Downstairs, Harry Lennox returned to the sitting room with the same polite chill he'd worn like a second skin throughout the conversation.
"Well," he said crisply, smoothing a hand down the front of his blazer, "I do hope she reaches out to you soon. The younger generation can be... enigmatic."
Gene's father stood slowly, jaw clenched. "We only want her safe. If you hear from her..."
"I'll pass along your concern," Harry cut in, voice gliding over the tension like oil on water.
"Though, I must say, she hasn't communicated with this household in quite some time. Your daughter was always rather... independent."
A beat.
"She is twenty-two, isn't she?" He smiled blandly.
Gene's mother flinched. "Barely."
Harry extended his hand with surgical precision, just long enough to be polite, not long enough to invite sincerity. They didn't take it.
As they exited, the butler returned silently to the doorway. Harry didn't look at him, didn't look at anything but the delicate steam curling from the untouched tea.
"Have the tapes wiped," he said quietly, more to the air than to anyone. "And if they come back, make sure someone else answers the door."
The fire crackled faintly in the hearth behind him, but the room felt more frigid than before.
Maisie was befuddled.
She remembered one assignment now, one she'd been eager to take, an extraction in District 7. It had sounded urgent, righteous. But Gene had talked her out of it with uncharacteristic sharpness: "It's not your kind of job, Maze. Trust me."
At the time, Maisie thought it was a concern. Now, she wasn't so sure. Maybe Gene hadn't wanted her to see something. Or become something.
And now? Maisie wasn't even certain who her friend had been working for.
Maisie's chest tightened as she thought about it. If Gene had been hiding so much, if she'd stepped away from the White Angels without telling anyone, what else was she keeping secret?
Maisie had trusted her, even looked up to her. But now, that trust felt fragile, like glass cracking underfoot. She didn't know if Gene was still the ally she thought she was, or if the lines between friend and enemy had already blurred.
She had tried to hold onto the pieces she had, the faintest memories of missions, the faces of those she once trusted. But the deeper truth of Gene's involvement, the full weight of her past, remained locked away, hidden beneath layers of lost time and forced forgetfulness.
Now, Maisie's trust was a fragile thing, given only to her brothers, the two people who, despite everything, felt like solid ground. Beyond them, the shadows of doubt stretched long, and she hesitated to reach out, afraid the walls she'd built might crumble.
In the silence of her room, Maisie wrestled with the gaps in her memory and the loneliness that came with them. The world outside moved fast, but inside, she felt trapped, waiting for the day when the truth, and perhaps someone trustworthy, might finally break through.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
At the hostel:
Gene remained hunched over her comm device, knuckles white against its sleek casing. The dim glow from its screen barely cut through the oppressive shadows of her hostel room, casting a sickly greenish light across her face.
The message, "SUBJECT EIGHT, WAKE", remained there, a ghost of a command that seemed to hang in the air long after the words had gone dark.
She contemplated ignoring it for a moment, letting it fade into the background like a bad dream, but ignoring messages from the White Angels was a luxury she'd forfeited years ago. Whatever it meant, whatever "wake" signified, it was a dramatic escalation. Igor was a piece on a board that was shifting under everyone's feet.
If someone were trying to activate him now, then time was running short.
Gene pressed her lips into a thin, hard line and turned back toward her small travel bag. From a hidden pocket, she retrieved a set of forged credentials, a sleek identification badge, and a stack of authorization documents that seemed just official enough to pass a casual checkpoint. She hadn't used this alias in years. She hoped it hadn't been burned.
Using backdoor contacts, the people who kept their heads down and their transactions off the grid, Gene secured a ride. A small delivery van with a driver who asked no questions and required only a handful of untraceable credits.
The route would take her toward the estate under cover of dark, slipping past the White Angels' perimeter without triggering suspicion.
As the vehicle's engine rumbled to life, Gene pressed her forehead against the chilly glass and forced herself to focus. There was no turning back now. Whatever lay at the estate, whatever had been set in motion, she had to warn Maisie.
Whatever the White Angels were planning, whatever danger Igor was in, her first move was clear: find Maisie, and hopefully, together, stay a step ahead of their enemies.