The duck breast took eleven minutes to cook.
Not because it was difficult. In the Level 2 kitchen, it was understood that cooking duck breast over medium heat was a dialogue between the fat and time, and that this dialogue should unfold at its own pace rather than be rushed by the cook's impatience. Maxwell scored the skin, something he hadn't been able to do at midnight on Saturday and now couldn't imagine not doing, placed it skin-side down in a cold pan first, cold, then hot, which was the exact opposite of everything he'd been told was the only way to cook fat properly, and watched it.
He watched it the way he watched everything now: not directly, but anticipating, trying to understand what it would do before doing anything. The fat mark on the edge, the change in the skin's color, the perfect moment when the breast would release cleanly from the pan without breaking.
She came out alone, in the ninth minute, because she had waited. She served it with a cherry reduction she had made from scratch, the acidity balanced with brown sugar, the thyme added at the end rather than the beginning because Level 2 understood that herbs cooked too long create another flavor, and ate it on the counter at 6:41 a.m., as the color of the lake shifted from black to gray and then almost silver in the morning light.
It was a truly wonderful breakfast.
She ate slowly and thought that twenty-one days earlier she had been making scrambled eggs and saying they were the best she had ever had. Level 1 seemed so far away since then.
The run along the lake started at eight.
Level 2's situational awareness changed the course in a way that Level 1 hadn't not drastically, not in a visually different way, but the density of information was different. Level 1 was a clearer version of what he always did: observe things, list them, evaluate them. Level 2 was predictive in a way he hadn't quite grasped yet. He knew the road ahead, but he didn't know what it was. The cyclist was coming off the northbound turn so fast he'd reach the narrow section in eleven seconds. The woman with the dog, whose leash was about to veer left, pulled it to the right. The gap between the trees where the wind was going to pick up and he'd have to adjust his pace.
None of this required thinking. It just happened, like the temperature, as if something was already in the air.
He was at mile four when the car appeared nearby.
Parked on Canon Drive, engine idling, front end tilted toward the road. Navy blue. He couldn't see the full license plate from that angle, but the first three letters were visible against the white Illinois background in the rearview mirror of the SUV parked eight feet to his right.
ZRX.
He accelerated. His speed didn't change. His heart rate didn't change. Instead of taking the park route, he returned to Lake Shore Drive via the underpass, which took him two more minutes, and a building came between him and the view of Canon Drive before he emerged back onto open ground.
He went upstairs. He showered. He made himself a coffee.
He called Victor at 10:14.
Victor answered on the second ring, which meant he was already reading something at the kitchen table. "Dragowski."
"I need to tell you something informally." He also made a note: this was a conversation, not an incident report. "I've seen a vehicle in my area several times. A dark sedan, Illinois license plate, with the initials ZRX written on it. Driving around. Not doing anything. Just there."
A pause. Not the pause of someone surprised. The pause of someone filing a report. "How many times?"
"Three confirmed sightings. On Dearborn Street on Tuesday the 13th. On Franklin near Adams on the 20th. On Canon Drive this morning."
"Are you asking me what I think it is, or are you asking me to check something out?" "I'm asking you to check if you can do that informally."
Another pause. Brief. "Give me the partial data again."
"Z-R-X. Dark sedan, four doors, recent model. Illinois license plate."
Silence for about four seconds. In the background, they were placing the FT on a table. "I have to make a call," Victor said. "I'm on my way."
The line went silent.
Maxwell hung up. He looked out at the lake. He poured himself more coffee.
Victor Okafor didn't just say he had to call. Victor Okafor said things with just the right amount of force, and nothing more. That was special about him. It meant that the name ZRX had appeared somewhere and had a voice of its own.
Maxwell opened his laptop and spent two hours with the Reinhardt Expansion Secondary Analysis, a job no one had yet asked him to do, sixty days before its need was even mentioned in Hartwell. He saved it to an encrypted storage system. He added a timestamp to the log.
He ate lunch. He called his father. Robert gave his name, asked two questions about his BMW's oil change interval, got the answers, said "okay," and hung up after four minutes.
Maxwell sat for a while.
Fiona was right. He'd been too silent. The question he couldn't completely ignore was whether this silence was the right kind or one with a weight limit he hadn't yet discovered.
He would postpone it until sixty days later.
The system beeped at 3:44.
[Hidden Reward Unlocked]
[Condition: First Practical Application: Level 2 Situational Awareness Module]
[Hostile Surveillance Identified. Counter-route Executed. Zero Detections.]
[Response: Calibrated. Contents.] Correct.] [Reward: 900 shares: Raytheon Company (NYSE: RTN)]
[Price, March 25, 2012: $47.62/share]
[Total Value: $42,858]
[Taxes: Managed. Host's Liability: $0.00]
[Deposit: Fidelity Account -4471]
He read the panel. Filed it. Returned to the window.
The lake was putting on a special show that afternoon: the light, from that angle in late March, tinted its surface a distinctive color, without a defined name. Not blue. Not gray. Something in between, like the difference between making a decision and saying it out loud.
He stayed by the window until the color changed. Then he made dinner and went to bed early because tomorrow was Monday, and on Monday he needed everything to be just as it was now.