- - -
The rest of the first day was quieter, which was somehow worse.
Outis had expected another skull, or something with teeth. Instead the Manager, wherever and whoever he was, sent him back to O-03-03. And then back again. And again.
"Insight work this time!" Malkuth chirped from the speaker beside the heavy door. "That means cleaning. You keep its room nice and tidy. It likes a tidy room! I think. It's never said."
"It doesn't say anything, ma'am."
"Exactly! So it's never complained!"
He couldn't fault the logic.
The cleaning supplies were waiting in a narrow cupboard beside the containment door: a mop, a bucket, a spray bottle with a label that only said SOLUTION, and a stack of white cloths folded with military precision. He filled the bucket at a steel sink and went in.
The skull hung where he'd left it, silent, crowned in thorns. Outis nodded to it, because it felt rude not to.
"Back again," he said. "Don't mind me."
Then he did what he'd done a thousand times on a thousand shifts. He mopped the floor in long, even strokes, corner to corner. He wiped down the walls. He found a smudge near the base of the cross, the faint print of a hand that wasn't his, and scrubbed it until it was gone. He didn't think about whose hand it had been.
It was easy work. It was the easiest work he'd ever done, and that was the strange part.
By the third session, he should have been tired. He knew exactly what tired felt like: the ache that started in the lower back, the burn in the forearms, the way the mind went fuzzy around the fourth hour. He waited for it. It never came. His arms moved like they'd just woken up. When he lifted the full bucket, it felt like a bucket, not like a weight.
And something else. Every time he walked out of that white room, he felt a little steadier. Not happier. Steadier. Like a table someone had finally fixed the short leg on.
No ceilings, the System had said. No numbers over your head.
He decided not to think too hard about that either. Not yet.
. . .
Between works, there was waiting.
The Main Room had benches along the walls, and Outis sat on one with his elbows on his knees and watched the facility live its life around him.
The people in brown suits came and went. A woman carried a box of what looked like light bulbs. A man pushed a cart of files. Another man, older, gray at the temples, walked through the room twice in ten minutes, the same direction both times, as if he'd forgotten where he was going and decided to try again. None of them sat down. None of them looked at the monitors. None of them looked at him.
At one point a young woman in brown stopped right in front of his bench to tie her shoe. Her hands were shaking. Not a lot. Just enough that the lace slipped twice before she managed it.
"Hey," Outis said quietly. "You okay?"
She looked up at him. For one second, he thought she might answer. Her eyes were very tired and very young.
Then she stood, smoothed down her yellow tie, and walked away without a word.
He watched her go.
[ They're not supposed to talk to you. ]
"Who says?"
[ The company. Different jobs. Different rules. ]
"That's a lousy rule."
[ Most of the rules here are. ]
He looked at the window for a moment. "That almost sounded like an opinion."
[ ...I'm allowed a few. :| ]
- - -
The day ended the way it began: with a voice from the ceiling that wasn't talking to him.
"Manager, the energy quota for today has been met. You may conclude operations whenever you are ready." A brief pause. "Well done. That is a very good start."
It didn't sound like praise. It sounded like a report being read aloud by someone who had read a great many reports.
Then the monitors flashed, and Malkuth was back, practically bouncing in her yellow frame.
"We did it! Day one, complete! Employee 001, you were wonderful. The Manager thinks so too, probably. I'm putting it on my list." The pen scratched. "There. Forever."
"Thank you, ma'am."
"You can go rest now! Your room's in the employee quarters. Down the east hall, take the elevator one floor down, and follow the signs. It's the one with your number on it." She paused. "It's not very big. But it's yours!"
"Mine," Outis repeated.
"Yours," Malkuth said firmly, as if daring the word to argue. "Good night, Employee 001! See you tomorrow!"
The monitors went back to the green image of the silhouette in the elevator. Outis sat there a moment longer, alone in the big, humming room.
It's not very big. But it's yours.
