The call from Vera came at seven in the morning.
Not about the protocol. Not about Harlan or the remaining subjects or the five blank lines on Okafor's list. She called and said one sentence.
"Dana Tsui is in Philadelphia."
Then she said the address.
Then she hung up.
Rof stood in the kitchen with his coffee going cold in his hand and processed that for ten seconds. S1. Seattle. The one who had known what she was for four years and had been deliberately avoiding Rael's network. The one Okafor had described as careful. Deliberate. Someone who understood the shape of what was coming for her and had been moving to stay ahead of it.
She was in Philadelphia.
Nine days before the semi-final.
He called Okafor.
Okafor picked up on the first ring which meant he was already awake and already knew.
"I know," Okafor said before Rof could speak.
"Is it Rael," Rof said.
"I don't know yet." A pause. The sound of movement. A door. "She came in last night. Alone. She checked into a hotel on Broad Street under a name that is not her name but the credit card behind the name traces back to a shell company I recognize from two other subjects who were trying to stay off Rael's grid." Another pause. "She is not here because Rael brought her. She is here because she decided to come."
"Why."
"That," Okafor said, "is what I am going to find out."
He hung up.
Rof put the phone on the table.
He looked at his father's door. Still closed. His father had been sleeping later this past week. Not from worsening. From something closer to the opposite as if the body, given slightly better conditions, was finally allowing itself the rest it had been rationing for years.
Rof drank his cold coffee.
He thought about Dana Tsui. S1. The first subject. Sensory ability that was how Okafor had described it. He had not elaborated and Rof had not pushed it. But sensory at the level of a Nullpoint subject meant something specific. It meant something that interacted with the world at a frequency ordinary perception could not access.
He thought about the list of five blank lines.
He thought about Rael's threshold. Seven subjects. Confirmed four. Possibly five if Silas could be maneuvered into the final venue regardless of his willingness.
He thought about Dana Tsui checking into a hotel on Broad Street nine days before the semi-final of a tournament she had no documented connection to.
He called Vera back.
She picked up immediately. "I know what you're going to ask."
"Does she know about the tournament," Rof said.
"She knows about Rael," Vera said. "Whether she knows about the tournament specifically I cannot confirm yet." A pause. "But she chose Philadelphia. Not Pittsburgh. Not Baltimore. Philadelphia. Nine days before." Another pause, shorter. "She knows something."
"Can we reach her."
"Okafor is already moving." A pause. Then, differently the fraction-less-controlled register that appeared rarely and briefly. "Rof. If she came here on her own it means she made a decision. About the program. About what is coming." A pause. "People who have been running for four years and then stop running have usually decided something that cannot be undecided."
He held the phone.
He understood what she meant without her completing it.
"I'll be at the gym at six thirty," he said.
"I'll be there," she said.
She hung up.
He put the phone down.
His father's door opened.
The old man came out in his usual way, one hand trailing the wall, moving at the pace his body allowed. He saw Rof at the table. He looked at his face the way he always did.
He went to the counter and began making his coffee. His hands were steadier again this morning. Rof watched them without appearing to.
"You have that look," his father said, his back to him.
"What look," Rof said.
"The one where you're carrying something new on top of everything you were already carrying." His father turned with his cup. "You've had it since you were fourteen. You think your face is closed. It isn't."
Rof looked at the table.
"Someone new arrived," he said. "Connected to all of it. I don't know what it means yet."
His father sat. He wrapped both hands around his cup. "Good news or bad."
"Don't know yet."
His father nodded. He drank his coffee. He did not ask for more detail because he had raised a son who gave the full picture when it was ready and partial pictures when it was not and he had learned to trust the difference.
"Marcus called again last night," his father said.
Rof looked up.
"Gideon," his father said. "The car accident. Marcus says the doctors still can't explain it. The car was totaled. The boy walked away without a scratch." His father looked at his cup. "Not a scratch. Not a bruise. Nothing." He was quiet for a moment. "Marcus says Gideon hasn't talked much since. Just sits in his room. Praying."
Rof looked at his father.
He said nothing.
Some things arrived in a conversation and were not ready to be spoken about and everyone present knew it and honored it by moving on.
