Circles Closing
The reply came just after dawn.
Amelia Kovács woke to the glow of her laptop screen. She hadn't meant to fall asleep at her desk, but somewhere between cross-referencing property records and reading the Hallam article for the fifth time, her body had mutinied.
Her neck hurt.
Her eyes hurt.
Her inbox pulsed with a new notification in the secure client.
She pushed her hair out of her face and sat up, joints protesting.
The message was from "C." No name, never a name. C had been a mid-level analyst at a regulatory body for five years and secretly angry for four of them. He loved numbers and hated how they were used.
> You're a problem,
he'd written once.
I respect that. Don't get me fired.
Now his subject line read: RE: those codes (you're playing with knives).
She opened it.
> Can't do a full pull without setting off bells. But I ran slices, like you asked. You didn't get these from me.
1. Several of your "intake shadow" tables are attached to special exemption requests filed by private security contractors and "logistics partners" during early 2000s. The exemptions were granted under "national security" umbrellas and sealed.
2. The FORGE tags aren't in our public side at all. They exist only as internal remarks referencing external classification systems. Translation: somebody else's internal program, piggybacking on government paperwork.
3. One cluster keeps showing up when you look at reassignment / disposal of state-connected children's homes: "Holcomb Transitional Youth Initiative." That's the official name. Unofficially: a children's home that got privatized in 2007, closed quietly in 2012, and then the building changed hands three more times through shell companies.
Last buyer on record (2016): "Bayline Commercial Holdings." Subsidiary of… you guessed it… Aegis. A year later, they transferred it to another shell and it became "mixed commercial-residential." No more youth initiative on paper.
You asked if any of this touched your alley friend's world. I can't say yes without lying. But I can say:
If I were trying to bury evidence of a program that treated kids like units, I'd do it exactly like this.
If I were that man in the alley, I'd know this address by heart.
DO NOT publish my name. Don't even write it down. If you go after this, don't drag me with you.
Also: if you're smart, you walk away.
– C.
Below his text was a small bundle of attachments: redacted exemption forms, property transfers, internal memos. Some were little more than metadata and dates. Others hinted at more.
Amelia's pulse kicked.
Holcomb Transitional Youth Initiative.
She opened one of the property documents.
The building had a street address. She knew that street. Small, tucked between bigger arteries. She'd been down it once or twice chasing unrelated stories.
She pulled up the map.
The pin landed half a block from a bar she remembered vaguely as a place with decent fries and a bartender who swore like she'd invented it.
Her gaze lingered on the building outline.
Five floors. Commercial unit on the ground floor. Apartments above.
"You again," she murmured, thinking of the man in the alley. "How many ghosts live in your rent contract?"
Her coffee was stale, but she drank it anyway.
Then she wrote C a short reply.
> Got it. Your name is buried.
If this is knives, I think someone's already swinging them at my head. Might as well see who's holding the handle.
She did not mention the alley man.
C probably had his own nightmares.
She saved all the attachments to an encrypted volume, then copied the Holcomb address into her offline notes and drew a circle around it.
Once.
Twice.
She stared at it until the street name stopped looking like letters and started looking like a challenge.
---
Elena brought her coffee in a paper cup with no logo.
Kieran accepted it like it was part of a ritual.
Her office was quieter in the mornings. Late afternoon was when people flocked to bring her problems. Early day was for whatever fires she chose to light herself.
Today, he was one of them.
"You look like you lost an argument with your ceiling," she said.
"I didn't argue," he said. "We understood each other."
"That's worse," she said. "Sit."
He sat.
She sank into her own chair, folded one leg under her, a sign she was too tired to perform full professional posture.
"Internal sent me the summary of your delightful midnight chat with Krell," she said. "Stress test. Kovács. Holcomb. Vos. I'd say I'm surprised, but I've met him."
"He wants to watch me choose," Kieran said. "Like I'm a lab experiment with entertaining motor responses."
"You are," she said. "We all are. He just likes your readouts more than most."