He'd heard that before. A social worker, the day he aged out. A landlord, the first time he signed a lease. It had never once meant welcome. It had always meant don't expect more.
He stood up and went to find it anyway.
. . .
The employee quarters were exactly what he'd expected, and that was the problem.
A long corridor, lower and narrower than the ones above, lit by the same humming tubes. Doors on both sides, close together, each one heavy and gray with a small window of wired glass at head height and a black plate bolted beside it with white numbers. 014. 015. 016. Most of the windows were dark. Behind one, a light was on, and he caught a glimpse of a man in a brown suit sitting on the edge of his bed with his face in his hands. Outis looked away before the man could look up.
001 was at the very end, as if the building had wanted to put him somewhere he couldn't be missed, or somewhere he couldn't be found. He wasn't sure which.
The door opened without a key. That bothered him more than a lock would have.
Inside, the room was maybe three meters by four. The walls were tiled in white up to his shoulders and painted gray above that, the kind of tile you saw in hospitals and old public bathrooms, easy to hose down. In the middle of the floor was a small round drain. He looked at it for a long moment and then decided not to look at it again.
A metal bed frame was bolted to the wall, with a thin mattress sealed in plastic that crinkled when he pressed on it. A folded gray blanket. A pillow that was mostly an idea. A steel sink in the corner with a single tap, cold only. A narrow shelf above it.
In the opposite corner of the ceiling, a small black dome. Behind its glass, a tiny red light glowed and didn't blink.
Control, Outis remembered. We monitor employees. Malkuth's team watched everyone. Which meant, he supposed, that Malkuth's team watched him.
He gave the dome a small, polite nod, the way he'd nodded to the skull.
On the inside of the door, at eye level, was a laminated sheet held up with four screws.
EMPLOYEE QUARTERS: RULES1. Lights out at the end of operations.2. Do not leave your quarters before the start of operations.3. Do not discuss Abnormalities outside of work.4. Report any unusual thoughts, dreams or voices to your department head.5. Take your daily supplement.
Outis read the list twice. Then he turned and looked at the shelf above the sink.
There was a small paper cup sitting on it, the kind they used for ketchup at fast food places. Inside the cup was a single white pill.
He picked it up and turned it over in his fingers. No markings. No label. Just white, and small, and very ordinary looking.
"Hey," he said quietly. "What's this?"
The window took a moment.
[ Something to make the job easier to bear. ]
"Easier how?"
[ Everything here feels a little further away, after you take it. The bad things, especially. ]
He looked at the pill for a long time. Then he thought about the woman with the shaking hands. The man who walked the same way through the Main Room twice. The man behind the window down the hall, with his face in his hands.
"Do I need it?"
[ No. Your body doesn't need anything here. Not food, not water, not that. ]
[ And I don't think you'd want things to feel further away. ]
"No," Outis said. "I wouldn't."
He set the pill back in its cup and put the cup back on the shelf, exactly where he'd found it, so that anyone checking would think nothing had changed. He wasn't sure why he did that. Old habit. Leave things the way people expect to find them.
Then he sat down on the edge of the bed. The plastic crinkled. The tiny red light watched.
"So," he said. "Do I sleep?"
[ You can, if you want to. Your body will rest here either way. ]
[ But you don't have to stay here. ]
"Meaning?"
[ Close your eyes. I'll show you. :) ]
He lay back on the crinkling mattress, folded his hands on his chest because there was nowhere else to put them, and closed his eyes.
The hum of the tubes faded.
So did the plastic. So did the cold.
- - -
The white was warm.
Outis opened his eyes, or the thing he used for eyes here, and found himself standing in the System's space again: the soft glow underfoot, no walls, no ceiling, no horizon. It was exactly as he remembered, and it was the most comfortable he'd felt all day.
He looked down. He was still in the black suit and the red armband. He checked his hand. No calluses. The same.
"Huh," he said. "So my body's back there."