"Tell him I'm praying too," Rof said.
"I already did," his father said.
They sat together.
The morning moved.
Vera was at the gym before six thirty.
When Rof came down the stairs she was at the board she had brought from her apartment and set against the gym wall two days ago. Not the full board. A smaller version. Portable. The essential threads.
She had added Dana Tsui overnight.
S1, in her precise handwriting. A photograph beside the name a woman in her late twenties, East Asian, with a face that was watchful in the way certain faces were watchful. Not anxious. Attentive. The face of someone who had trained themselves to notice things most people missed.
Beside the photograph Vera had written one word.
Sensory.
And beside that, in smaller writing, a note Rof had to step close to read.
Full activation unknown. Program notes describe S1 as the most sensitive subject. E. Voss's personal file rates her as the variable most likely to exceed projected parameters.
Rof stepped back from the board.
"Exceed projected parameters," he said.
"Yes." Vera turned from the board. She was in the gray jacket. She had her coffee. She looked like she had slept three hours and considered it adequate. "The program was designed with upper limits for each ability. Maximum activation thresholds. E. Voss built in governors neurological caps that were supposed to prevent the abilities from developing beyond a certain point." She held his gaze. "In his personal notes he flagged S1 as the subject most likely to breach the governor." A pause. "He did not describe what breaching the governor would produce. The note ends there."
Manny came down the stairs.
He looked at the board. He looked at Vera. He looked at Rof.
"New variable," he said.
"S1," Rof said. "She's in the city."
Manny processed this with the stillness of a man who had learned that new information in the final stretch before a fight was either useful or noise and the only thing to do was determine which category it belonged to before letting it take up space.
"Does it change what we do this morning," Manny said.
Rof looked at the board.
At Dana Tsui's watchful face.
At the one word beside it.
"No," Rof said.
Manny nodded. He went and got the wooden stick. "Then let's work."
They worked for two hours.
Manny focused the entire session on the half second. The specific half second after Brynn Cole said the first thing. He had developed a method for training it over the past two days he would stop the session without warning and say something. Not loud. Quietly. The way Brynn would say it. Something targeted. Something that arrived in the space between movements when the guard was technically up but the mind had briefly left the building.
The first time he did it Rof flinched. Not physically. Something behind his eyes flinched.
Manny saw it. He tapped the wooden stick against his palm twice. Reset.
The second time Rof felt it coming and braced for it which was almost as bad as flinching because bracing was a form of anticipation and anticipation meant the mind was already in the future instead of here.
Manny tapped twice. Reset.
The third time.
Manny said a quiet thing in the middle of a combination and Rof let it pass through him the way wind passes through a structure that has decided not to resist it. He felt it arrive. He felt its shape. He did not grab it or push it away. He just continued the combination.
Manny said nothing.
He tapped the stick once against his palm.
Not reset. Something else. The single tap he used when something was right.
They continued.
By the end of the session Rof had managed the pass-through seven times out of eleven attempts. Four times the thing had found a gap. Not the same gap each time. Different ones. Which meant the work was not finished. Which meant the remaining nine days would be about finding those gaps and understanding them well enough that Brynn Cole could not slip through them.
Manny called a stop at nine fifteen.
Rof leaned against the ropes.
Vera was in her chair. She had been watching the entire session. She had the folder in her lap but she had not opened it.
"Okafor called," she said. "During the session. I didn't want to interrupt." She looked at Rof. "He made contact with Tsui."
Rof straightened.
"She agreed to meet," Vera said. "This afternoon. She asked that it be just two people. Not a group." She paused. "She asked specifically for you."
Manny looked at Rof.
Rof looked at Vera.
"She asked for me," Rof said.
"By name," Vera said. "She said S8. She knew your designation." A pause. "She said she had been following your fights. Not through Rael's network. Through her own channels." Another pause, the small kind. "She said she came to Philadelphia because of what happened in round three against Okon."
The gym was quiet.
The single bulb above flickered once.
"She felt it," Rof said.
"From Seattle," Vera said.
Nobody said anything for a moment.
Rof put his hand on the rope. The rough familiar texture of it.
"Set up the meeting," he said.