"He plans to nudgingly feed her Holcomb paths," Kieran said. "He didn't deny it."
"Of course he didn't," she said. "He's proud of his work. That's the worst part."
He took a sip of coffee. It was hot and bitter.
"Two days," he said.
"Probably one and a half now," she said. "If his timing holds."
"You knew about his timing," he said.
"It's my job to know," she said. "Also to decide whether to trip him in the corridor when he gets smug. What do you want from me, Kieran?"
He considered the question.
"Worst-case," he said. "Mapped honestly."
"Elaborate," she said.
"Kovács follows the trail to Holcomb," he said. "She finds the building. She pokes the past. She maybe recognizes me if she sees me. She certainly notices the way the air gets tighter around the bar if Internal panics."
"And Ves?" Elena asked. "Vos."
"Lena either stays as she is," he said, "or her memory gets pulled. Or she gets taken. Or she gets killed to protect the nice clean shell companies in Aegis's ledger."
"Or," Elena said, "you do your job and prevent at least some of that."
"That's what Krell wants," he said. "To see how I arrange the bodies."
She tapped the pen against her mug.
"Look at it this way," she said. "This was always coming. Kovács was never going to stop with Ruiz. Hallam was always going to bump into someone. Holcomb's ghost was always going to rattle. Krell is just…choosing the tempo now."
"You sound like you agree with him," Kieran said.
"I agree with reality," she said. "I don't have the luxury of wishing it were a different shape. Neither do you."
He studied her.
"What would you do?" he asked.
Her lips quirked.
"You realise how much I hate that question," she said.
"You're going to answer anyway," he said.
"Annoyingly, yes," she said.
She leaned forward, elbows on the desk.
"Option one: you scare Kovács away from Holcomb," she said. "Spook her hard enough that she decides this particular story isn't worth her life. She retreats to safer corruption. Vos stays ignorant. Forge keeps ticking. Krell is bored."
"She won't scare easily," he said. "She's already had a gun pointed in her direction."
"She had a gun pointed at her laptop," Elena said. "Those aren't the same thing. But I agree. She's got that…chew-the-wall personality. Fear just gives her adjectives."
"Option two?" he asked.
"You let Kovács get close enough," Elena said, "but not to Lena. You feed her something mid-level. A smaller Forge-linked scandal. Enough to burn some minor partners, enough to satisfy her sense that she's drawn blood, without touching the structural beams."
"That sounds like throwing someone else on the fire," he said.
"Welcome to the job description," she said.
"Option three," he said.
"Option three is the one Krell is openly interested in," she said. "You play both ends. Keep Kovács alive and digging, keep Vos alive and ignorant, use the friction to pry open sections of Forge while pretending to defend them. This is the 'erosion' model. It's messy. Unstable. High failure potential."
"That's the one you want," he said.
"It's the only one where something changes," she said.
"And Krell's test?" he asked.
She shrugged one shoulder.
"He doesn't mind if things change," she said. "As long as he understands why. As long as he's the one holding the graph at the end."
"They all talk about control," Kieran said. "As if that's a neutral word."
"It's not," she said. "It's a weapon. The question is who you point it at. So. What's your instinct?"
He blew out a breath.
"My instinct is to get Lena out," he said. "Off Holcomb. Away from this building. Away from the bar. Somewhere they don't think to look for her."
"That's how you make them look," Elena said. "Woman vanishes from an address that suddenly glows on all their maps? Internal will notice even if Krell pretends not to. And Lena will hate you for ripping what she thinks is hers away."
"She already hates me," he said.
"There are grades of hate," Elena said. "You haven't hit the kind where people actively try to undo you yet. Don't rush."
He stared at his cup.
"What if she remembers?" he asked quietly. "What if this knocks something loose? Some trainer's voice. Some command buried deep."
"Then we deal with it," Elena said. "We rewrite where we can, we blunt where we can't. You forget how many people we've deprogrammed halfway."
"Halfway," he repeated.
"Yes," she said. "The other half learns to live sideways."