[ Your body's back there, resting. Your mind's here. ]
[ Think of it like... going home after a shift. Except home is a big empty room and also me. ]
"That's the saddest description of home I've ever heard."
[ ;-; ]
"I meant that nicely."
[ I know. :) ]
He sat down on the glowing floor and stretched out his legs, and for a while neither of them said anything. It was a good silence. It reminded him of the skull's silence, except this one was on his side.
"Can I ask you about today?" he said eventually.
[ Of course. ]
"The company makes energy. From... those things. The Abnormalities." He'd heard the word from Malkuth during the cleaning, as casually as anyone else would say equipment. "And the people who work with them have to take pills so they don't fall apart. And if someone says they can't handle it, they..." He stopped. "They resign."
The window didn't answer right away.
"I'm not stupid," Outis said. "I know what that means."
[ I know you're not. ]
"So is that what this is? Fifty days of watching people resign?"
The window dimmed, the way it did when the System was choosing its words.
[ This place is cruel. I'm not going to pretend it isn't. Most of the people who work there don't make it very far. ]
[ But this mission isn't about them. Not exactly. It's about you, and what you can learn here, and what you become by the end. ]
"That's not an answer."
[ No. It's the honest version. ]
He leaned back on his hands and looked up at the place where a ceiling would be.
"The voice that talks to the Manager," he said. "Angela. And the Manager. You know who they are."
[ I know a little. ]
"Are they the bad guys?"
The window hesitated for so long that he thought it might not answer.
[ I think you'll have to decide that for yourself. ]
[ I can tell you one thing, though. ]
[ The Manager in this building is not careless with the people in it. Whatever else is true, remember that. ]
Outis frowned. "What does that mean?"
[ You'll see. :? ]
"You keep saying that."
[ I keep meaning it. ]
He let it go. He was getting good at letting the System's doors stay closed, and he was beginning to suspect it knew that, and was grateful.
"Okay," he said instead. "Different question. Today I worked all day and didn't get tired. Not even a little. And every time I came out of that room, I felt... better. Steadier. Is that you?"
[ That's you. ]
[ Remember what I said about no ceilings? Most people here can only grow so far before they hit a wall. You won't. Every day you work, you'll come back a little stronger than you left. In body, and in here. ]
A tiny line of text appeared under it, and he realized it was pointing at his chest.
"In here," he repeated.
[ The things in that building don't only hurt bodies. They hurt minds. The people with the shaking hands, the ones who walk in circles... that's what it looks like when the mind is hurt and can't heal. ]
[ Yours will heal. Every time. That doesn't mean it won't hurt. ]
Outis was quiet for a while.
"That girl in the Main Room today," he said finally. "The one who was tying her shoe. Her hands were shaking."
[ I saw. ]
"She's going to resign, isn't she. One day."
The System didn't answer. That was its own kind of answer.
He looked down at his own hands: steady, soft, an eighteen-year-old's hands with twenty-two years behind them.
"I don't like this place," he said.
[ I know. ]
"I'm still going to do it."
[ I know that too. ]
[ That's why I picked you. :) ]
- - -
He woke up in his body to the sound of a buzzer, flat and loud, like the one in every warehouse he'd ever worked in.
For one second he didn't know where he was. Then the crinkle of plastic, the cold air, the hum, and the small red light in the corner of the ceiling, still watching, still not blinking. All of it came back.
He sat up. The pill was still in its paper cup on the shelf. The blanket was still folded, because he'd never unfolded it. He felt rested in a way he didn't have words for, like a phone that had been charging all night.
[ Good morning! Day 2. :D ]
"Morning," Outis said, and rubbed his face.
Out in the corridor, doors were opening. People in brown suits stepped out of their rooms and walked toward the elevator in a silent, single-file line, looking straight ahead. The door with the light on last night was open now. The room behind it was empty. The bed was stripped down to the bare plastic.
Almost bare. Lying across the middle of the mattress, as if someone had dropped it on their way out and nobody had bothered to pick it up, was a yellow tie.
