At sunset, I watched the harbor from outside my quarters. Somewhere beyond the buildings, ordinary work continued under a schedule that had finally been forced to admit what it did not know.
I wanted sleep, answers, and a day without the sound of the microphone in my head. For the moment, I chose to call Elise back and tell her she could come after all.
Price and I met again two mornings later in a room where the windows could open. He brought coffee without knowing whether I still drank it, a small uncertainty that made the years between us feel real.
“I remember terrible coffee,” he said.
“That doesn’t narrow it down.”
We smiled, then stopped because the reason for the visit remained between the cups. Dorsey knew we had a prior professional connection and had already asked each of us to describe it through the appropriate protected route.
We would not compare accounts of the parade ground. We could speak about whether I needed transport to my appointment and whether he had any information concerning the assignment that should go through official channels.
Price wanted to apologize for waiting. I let him finish rather than rescuing him from the discomfort.
“I saw the first strike,” he said. “I should have moved then.”
“Yes.”
He looked down. “I thought a clear instruction would stop him.”
“It might have. It didn’t.”
We sat quietly. There was no useful version of the conversation in which I told him delay did not matter simply because he helped afterward.
But there was another truth too. “You stopped people rushing at the wrong moment. You preserved the recording. Those things mattered.”
He nodded without treating the words as absolution. I respected that more than I expected.
Eight years earlier, we had been part of a recovery operation called Lantern Reach. The name itself was now authorized for limited internal reference, although locations, identities, and methods remained protected.
Price had seen people arrive who were not expected to arrive alive. He remembered me as the officer who kept revising a support plan while others argued over whether the last group could still be reached.
The public biography described that period as coordination. It was not false, only incomplete in a way Rusk assumed could mean nothing but comfort.
I remembered different things: a medic counting blankets, a translator refusing to leave without a colleague, and Price asking for water because he could not stop shaking once the work was done.
I did not remember myself as a weapon somebody should fear. I remembered making decisions with incomplete information and living afterward with the people those decisions could not save.
“You knew I wouldn’t approve a route on hope,” I said.
“I did.”
“Then make sure your statement explains the route facts you personally know. Not what you think my history proves.”
He agreed. The old connection could explain recognition, but it could not make us the only people entitled to define the present.
Price asked whether I wanted him to stop mentioning our past connection entirely. I said the relevant fact should be disclosed honestly through the proper process; hiding it could create a different kind of distortion.
What I opposed was using it to explain away questions about the present. He nodded, then asked for the correct contact to verify the limited history.
It was an awkward conversation between people who once trusted each other under far worse conditions, but trust now meant accepting review rather than treating shared experience as a private authority no one else could question.
Elise arrived that afternoon with groceries and an expression she was trying to keep practical. She hugged me carefully, then complained about the quarters’ lighting because it was easier than commenting on my lip.
She taught mathematics at a community college. Her world contained impossible deadlines, frightened students, and administrators who believed a problem became smaller when written more politely.
“Your office sounds familiar,” she said when I described the assessment dispute in general terms.
I laughed until the split skin pulled. She apologized for making me laugh, then looked offended when I thanked her for it.
We ate at the little table. I explained what I could share and said clearly when I could not discuss something.
Elise accepted the boundary. She had spent years loving a sister whose work arrived home in fragments, and she understood that not knowing details did not mean she was untrusted.
“Are you worried he’ll get away with it?” she asked.