"The other half kills themselves," he said.
Her gaze slid away for a second.
"Not on my better days," she said.
He set the cup down.
"You're very bad at comfort," he echoed Hallam's earlier words quietly.
"I'm not here to comfort you," she said.
He almost smiled again. It passed.
"What do you need from me?" she asked, more softly.
"I need Jonas on Holcomb," Kieran said. "Not just on a rooftop. In the street. Eyes on Amelia if she comes. I need to know the second she sets foot in that district."
"That I can arrange," she said. "He'll pretend to smoke outside that bakery you don't like."
"The one with the burnt crust," he said.
"You're very picky for someone whose childhood dinners were numbers in a log," she said.
"I earned the right to be picky," he said.
"Fine," she said. "I'll tell him to act like a man whose cholesterol is a slow suicide note. Anything else?"
"Keep Internal away from Lena for as long as you can," he said. "Paperwork. Delays. Risk trees. Whatever you do to jam their gears."
She smirked faintly.
"It's like you understand my love language," she said. "Forms."
She sobered.
"I'll slow them," she said. "I can't stop them. Not if Krell decides the test requires a more…direct poke."
"I know," he said.
She studied his face.
"You're not asking what happens if you fail," she said.
"I know what happens if I fail," he said. "I've seen the room they use."
"Then don't," she said simply.
He stood.
She watched him.
"You'll go see her," she said. "Vos. Today."
"Yes," he said.
"And what will you tell her?" Elena asked.
"The truth," he said. "At least the parts that keep her alive."
"That's rarely the same as the whole," she said.
"I don't deal in whole," he said.
Her lips pressed together, like she wanted to say something and decided against it.
"Go," she said. "And Kieran?"
He paused at the door.
"Try not to be interesting," she said.
"Bad for your workload," he said.
"Exactly," she said.
---
Jonas "Quiet" Rhee lit a cigarette he had no intention of smoking.
He stood under the awning of a bakery that smelled like sugar and burnt mornings, on the corner near Holcomb.
He looked like a man waiting for his order.
He was not.
The day had rolled fully into late afternoon. Holcomb Street dressed in its usual patchwork: kids weaving bikes between parked cars, someone yelling two blocks away, somebody else music-blasting a track too distorted to identify.
He watched.
His earpiece clicked once as Kieran came on the line.
"Position?" Kieran asked.
"Corner of Holcomb and 'why does everything smell like overcooked bread,'" Jonas said. "Visual on the bar. Visual on your front door. I can see Vos if she comes out for a smoke. What am I looking for besides your bad decisions?"
"A journalist," Kieran said. "Mid-thirties. Dark hair. Eyes like a dog that's been kicked too many times and learned how to bite back."
"That narrows it down to every woman in reporting," Jonas said.
"You'll know her," Kieran said. "You've seen the file."
"Right," Jonas said. "The alley girl."
"You don't need to phrase it like that," Kieran said.
"I absolutely do," Jonas said. "It annoys Internal."
"Noor is on this channel," Noor's voice cut in.
"I know," Jonas said, unabashed. "You get your risk curves out for this yet?"
"They're updating as you speak," Noor said. "Try not to add variables for fun."
"As if I've ever done anything for fun," Jonas said.
Kieran cut in.
"Any sign of tails?" he asked.
"No coordinated movement," Jonas said. "One patrol car rolled through, bored. A guy who might be watching the bar or might just be too in love with your graffiti. Hard to tell."
"Keep an eye on the might-be," Kieran said.
"Already doing it," Jonas said.
He watched the man in question—a skinny figure in a hoodie—pretending to text and not quite pulling it off. The kid's eyes kept drifting toward Lena's sign.
Local. Not his problem today, unless he became one.
Jonas checked his phone, more out of habit than need.
There.
A notification from Elena.
> 17:42 – "Kovács pulled Holcomb building records from her cache. Ticket booked. She'll be on your side of town within the hour. She doesn't know you're watching. Don't get cute."
He whistled under his breath.