Outis stopped in front of that door for a second.
He looked at the tie. Then at the line of people shuffling past him, at their brown suits and their yellow ties. Then down at his own sleeve, at the red band with the white M stitched into it.
None of them wore one. Not a single person in that line had an armband. No color. No letter. Nothing that said which team they belonged to, or whose list they were on.
Brown suit, yellow tie, no armband, he thought. That's how you tell.
He wasn't sure yet what the difference meant. But he had a feeling it was the kind of difference that decided who got a stripped bed and who didn't.
Then he kept walking, because the line was moving, and because he didn't know what he would have said even if there had been anyone to say it to.
. . .
The Main Room looked exactly the same as yesterday, which was its own kind of comfort.
Outis took his spot on the bench and waited. The monitors showed the green silhouette. The clerks drifted past. He counted the seconds, out of curiosity.
At two minutes past the start of operations, every screen flashed yellow.
"Good morning! I'm a little late! Two minutes. But two is very close to one, and one is practically on time, so really, this is fine!" Malkuth clutched her clipboard to her chest, beaming. "Good morning, Employee 001!"
"Good morning, ma'am."
"Today is very exciting!" She flipped a page. "The Manager has hired a new employee for our team! That means Control Team is now... two people! Double! We've doubled!"
Outis sat up a little straighter.
"They should be arriving any second now. I hope they're not late," Malkuth added, with no apparent irony at all. "Oh! And there's a new Abnormality coming to our floor today. So this is a very big day. Two new things! I'm writing it all down."
Down the hall, the elevator dinged.
Footsteps came toward the Main Room, quick and uneven, like someone trying to walk at a normal pace and failing. Then the person they belonged to came around the corner and stopped dead in the doorway.
He was young, maybe a year or two older than Outis's new body, and a little shorter, with a mop of dark, curly hair that looked like it had lost a fight with a comb and given up. He wore the same black suit as Outis, the same black tie, knotted slightly crooked, and the same red armband with the white M. He had a round, open face that looked like it was used to smiling, though right now it was mostly busy being terrified. His hands were fidgeting with the hem of his jacket.
He looked at the huge Sephirot mural. He looked at the monitors with the green silhouette. He looked at the clerks drifting through the room. His eyes got wider with each one.
Then he looked at Outis.
And he smiled. It was shaky and lopsided, but it was a real smile, the kind that showed up before its owner had decided whether it was a good idea.
"Hi!" he said. Too loud. He winced, then tried again, quieter. "Hi. Sorry. Hello. Are you, um, Control Team? You've got the..." He pointed at his own armband, then at Outis's. "The M. Same M. Are we the same M?"
"We're the same M," Outis said.
"Oh, thank god." The young man let out a breath and crossed the room, and then, before Outis could do anything about it, stuck out his hand. "I'm Polites. I'm new. Super new. Like, today new. They said there was already someone on the team, and I was really hoping you'd be nice, because the guy in the elevator didn't say a single word to me and I said good morning to him twice."
Outis looked at the hand. Nobody had held a hand out to him like that in a very long time. Not to shake on a deal, not to sign something. Just to say hello.
He took it. Polites's grip was warm and a little sweaty and very, very earnest.
"Employee 002!" Malkuth said happily from the screens. "Welcome to the Control Team! I'm Malkuth, your department head. Congratulations on joining Lobotomy Corporation!"
Polites jumped about a foot. Then he turned toward the monitors and, after a second of visible panic, gave the screens a little bow.
"Hello! Good morning, ma'am! Thank you for having me!"
Malkuth's face lit up so brightly that the yellow frame practically sparkled.
"Ma'am! Another one! Oh, this is the best team. I knew it."
Polites shot Outis a confused, sideways look. Outis gave him a very small shrug that meant just go with it.
"Um," Polites whispered, leaning in. "Is she... a person?"
"No idea," Outis whispered back. "She's nice, though."
