Chapter 88 | Bad News

Chapter 88: Chapter 88 | Bad News

He turned to go.

"Kai," she said.

He stopped.

She was looking at the desk. Not at him.

"Yesterday," she said. "In the apartment. What you said."

He waited.

She was quiet for a moment. The line of her jaw was the underneath version — the one that had no armor and no performance in it. The one he had only seen a few times.

"You were here," she said. "When it mattered. You’ve been here."

He looked at the door.

"I know," he said.

"Then stop carrying the time before you were," she said. "That’s not yours to carry."

He stood at the door.

He did not say anything.

She opened the notebook.

He left.

====

He knocked on Mira’s door.

It opened. She had the board ready. He told her the same things , motion rejected, hearing moved forward, the coordination firm, one week.

She listened. She held the board in her lap through all of it.

When he finished she wrote.

The coordination firm. Does it connect to the Calloway Foundation.

He looked at her.

"Denko is working on that," he said.

If it does the case expands again.

"Yes."

Not just the Renmei family. The containment partners.

"Yes."

She held the board.

She wrote: Dana Holt was blocked for eighteen months. Reese Calloway’s filing was returned six times. If the coordination firm connects to the Calloway Foundation—

She stopped writing.

She looked at the wall near his shoulder.

It was never just one family, she wrote.

"No," Kai said. "It wasn’t."

She was quiet for a moment.

Good, she wrote. Then the case should be as large as what they did.

He looked at the board.

"Yes," he said.

She set the board down.

She picked it up again.

Your ribs, she wrote. Don’t use the Gale Strike Echo for three weeks.

"Dr. Harlen said—"

I know what he said. I’m saying don’t use it. She held the board. The rotation correction Shira gave you last week. Practice the form without the Echo. The form is more important than the application right now. You’ve been skipping steps.

He looked at the board.

"How do you know I’ve been skipping steps," he said.

She looked at the wall near his shoulder.

She wrote: I can hear the difference in the wind pressure through the wall.

He looked at the board.

He looked at her.

The initiation is clean now, she wrote. The cutoff timing is better. But you’re rushing the recovery between rotations. That’s how you get caught off balance. She held the board. That’s what happened in the stairwell.

He was quiet for a moment.

"Yes," he said.

Three weeks without the Echo. Work the form only. When the ribs are healed and you pick the Echo back up the foundation will be better.

He looked at the board.

"You’ve been listening to my form," he said.

She set the board down.

She picked it up.

Someone has to, she wrote. Shira watches. I listen. You practice in the middle of the night when you think we’re asleep. The recovery sequence you do at two a.m. is slower than the one you do at six. That means you’re tired when you practice at night and compensating with muscle rather than technique.

He stared at the board.

She lowered it.

She was eating deeply absorbed in having said what she needed to say and having no further interest in the conversation.

He stood in the doorway.

"The name," he said. "On the board yesterday. When you wrote it."

She did not look up.

He waited.

She did not write anything.

He waited a little longer.

"Okay," he said.

He went to make lunch.

====

At two in the afternoon Dorothy Callahan knocked.

Kai opened the door.

She had her reading glasses on her head and a container and she was looking at him the way she looked at things she had decided something about.

"I heard something last night," she said. "Around nine. A sound in the building."

"There was an incident," Kai said. "It’s been handled."

She looked at his arm brace.

She looked at his ribs — she could not see them but she looked at how he was standing the way people who have been old for a long time look at things they have seen before.

She said nothing about either.

She held out the container.

"Rice porridge," she said. "Same as before."

He took it.

She looked past him into the apartment. Shira at the window. Mira at the kitchen doorway with the board.

"The floor joins," Dorothy said. "In the new building."

"Still level," Kai said.

She nodded.

"Good," she said.

She looked at Shira.

Shira looked at her.

Dorothy said: "I’ve been following the news."

Shira said nothing.

"The hero association bulletin this morning," Dorothy said. "The hearing date."

Shira looked at her.

"One week," Dorothy said. "They moved it forward."

"Yes," Shira said.

Dorothy looked at her for a moment.

"My husband," Dorothy said. "Thirty-one years as a field assessor for the dungeon classification authority. He used to say the committee only moves fast for two reasons." She paused. "When something is obviously wrong. Or when they’re embarrassed they didn’t move faster."

She looked at Shira.

"I think it might be both this time," Dorothy said.

Shira looked at the window.

"Yes," she said. "I think so too."

Dorothy nodded.

She turned to go.

She stopped.

She looked at Kai’s arm brace one more time.

She said nothing about it.

She went back to two-twelve, humming the four notes.

Kai closed the door.

From the living room Mira’s board appeared over the back of her chair.

Her husband was a field assessor.

"Yes," Kai said.

For the dungeon classification authority.

"Yes."

For thirty-one years.

"Yes."

The board held.

Did you know that.

"No," Kai said.

Mira looked at the wall near the door.

She wrote: She’s been watching this case since before we filed.

Kai looked at the door.

He looked at Mira’s board.

He looked at the container of rice porridge in his hand.

"Yes," he said. "She has."

====

After dinner Kai was at the table when the system chimed.

『 Bond Level — Shira Voss: 3.4 / 10. 』 『 Bond Level — Mira Elys: 3.4 / 10. 』 『 MULTIPLIER: ×2,000. ACTIVE. 』 『 The system notes: 』 『 Yesterday both wives defended the apartment without Host. 』 『 The system does not grade this because it was not an investment. 』 『 It was something else. 』 『 Host said five words in the apartment doorway. 』 『 The system recorded them. 』 『 The system will not repeat them here because they are already in the room. 』 『 Shira Voss said: that’s not yours to carry. 』 『 She said it to the desk. Not to Host directly. 』 『 The system notes the desk received the most important thing she has said in 42 Chapters. 』 『 Mira Elys wrote Host’s name on the board yesterday and did not explain it today when he asked. 』 『 The system notes she has written it seventeen times in her room on scrap paper since Chapter 35. 』 『 She was practicing. 』 『 Dorothy Callahan’s husband was a dungeon classification assessor for thirty-one years. 』 『 The system notes this separately because it changes the weight of every container of rice porridge. 』 『 The system has no further notes. 』 『 The hearing is in one week. 』

Kai read it.

He put the phone down.

He sat at the table for a while.

Seventeen times, he thought. On scrap paper.

He sat with that.

From Shira’s room — the form starting. Not the five a.m. version. The late version, the one that was slower because she was running it for herself rather than for the count. Signal to the cutoff. Through. Twelve beats, thirteen, fourteen. She held fourteen. She started again.

From Mira’s room — the RF-7. The receiving channel opening. Then her voice following the second phrase of the album. Thirty-eight seconds. Forty. Forty-two.

She let it end.

She did not start again.

Instead he heard her moving , the specific sound of her chair crossing to the desk, the drawer opening, something small being set on the surface.

Then her voice. Not the album phrase. Not a frequency exercise.

One word, at the clearest function he had heard from her yet , not fourteen percent, something more said into the room for no one in particular.

His name.