"ETA sixty," he said. "Journalist on approach."
"I'll be downstairs," Kieran said.
"Vos?" Jonas asked.
"Working," Kieran said.
"Blissfully unaware," Jonas said.
"For the moment," Kieran said.
"Clock's running," Noor said quietly.
It always was.
---
Lena knew something was wrong the moment he walked in.
Kieran moved like Kieran. Controlled, economical, always cataloguing exits and threats. That didn't change.
What changed was the air around him.
"You again," she said, because it was easy, and normal, and safer than "Why do my instincts start screaming when I see your face now?"
"Me," he said.
"Beer?" she asked.
He hesitated for half a second too long.
"Yes," he said.
She poured it, watching him while pretending not to.
"Your aura is all kinds of unpleasant today," she said. "You bring more bad news about my childhood, or is this a new flavor?"
He almost smiled.
"New flavor," he said.
"Lucky me," she said. "Do I get a warning this time, or are we just free-styling?"
He glanced around the bar.
There were half a dozen regulars scattered at tables, two guys at the pool table, a couple sharing a bowl of fries in the corner. The television muttered in the background.
"Back room?" he asked.
She bristled.
"Back room is for kegs and tax documents," she said. "And occasionally hookups when I'm drunk enough to forget I own this place. Which I'm not. So if you have something to say, you can say it here."
"This isn't for them," he said, nodding at the room.
"Then make it for us," she said quietly. "Right here. Right now."
He looked at her for a moment, then conceded with a small dip of his head.
"A journalist is coming," he said.
"Congratulations to her," Lena said. "What's that got to do with me? I don't give interviews. Last time a local paper mentioned this place, they called it 'gritty.' I still haven't forgiven them."
"She's looking into the building," he said. "Into its past tenants. Children's homes. Shell companies. Programs."
Lena's hand tightened on the bar towel.
"Like the one I ran from," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"And she's coming here?" Lena asked.
"She might," he said. "The address will draw her. She's good at following threads."
"Is she one of yours?" Lena asked.
"No," he said. "She's one of hers. Herself. And that's part of the problem."
"So you're scared of a woman with a notebook," Lena said. "Feels like an overreaction, even for you people."
"It's not just the notebook," he said. "It's what she does with it when she sees where it leads."
"And where does it lead?" Lena asked.
He met her eyes.
"To you," he said. "Maybe not by name. Not yet. But to this building. This bar. The fact that a 'transitional youth initiative' went from hosting children to hosting drunks without anyone asking enough questions."
"Let me guess," Lena said. "You want me to play along. Smile. Pour her a drink. Pretend I don't remember anything. Hope she gets bored and goes away."
"That's one option," he said.
"And the others?" she asked.
"You leave," he said. "Close early. Take a night off. Let her walk into an empty bar and a locked door. Less for her to see."
Lena laughed, short and disbelieving.
"You want me to run," she said. "Again."
"I want you alive," he said.
"So your bosses can keep playing god in peace?" she shot back.
"So you don't get turned into a case study," he said. "In one direction or another."
She leaned on the bar, closer.
"What if I want answers?" she asked. "You ripped open a hole in my memory and dropped the word 'Forge' into it. Now someone is showing up who might have the other half of the story, and your first instinct is to tell me to hide under my own counter."
"Her story won't be whole either," he said. "She has fragments. Logs. Flashes. Enough to get you hurt, not enough to put them in a cell."
"You keep saying 'them' like you're not one of them," she said.
He didn't flinch.
"I am," he said. "That's why I know how this happens."
She looked away, jaw tight.
"How much of me is theirs?" she asked quietly. "You said I ran. You said I got away. But if my name's on their maps… If they put me behind this bar in the first place…"
"They didn't put you here," he said. "Not like that. They aimed you. You veered. You landed here on your own."
"How do you know?" she asked.
"Because if they had placed you here deliberately," he said, "I would have met you in a very different context, long before the landlord paperwork."
She absorbed that.
"What do you want me to do?" she asked finally.