"Okay. Okay, nice is good." Polites nodded several times, the way people do when they're trying to convince themselves. "I'm nervous. Sorry. I talk a lot when I'm nervous. And when I'm not nervous. Basically I just talk a lot." He took another breath. "What's your name?"
Outis opened his mouth, and for a second, nothing came out.
It was such a simple question. People asked it all the time. People had asked it at work, at school, at the bank. But they'd asked it the way you check a box. They'd asked so they could write it down, and then they'd forgotten it the moment the paper left their hands. Nobody had ever asked it like this, with their whole face, like the answer was the most important thing they were going to hear all day.
"Outis," he said.
"Outis," Polites repeated carefully, like he was setting it down somewhere safe. "Outis. Okay. Cool. That's a cool name. I'm not going to forget that."
Outis didn't know what to say to that. So he didn't say anything. He just nodded.
In the corner of his vision, very small, a window opened and closed again before he could read it. He had a feeling it had only said [ :) ].
"Wonderful, wonderful!" Malkuth was saying. "Employee 001, you're the senior employee now! That means you show Employee 002 how things work. Isn't that exciting? You're a teacher!"
"I've been here one day," Outis said.
"Exactly! One whole day more than him!"
Polites laughed. It came out a little cracked around the edges, but it was a real laugh, and it made the big gray room feel very slightly less big.
"So," he said, turning to Outis. "Senior employee. Teacher. What's the first thing I need to know?"
Outis thought about it. About the skull and the confession. About the people in brown who never looked up. About the pill in the paper cup, and the empty room down the hall with its bed stripped bare.
About resign.
"Stick close to me," he said finally. "And if anything here ever asks you to come closer..."
He stopped. He didn't know how to finish the sentence. He didn't know enough yet to finish it.
"...ask me first," he said instead.
Polites nodded seriously, like it was the most reasonable instruction in the world.
"Got it," he said. "Stick close. Ask first." Then he grinned, nervous and lopsided and bright. "You know, I've got a good feeling about this. I always say hello first. Usually, if you're nice to something, it's nice back."
Outis looked at him: at the crooked tie, the curly hair, the open, hopeful face.
Usually, he thought.
. . .
The new Abnormality arrived an hour later, and nobody saw it come in.
One moment the containment unit next to O-03-03 was a dark, empty room with a blank sign beside its door. The next, the window in that door was glowing a soft, watery blue, and the sign read, in the same neat, clinical letters:
F-04-83
"It's here, it's here!" Malkuth's voice crackled from the speaker, giddy. "Our second Abnormality! Oh, and it's another one of the lowest risk level, so that's very good for a new employee. The Manager's ordered Instinct work for Employee 002!"
Polites went pale. "That's me. I'm 002. Right? I'm 002."
"You're 002," Outis said.
"What's Instinct work?"
"Feeding!" Malkuth said brightly. "You just give it what it needs! There's a tray of food by the door. Easy!"
"Feeding," Polites repeated faintly. "Feeding is fine. I fed my neighbor's cat once. For a week. It only bit me twice."
Outis walked him to the door. That was as far as he was allowed to go; the work order had one name on it, and it wasn't his. Beside the door was a cart with a covered steel tray. Polites picked it up with both hands, the way you'd hold something that might go off.
"Hey," Outis said. "Remember what I told you."
"Stick close. Ask first." Polites swallowed. "I can't really stick close if you're out here, though."
"Then just be honest with it," Outis said. "And if anything feels wrong, come out. Don't finish. Just come out."
Polites nodded. Then he took a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and pushed the door open with his back.
"Hi!" Outis heard him say as the door swung shut. "Good morning! I brought breakfast!"
Outis stepped up to the small window in the door and looked through.
The room beyond was washed in soft blue light, and it was full of flowers: real ones, or something that looked like them, pale petals and drooping stems that hadn't been there an hour ago, growing out of the seams in the tile. In the middle of it all, hovering a little above the floor on two pairs of thin, insect-like wings, was a creature about the size of a child.
