The cough changed in February.
Not louder. Deeper. The sound of something past the point where will alone manage it.
Sid had been building toward Sera for three months. She was the fourth solution — the first three hadn't been enough. He went to Bloc Six on a Tuesday morning with four pieces of intelligence he had been holding for exactly this.
Her building had no sign. You found Sera if you needed her and knew the right people. She had come from Zone Two eleven years ago after her husband's arrest and the clean removal of everything a Zone Two life consisted of. What the system hadn't taken was twelve years of watching him run an intelligence business and understanding, through pure attention, how it worked.
She had built the same thing in Bloc Six. Better, because she understood his mistakes.
The young woman who opened the door looked at Sid the way you look at something that doesn't fit any category.
"We don't take walk-ins."
"Four pieces. Blocs Six and Two. At least one actionable today." Sid kept his voice even. "I need Sera."
[4 pieces = 4 pieces of information.
In the intelligence world of the Ash, "a piece" just means one verified piece of information. Like:
"The RA patrol on the Bloc Six eastern lane is running 7 minutes late every Wednesday"
"The grain supplier in Bloc Two north market is switching his route next week"
"There's a new operator moving into Bloc Six's document trade"
"The Ironbacks in Bloc Five have a leadership dispute — two men, started three weeks ago"]
A pause. Then: "Wait."
He waited in the lane. He thought about Nina's cough. He thought about Danny — how Danny would have just knocked and explained and trusted people to respond to a true need. He couldn't do it that way. His version of need didn't translate without a structure around it. So, he built the structure.
Sera came to the door herself. Forty, precise in every movement, with eyes that finished their assessment of him in about two seconds and moved on.
"You're six," she said.
"Four pieces. Verifiable within twenty-four hours. I'd like to propose an arrangement."
She held the door open.
"Come in," she said.
She asked two questions after the four pieces. Both precise. Both told him her existing picture of Blocs Six and Two was already deep — he was adding detail, not filling emptiness. Good. Detail was worth more.
"If these verify," she said. "What do you want."
"Two pieces per week. In exchange for a medical credit with Yusuf in Bloc Seven. Monthly."
"Your mother."
"Yes."
"Why not coin."
"Because the credit is what I need. And because a six-year-old with coin is a question. A medical arrangement for a sick mother isn't."
She was quiet. He watched her decide.
"I'll run it through my account," she said. "Your name doesn't appear in it."
He hadn't asked for that. She was giving it because her operation ran clean or it didn't run.
"One wrong piece ends it," she said. "You tell no one."
"Agreed."
"Come back in two days."
He walked back through Bloc Six with the feeling of a door that had opened when he wasn't sure it would. He touched the stone. He thought: Nina doesn't know this is happening. When she finds out she'll feel something complicated about it. That's a later problem. The cough is now.
The verification came before sunset. One word through a channel he hadn't known she had, delivered quietly to Building Four's ground level.
Confirmed.
In the thin room upstairs, Nina came home from the evening shift and coughed into her sleeve and didn't know.
She would be better before she knew.
That was the point.