"For now?" he said. "Work. Like you always do. Treat her like any other customer. Don't volunteer information. Don't lie elaborately. Let me handle the rest."
"And if she starts asking questions?" Lena said.
"Then you tell her the truth you remember," he said. "No more, no less. A shitty children's home. A girl who climbed out a window. No shadow programs, no Forges, no architects. Just one more screwed-up childhood in a world full of them."
"You think she'll buy that?" Lena asked.
"For the moment," he said. "She'll file you under 'possible lead' and move on to whatever looks like proof."
Lena's mouth twisted.
"And what do you file me under?" she asked.
"Problem," he said. "Anchor. Liability. Reason."
"Not sure if I'm offended or flattered," she said.
"Both usually means I'm close to accurate," he said.
She stared at him.
"You'll be here when she comes?" she asked.
"Yes," he said.
"Good," she said. "If this blows up in my face, I want you within punching distance."
He inclined his head.
"That's fair," he said.
The door opened.
A pair of regulars came in, stomping cold off their boots. Lena straightened and pulled her mouth back into its usual curve.
"We're not done," she said. "But I don't want to have this conversation in front of people who pay me in singles."
He moved to his usual stool.
She went back to work.
---
Amelia rode the tram to Holcomb with her notebook open on her knees.
She did not wear anything that screamed "journalist." No press badge, no clever T-shirt. Just jeans, a jacket with too many pockets, and the kind of tired face that fit in anywhere.
The city slid by outside the window. New glass, old brick, bruised concrete.
Holcomb was a middle piece. Not glamorous enough to gentrify fully, not broken enough to abandon entirely. The kind of place you could hide a dozen sins without anyone noticing until the smell got too strong.
She stepped off at the third stop, checked the street sign, and walked.
The address C had given her led to a building that looked exactly like every line on its property document.
Five stories. Brick, patched and repatched. A ground floor commercial unit with a painted sign over the door: LEN'S. The rest of the letters had once spelled more, but the paint had peeled.
She stopped across the street and looked up.
There was nothing to distinguish it from the others. That was the point.
Her phone buzzed once.
A message from a colleague at her outlet, half a joke, half a worry.
> You disappeared into your cave again. If you get shot this time, text first, yeah?
She typed back.
> If I get shot, you can have my notes. Don't mess up my adjectives.
She slid the phone into her pocket and crossed.
The bell over the bar door jingled when she pushed it open.
The space inside was dim without being dark. Tables, bar, TV, people. The smell of fry oil and spilled beer.
Behind the bar was a woman with dark hair pulled back and an expression like she'd forgotten how to be intimidated.
Lena.
Amelia didn't know the name. Not yet. But she recognized the posture. It was the posture of someone who had decided, quietly, that surviving was a harder job than anyone gave it credit for, and was doing it anyway.
The woman glanced up.
"Pick a seat," she said. "Or I'll pick one for you and you probably won't like it."
Amelia chose a stool near the center, where she could see the door and a slice of the back.
"Beer," she said. "Whatever doesn't taste like punishment."
"That's a tall order," the bartender said, but she poured something and set it down.
Amelia took a sip.
It was better than the coffee she'd had at dawn. That wasn't saying much. It was okay.
She let herself be just a customer for three breaths.
Then she started looking properly.
The bar had been here long enough to collect layers. There were photos on the walls—patrons, sports moments, holiday decorations that had never fully come down. None of them screamed "children's home" or "transitional youth initiative," but that wasn't how it worked. You didn't hang your crimes on the wall.
She glanced at the bartender again.
"You been here long?" Amelia asked, voice casual.
The woman gave her a quick side-eye.
"You a cop?" she asked.
"No," Amelia said. "Journalist."
"Worse," the woman said.
Amelia smiled faintly.
"Only on Thursdays," she said. "I'm off-duty today. Just curious."
The woman snorted.
"You people are never off-duty," she said. "But fine. This place? I've had it eight years. Lived upstairs longer."
"Nice building," Amelia said. "History?"