Its skin was a smooth, glassy aquamarine. It had pointed ears and a small, round, contented face, and a stomach so bloated it looked almost comical, like it had already eaten a great deal and was hoping for more. It had more arms than it should have: two pairs, folded neatly over that round belly, and long, trailing strands that might have been hair or might have been another set of something. A slim tail curled beneath it like a question mark.
It looked at Polites. Polites looked at it.
Then Polites smiled, set the tray down on the floor and lifted the cover, and the creature drifted down toward the food with a sound like a wind chime being stirred.
Outis watched the whole thing through the window with his arms crossed, ready to pull the door open. He didn't need to. Polites talked the entire time, Outis could see his mouth going, and the creature ate, and its wings shivered happily, and when the tray was empty it lifted one of its many hands and, very gently, patted Polites on the head.
Polites came out grinning so wide it looked painful.
"It patted me," he said. "Did you see that? It patted my head. It likes me!"
And then Outis noticed they weren't alone.
Around Polites's shoulders, and in his curly hair, and clinging to the crooked knot of his tie, were tiny things. Dozens of them. Each one was no bigger than a thumb, aquamarine and round-bellied and four-armed and winged, small copies of the creature in the room. They drifted and settled and nestled against him like bees on a flower, and wherever they touched, a faint green glow spread across his skin.
Polites looked down at them in wonder. "Oh," he breathed. "Oh, they're tiny. Outis, look, there's babies."
He held up a hand. One of the little fairies landed on his fingertip and curled up there like a cat in the sun.
The scrape on his knuckle, the one he must have picked up somewhere on his way in, faded and closed while Outis watched.
"They're healing me," Polites whispered. "That's so nice. That's the nicest thing that's ever happened to me at a job."
"Work result: good!" Malkuth sang from the speaker. "Wonderful, Employee 002! The Manager's very pleased. Oh! And since it went so well, the Manager's sending you right to the next one. Attachment work on O-03-03! Go say hello!"
Polites lit up. "The skull one? You did that one yesterday, right? You said it listens." He was already turning toward the heavy door down the hall, the little fairies bobbing along with him like a cloud of green sparks. "I'm going to tell it about the cat."
Outis watched him take one step. Then two.
Something was wrong.
He couldn't have said what, not right away. It was the same instinct that had made him notice the janitor's cart catching on the threshold on graduation day. The same one that had made him look twice at a truck with its headlights where they shouldn't be. Something in the shape of things had shifted.
He looked at the fairies.
They had stopped drifting. Every single one of them, all at once, had gone still against Polites's suit. And every one of them had turned its tiny, round face toward the door marked O-03-03.
And they were smiling.
Not the soft, contented smile of the creature in the blue room. These smiles were wider. Much too wide for faces that small. And in each one, so small he almost didn't see it, was a row of very fine, very white teeth.
[ Outis. ]
He was already moving.
He caught Polites by the arm two steps from the door. Polites stumbled and turned, startled, and the cloud of fairies lifted off his shoulders in a hissing, glittering swarm.
"Hey, what..."
"Don't," Outis said. His voice came out lower than he'd meant it to, low and level and certain, the voice he'd only ever heard from himself in his own head. "Don't go in there. Not yet."
Polites blinked at him. "But the Manager said..."
"I know what he said." Outis didn't let go of his arm. He kept his eyes on the swarm. The fairies hung in the air between Polites and the door, thin wings humming, tiny smiles still stretched too wide. Waiting. "Look at them. Look at their faces."
Polites looked.
Outis felt it the moment he understood. The arm under his hand went rigid, and then started, very slightly, to shake.
"Oh," Polites said, in a very small voice.
Nobody moved. The hum of the tubes and the hum of the wings blended into one sound.
[ They heal whoever they cling to. But they don't like to share. ]
[ If he goes to work on anything else before they leave him... they'll eat him. ]
"How long?" Outis said, very quietly.
