Chapter 437

“You moved faster than Jordan,” Nina said.

I drove.

The tree line was thickening on both sides. The facility was ahead of us – the third location, the one Vesper had confirmed, the one where the teleportation signature pointed and where Damon had been sighted and where Ivory had been taken with a damaged shoulder and a wolfsbane chain situation and two hours of whatever they were doing to her before we arrived.

“Ivory’s going to be furious,” I said. “When we get her back. She’s going to know I got the information from Vesper without her present. She’s going to want a full account.”

“She’s going to be furious about the arms,” Jordan said. “Specifically.”

“Both of them,” Nina said. “On separate occasions.”

“In one day,” Jordan said.

“It was efficient,” I said.

“You detached two arms from the same man in one day,” Jordan said. “The efficiency of that is arguable.”

“He had information,” I said. “The information was obtained.”

“He did,” Jordan said. “And you obtained it. I’m just-” he paused, “-noting the method for the

record.”

“The record is Nina’s notebook,” I said.

“Everything goes in Nina’s notebook,” Nina said, writing something.

“Are you writing this conversation,” I said.

“Parts of it,” she said. “The operationally relevant parts.”

“What’s operationally relevant about this conversation,” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I’m writing the personally relevant parts and calling them operationally relevant so you don’t object.”

“Nina-”

“Moving faster than Jordan is in the notebook,” she said. “So is the practical decision framing. And the working on it. And the mellowing.”

“I am not mellowing,” I said.

“You left the arms,” Elite said. “On separate occasions. The first time you left significant injury. The second time you left the arm on the floor for Jordan.”

“The arm situation was-”

“You were angrier the first time,” Elite said. “At the training wall. In the clinic after the footage. The anger was larger and the response was more restrained than it was tonight with Vesper, when the anger was-” she tilted her head slightly, the Elite version of considering something, “-not smaller, but more directed. More purposeful.”

“Purposeful is better than restrained,” I said.

“Both are better than what the curse years produced,” she said. “Which was neither. Which was just the wolf doing what the wolf did before anyone could intervene.”

I hadn’t heard Elite put it that plainly before. She wasn’t given to the kind of directness that Jordan brought to personal topics or the weight that Nina brought to them. Elite operated in the operational register and occasionally produced a sentence from it that landed in a completely different place.

“We’re not going to talk about the curse years in this car,” I said.

“We’re currently talking about everything in this car,” Jordan said. “It’s that kind of drive.”

“We have an hour and twenty minutes,” I said. “Can we do something useful with it.”

“We’ve been doing something useful,” Nina said. “You know we have.”

She wasn’t wrong. I knew she wasn’t wrong. The things they’d been saying the Jordan observation, the Elite analysis, the Nina precision of the wolf and the bond and the performance and the change – none of it was new information to me, technically. All of it had been available to me in the background for months.

Having it said out loud in a car with ninety minutes of road ahead was a different experience than having it exist as unexamined background material.

“Aria,” Jordan said, one more time. Quieter than the previous times.

“Jordan,” I said.

“I’m not asking you to resolve anything,” he said. “I know the situation is complicated. I know there’s no clean version. I know there are multiple things that are all true at the same time and some of them are in conflict with each other.” He paused. “I’m just saying. She’s in the east courtyard with the anchor open and the channel ready to receive Ivory. She’s been sitting there alone since we left. And she’s sitting there because you asked her to and she chose to honor what you asked.”

“I know,” I said.

“And she told you to go get Ivory,” he said. “She said it like she meant it. Not like it cost her. Just

go get her. Bring her back.”

—

“I know,” I said.

“That’s someone who understands what matters,” Jordan said. “In the full picture. Someone who can hold all of it at once and still tell you to go do what you need to do.”

I drove.

The road narrowed further and I slowed for the turning that would take us into the approach route toward the facility. The map on the dashboard shifted to show the last section of the

the part that required switching to foot at a specific point, the access details Vesper had provided matching the terrain on the map in ways that confirmed the accuracy of his information.

route

—

“The wolf moved faster too,” I said.

Nobody said anything.

“In the corridor,” I said. “When she screamed. The wolf – I felt it. The wolf was already moving before I was consciously deciding to move. Before the man.”

The car was very quiet.

“That’s new,” Nina said. Finally.

“Yes,” I said.

“The wolf moving toward Aria,” she said. “In a non-threat context. Toward rather than away.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Working on it,” Jordan said, and this time the two words had a completely different quality than when I’d been using them. Not deflection. Confirmation.

“Working on it,” I confirmed.