Jennifer Luo was composed.
Her face said so. Her posture said so. Both hands flat on the table, spine straight, chin level — the whole architecture of her body presenting the version of herself she had spent twenty years building and never fully stopped wearing, even in a bakery, even at 6 AM, even when a naked man had recently fallen through her ceiling and was currently standing close enough that she could feel the warmth radiating off his skin.
'Composed.'
Inside, she was absolutely not composed.
'A man fell through my ceiling.'
The thought kept arriving in that exact phrasing, as if repetition would eventually make it make sense.
'From the sky. Through concrete. Onto tile. And stood up.'
She had done nineteen years in Division Six. She had seen men take bullets and keep moving. She had seen a target in Bucharest absorb a fall from a fourth-floor window and walk seventeen meters before his legs gave out.
That man had died.
This man had ruffled his hair.