The woman's eyes narrowed a fraction.
"Everything around here has history," she said. "Usually the kind you don't put in the tourist brochures."
"I heard it used to be a youth place," Amelia said. "Program for kids. Before the bar."
The bartender's hands kept moving—wipe, pour, ring up—but Amelia saw the tiniest hitch.
"Heard from who?" the woman asked.
"Old documents," Amelia said. "Paperwork's chatty if you listen to it."
The woman studied her.
"Yeah," she said eventually. "There was a home. Before me. Before the last guy. You know how those go. Good intentions, bad funding, worse management. State pulled the plug. Building shuffled hands."
"What kind of home?" Amelia asked. "Foster? Group? Special program?"
"You got a lot of questions for someone 'off-duty,'" the woman said.
"I'm bad at vacation," Amelia said.
The bartender rolled her eyes.
"Kid's place," she said. "Beds, chores, rules. Church money on the sign, government money underneath. Some of the staff were decent. Some weren't. Like everywhere else."
"You were there?" Amelia asked.
"For a bit," the woman said. "Then I wasn't."
"How'd you get out?" Amelia asked.
"Window," the woman said. "Maybe a door. Maybe a hole in the fence. Maybe I didn't. Maybe I died there and now I'm haunting my own bar. You going to print that?"
Amelia huffed a quiet laugh.
"Not without your name," she said.
"You're not getting that either," the woman said. "House policy."
Amelia took another sip of beer.
"You remember who ran it?" she asked. "Any company names? Charities? People who came in suits and took notes?"
The bartender's gaze cooled.
"Why?" she asked.
"Because some of those people went on to erase their own involvement," Amelia said. "And I'm trying to un-erase it."
The woman leaned in slightly, resting her forearms on the bar.
"Listen," she said. "I don't know what you think you're going to find, but if you start digging deep enough in Holcomb, you're going to hit bones. Some of them are mine. I don't like strangers with shovels."
"Neither do I," Amelia said quietly. "But someone's already digging in my life, and I don't get to choose whether they stop. I only get to choose whether I pretend not to see the holes."
The woman's eyes flicked to something over Amelia's shoulder.
Reflex more than intention, Amelia turned a fraction, just enough to catch a newcomer in the bar's mirror.
Man in his thirties, plain clothes, not plain posture.
He walked like someone who had been trained to enter rooms without changing the air, and had never fully unlearned it.
The alley man.
Her heart didn't lurch so much as settle into a higher gear.
"So," Lena said in a tone that did not match her eyes, "that's your boss?"
Amelia turned back slowly.
"He's not mine," she said.
"Funny," Lena said. "He says the same about you."
The man reached the bar, collected his usual distance to the world, and set a folded hand over the edge.
"Beer," he said.
"You two know each other?" Lena asked, voice sharp around the casual words.
"Once," Amelia said.
The man looked at her directly now.
There was no flicker of surprise. That bothered her more than if there had been.
"Kovács," he said. "You found Holcomb."
"You threw Holcomb at me," she said. "Indirectly."
He tilted his head.
"No," he said. "You were always going to get here. I just tried to make sure you didn't take the whole street with you when you did."
"Comforting," she said.
"Is it?" he asked.
"Not remotely," she said.
Lena glanced between them.
"You want to explain," she said, "why the woman who just told me she's a journalist is staring at you like you're a car crash she's been in before?"
Amelia didn't look away from him.
"He killed my laptop," she said. "Instead of my skull."
"That's…very specific," Lena said.
"Ruiz," he said to Amelia. "You're still working that thread."
"I'm not in the habit of dropping stories because someone points a gun at my hardware," she said.
"Unhealthy habit," he said.
"Hypocritical comment," she shot back.
He almost smiled.
Lena slapped a hand on the bar.
"Time out," she said. "I am not running a reunion for murder-adjacent acquaintances without being told in very small words what the hell is going on."
The man lifted his hand away from the edge of the bar, palms open, not in surrender so much as in disclosure.
