Chapter 29: Reyes Makes the Choice That Costs Him

The Logistics Officer used a dead drop rather than a live contact this time.

Reyes found it on a Tuesday morning, tucked inside the false bottom of a water distribution crate at the Franklin Street relief station, which meant the Logistics Officer had switched to a secondary channel without notifying him, which meant one of two things: either the primary had been flagged, or this particular message warranted the additional layer. He recognized the container from the lid's scratch pattern before he touched it. He had not known there was a secondary channel until this moment. That, too, was information.

He pocketed the folded square and finished his shift. He distributed six crates of purified water to the queue of residents waiting in the cold outside the station, noted the quantities in the station log with the neatness Marcus had trained into him, exchanged nothing more than transit documentation with the checkpoint officer on his way back through, and walked four blocks north before he found a doorway with adequate sight lines and read what had been left for him.