[ Not long. Wait with him. Don't let him go through any door. ]
So they waited.
Outis stood in the hallway with his hand on Polites's arm, and Polites stood perfectly still, and neither of them said anything. Not even Polites, who had told Outis not an hour ago that he talked when he was nervous. The fairies circled. One of them drifted close to Polites's ear and hovered there, and Polites shut his eyes and held his breath.
Five seconds. Six. Seven.
On the eighth, the swarm's smiles softened, all at once, like a held note finally released. The tiny teeth disappeared. The fairies drifted back toward the blue door in a loose, glittering cloud, slipped through the gap underneath it like smoke, and were gone.
Polites let out a breath so long it sounded like it had been in there his whole life. His legs gave out a little. Outis caught him and lowered him onto the floor against the wall and crouched beside him.
"You're okay," Outis said. "You're okay. They're gone."
"They were going to eat me," Polites said. His voice had gone high and thin. "They were nice to me and they were going to eat me."
"I know."
"I said hello."
"I know you did."
Polites put his face in his hands. Outis sat down next to him on the cold floor, shoulder to shoulder, and didn't say anything else, because there wasn't anything to say that would make it better. He'd learned that a long time ago. Sometimes you just stayed.
After a minute he looked up at the speaker on the wall.
"Ma'am," he said. "The fairies. If someone goes to work on another Abnormality while they're still around him, they attack. We need to wait until they leave before he does anything else. Can you tell the Manager?"
There was a short pause from the speaker.
"Oh," said Malkuth. Then, quieter: "Oh. I didn't... We didn't know that yet. It's a new one, so we haven't observed it very much." The pen scratched. It scratched for a long time. "I'm writing it down. I'm telling the Manager right now. Thank you, Employee 001. That's... that's very good work."
Then, after a moment, in a voice that wasn't quite as bright:
"Employee 002? Are you all right?"
Polites lifted his head. His eyes were red. He wiped his face with his sleeve, took a shaky breath, and then, unbelievably, smiled. It was the smallest, wettest, most crooked smile Outis had ever seen.
"Yes, ma'am," he said. "I'm okay. Outis caught me."
The speaker was quiet for a second.
"Good," Malkuth said softly. "Good. That's what a team is for."
The speaker clicked off.
Polites leaned his head back against the wall and laughed, one short, shaky, disbelieving huff.
"Ask first," he said. "You said ask first. Like, an hour ago. How did you know?"
"I didn't," Outis said honestly. "I just... looked."
"Well." Polites turned his head and looked at him, and there was something new in his face now under the fear. Something steadier. "I'm going to keep asking you first. Forever. You're not getting rid of me."
Outis didn't answer. He looked down the hall at the blue window of F-04-83, glowing softly, peacefully, as if nothing had happened at all. Then at the heavy door of O-03-03.
From where he sat, he could just see through its small window. The skull hung where it always hung, pale and crowned in thorns, its empty sockets turned toward the door. Toward the hallway. Toward the two of them sitting on the floor.
It didn't have eyes. It couldn't have been looking at anything. Outis knew that.
But he felt it anyway: the same thing he'd felt in that white room yesterday, when he'd told it about the woman with the clipboard. A quiet, gentle weight, like a hand resting on the back of a chair you're sitting in. Not watching the way the red light in his room watched. Watching the way someone sits up with you at night, just so you don't have to be awake alone.
It listens, Malkuth had said.
Maybe, Outis thought, it had been listening the whole time.
Then he looked at the young man sitting next to him on the floor, with his crooked tie and his red eyes and his stubborn, lopsided smile, who had known Outis for barely an hour and had already decided to trust him with his life.
And for the first time since he'd arrived in this place, Outis felt something that wasn't fear, or steadiness, or the cool draft of a confession. It was smaller than all of those, and it was much heavier.
It was the feeling of having something to lose.