"He recently informed you," he said to Lena, "that the place you grew up was part of something called Forge. Yes?"
"Yes," she said tightly. "And then went home like he'd told me the weather."
"And you," he continued, looking at Amelia, "recently found several shredded databases that mentioned something called Forge. And Holcomb. And North River. And you have not yet published any of it, because you know you're still missing the piece that makes it stick."
"Do you listen in my sleep now?" she said. "Is that new spyware, or just flattering omniscience?"
"I listen where it matters," he said.
She laughed once.
"You sound like him," she said.
"Who?" he asked.
"The architect behind all this," she said. "Whoever decided children were better as line items."
His eyes hardened almost imperceptibly.
"I am not him," he said.
"Good," she said. "Because I'd have shot you already if you were."
Lena watched them like someone watching a match and a leaking gas line, waiting to see which one reached the other first.
"Okay," Lena said. "I'm going to make a wild guess. You work for the people who ran that home. You're trying to keep her from blowing it up. And I am a very unlucky middle."
"Correct," he said.
"Do I win a prize?" she asked.
"Survival," he said.
"Not very original," she said.
He turned his attention fully to Amelia.
"You came because of Hallam," he said. "And North River. And because you don't like it when fires happen in places that shouldn't burn."
"You talk like someone who lit one," she said.
He didn't deny it.
"There is a line," he said. "Between exposing rot and cracking load-bearing walls. You're close to it. I'm here to tell you not to step over it."
"You don't get to tell me where to step," she said.
"If you don't listen," he said, "people who have no idea they're standing near that line will fall with you."
Her throat tightened.
"Children," she said.
"And adults who survived being children," he said, glancing at Lena.
Lena's jaw clenched.
"Don't use me as a prop," she said.
"I'm not," he said.
She snorted.
Amelia set her glass down.
"You keep talking about 'rot' and 'load-bearing walls,'" she said. "Let's stop with the metaphors. Forge. What is it?"
"A network of facilities and programs designed to condition and repurpose children," he said. "Some were like your Hallam's home. Some worse. Some… adapted. They supplied assets to people who wanted tools that didn't exist on any official roster."
"How many?" she asked.
"Too many," he said. "Not enough to sustain a revolution if you topple them outright. Enough to justify very ugly responses if you try."
"You're asking me not to publish," she said.
"I'm asking you to aim," he said. "If you must shoot, don't spray. Pick something that hurts the people at the top without triggering a cascade that kills the ones at the bottom."
"How generous," she said.
"You got Ruiz killed," he said mildly.
She flinched.
"Excuse me?" she said.
"Your pursuit pushed him to panic," he said. "Panic made him sloppy. Sloppy made him visible. Visible made him a target. I was the bullet, but you were the movement. You know this."
Her fingers tightened around the glass.
"I didn't tell you to blow his brains out," she said.
"No," he said. "You just lit a fire next to his stash of secrets and walked away. You don't get to pretend that's unrelated."
Lena looked at Amelia now, sharper.
"You brought a storm near my building," she said.
"I didn't know it was yours," Amelia said, suddenly genuine. "I didn't know about any of this until they started trying to erase it."
"And you still don't," he said.
"Then tell me," she snapped, turning back to him. "If you're so worried I'll break the wrong thing, hand me something I'm allowed to smash. You can't have it both ways. You can't keep me ignorant and still blame me for collateral I can't see."
He studied her.
For a heartbeat, the bar noise fell away in his head.
Elena's voice, distant: Option three. Erosion. Use the friction.
He exhaled slowly.
"There is a facility," he said. "Not active as a Forge intake anymore, but still on the books as a 'behavioral research partner.' They test conditioning models on small populations. Old kids, mostly. Legal ages. On paper. Off paper…less clear."
Amelia's pen was already out, notebook open, as if conjured.
"Where?" she asked.
He shook his head.
"Not here," he said. "Not like this. I will not say the name out loud in this bar. You write too fast."
"Email?" she said. "Encrypted?"
