which was why Carol was in it.

She had arranged the regional overlays across the worktable in the order Marcus used — northern sector, southern sector, Baltimore corridor, extraction points annotated in his precise handwriting — and she had been sitting with them for forty minutes without adding anything new. Thinking, or something that used to be thinking, before the outer systems had replaced it with calculation. The distinction had been collapsing for years and she had not marked the moment it went.

She heard Vasquez before she saw her. Not footsteps — Vasquez moved without telegraphing herself — but the slight change in air pressure from the door seal, the barely audible click of the latch. Carol did not look up.