Chapter 73: Forty-One Years Behind on Everything

Undefined Conviction

Chapter 73: Forty-One Years Behind on Everything

Aldric held the phone like it might bite him, turning it over slowly while Reeve tried, for the third time, to explain what an app actually was.

"It's a program," Reeve said. "Little icon, you tap it, it does a thing."

"I understand the concept of a program. I maintained resonance stabilization equipment for four decades." Aldric tapped the screen experimentally, flinched slightly when it lit up brighter than he expected, and set it down like it had personally offended him. "I simply don't understand why this particular program needs to know my location at all times to help me order food."

"Nobody understands that. We just accept it."

"That seems like a poor foundation for a society."

"You're not wrong," Mia said, sliding a plate of honey toast across the table without being asked, an unofficial welcome ritual that had apparently extended itself to Aldric without anyone formally deciding it should. "Try this instead. Considerably less confusing than modern technology."

Aldric took a bite, chewed slowly, and something in his careworn face eased for the first time since arriving. "That's remarkably good."

"Told you," Cole said, from across the kitchen, unable to resist even a small vindication where honey toast was concerned. "Number one on the list for a reason."

"I've missed food that wasn't rationed and grey. Forty-one years is a long time to forget what actual flavor tastes like." Aldric took another bite, slower this time, savoring it like a man rediscovering pleasure he'd genuinely forgotten was available to him. "I don't know how to thank all of you properly. I've spent four decades being useful to people who never once said thank you back. I'm out of practice receiving it."

"You don't have to thank us," Dana said, quiet, from the doorway. "You helped save my sister. That's a debt that runs the other direction, if we're keeping score at all."

"I'd rather not keep score. Score-keeping is mostly what got me into this situation in the first place." Aldric managed a small, tired smile. "I'd simply like to learn how to exist in a world that's moved forty-one years past the one I remember, without embarrassing myself too thoroughly along the way."

Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

"We'll teach you," Reeve said. "Slowly. No promises on the phone thing, though. Half of us don't fully understand it either."

Dana's phone rang twice that evening, both times numbers she didn't recognize, and the second call left her staring at the screen with an expression that made Cole's stomach tighten before she'd said a word.

"Reporter," she said finally. "Independent journalist. Says a source leaked partial footage of 'unusual activity' at a restricted government site. Wanted to know if I had a comment, given my name's apparently attached to some records requests filed around the same region."

"Preston's leak."

"Preston's leak, moving faster than any of us accounted for." Dana set the phone down, rubbing her eyes. "This is good, in theory. Public pressure might force Kessington's hand toward actual accountability instead of quiet exploitation. It's also considerably more exposure than any of us are prepared to manage carefully."

"Halden's going to have a rough week."

"Halden's going to have a rough month, at minimum." Dana managed a tired laugh, mostly humorless. "At least it's pointed at the Ministry's cover-up instead of directly at you. Small mercies."

The knock at the door came an hour later — an ordinary knock, no wrongness in the temperature, and Cole opened it to find a young woman with a press badge and a notebook considerably less mysterious than Vesper's, though her expression carried the same hungry, careful attention.

"Cole Vale?"

"Depends who's asking."

"Priya Okonkwo-Reyes, independent press. I'm running down a story about Sector Twelve." She held up her badge, unbothered by his obvious wariness. "I understand you might have information relevant to my investigation."

Cole studied her a long moment, feeling the shape of her Conviction settle into focus — not loud, not desperate, just steady, patient curiosity built around a genuine, uncomplicated belief that truth mattered more than convenience.

"I might," he said carefully. "Depends what you're planning to do with it."

"Publish it. Carefully. Responsibly, if you're worried about that part." She met his eyes, steady. "I've been doing this a long time, Mr. Vale. I know the difference between a story worth breaking and a story worth burying people to get. This is the first kind."

Cole didn't invite her in, not yet, but he didn't close the door either. "Give me a day. I need to talk to some people before I decide how much of this actually belongs in a newspaper."

"Fair enough." She handed him a card, old-fashioned and slightly worn at the corners. "I'll wait. Some stories are worth waiting for the right version of."

She left without pushing further, and Cole stood in the doorway a long moment, turning the card over, feeling the weight of a decision that had just gotten considerably more complicated than a private investigation ever needed to be.

"Well," he said, heading back inside, "guess we've got a new decision to make. Whether the whole world's ready to know what we found out there."

Nobody had an easy answer for that. The honey toast sat cooling on the table, Aldric's phone lay abandoned and unopened, and somewhere out in an ordinary evening, a journalist with steady eyes and patient curiosity waited for an answer that was going to matter considerably more than any of them were fully prepared for yet.

[End of Chapter 73]