"A meet," he said. "Neutral ground. No bar. No Holcomb. Somewhere I can control the exits without making Vos feel like she's sitting on a pressure plate."
Lena lifted both hands.
"Thank you," she said. "Because I am absolutely feeling that right now."
"Why should I trust you?" Amelia asked.
"You shouldn't," he said. "You should verify. The thing is, you can't verify anything if you're dead. And if you keep digging blind, that's where this goes."
Lena snorted softly.
"He's very cheerful," she said.
"This is his version of caring," Amelia said.
He glanced at her.
"You hate that I shot the machine," he said.
"I hate that you made me complicit," she said. "You killed my source in front of me and then let me live. That's not mercy. That's a leash."
"It's a line," he said. "It exists whether you acknowledge it or not. I'm giving you a chance not to strangle yourself on it."
She closed her notebook.
"Where and when?" she asked.
"Tomorrow," he said. "Ninth Street underpass. The one with the mural that's half finished. Noon. No obvious tails. No loud heroics."
She raised an eyebrow.
"You'll bring proof?" she asked.
"I'll bring enough for you to see this isn't just a ghost story," he said. "Names, structures, a place you can hit that won't collapse the whole network on whatever children are still inside."
"And in exchange?" she asked.
"In exchange," he said, "you leave Holcomb alone. Vos, this building, the old home. You treat it as background, not target. At least for now."
She looked at Lena.
The other woman met her gaze, unflinching.
"I don't owe you anything," Lena said. "But if staying out of my floor plan means you get to light a fire somewhere that doesn't blow my bar into shrapnel, I'm selfish enough to be okay with that."
"You think they won't come for you later?" Amelia asked.
"I think they will," Lena said. "But I'd rather fight one battle at a time."
Amelia looked back at him.
"You're asking me to walk away from the thing that started this," she said.
"It started long before you," he said. "And it won't end with you. Take the win you can get."
She hated that part of her agreed.
Information. A facility that was vulnerable. A chance to hit something that mattered without triggering whatever emergency protocol Forge had for full exposure.
It could be a trap.
It probably was a trap.
"He's not lying," Lena said softly.
Amelia looked at her.
"You don't know that," Amelia said.
"Yes, I do," Lena said. "I've heard people lie because they want you to feel small. This doesn't sound like that. This sounds like someone who's already standing in front of a train and is just trying to decide which way to push you."
"Professional endorsement," he said. "That's new."
"Don't get used to it," Lena said.
Amelia tapped her pen against the notebook.
"Fine," she said. "Underpass. Noon. If you screw me, I'll make sure whatever's left of me ruins your boss's quarterly reports."
"That's the spirit," he said.
She slid off the stool, dropped cash on the bar, and finished her beer in one swallow.
As she moved toward the door, she paused.
"You have a name?" she asked.
He considered.
"You already wrote one down," he said. "Use that."
"'The man who shot the machine first' is not going to fit in my copyediting CMS," she said.
"Then shorten it," he said. "Make it quiet."
"Quiet," she repeated. "That's taken. I'll find my own."
She left.
The bell chimed behind her.
Jonas watched her step back onto the street from his bakery post.
"Kovács heading out," he murmured. "No obvious tail. Eyeballing the building like it owes her money. What did you give her, Holt?"
"Homework," Kieran said.
"Fun kind?" Jonas asked.
"No," Kieran said.
Inside, Lena leaned on the bar.
"That woman is going to get us all killed," she said.
"That's one possible outcome," he said.
"You don't have to sound so calm about it," she said.
He picked up his beer, now warm, and didn't drink.
"I've seen worse ways to go," he said.
She stared at him.
"You're insufferable," she said. "Next round, you're paying. And if men in suits start sniffing around here because of this, you're also buying me a new life."
"If it comes to that," he said, "I'll do better than a round."
"Don't make promises you can't keep," she said.
"I don't," he said.
For once, she almost believed him.
Outside, Holcomb went about its business, unaware that three people in a bar had just redrawn half a map none of them had ever asked to see.