The silhouette stayed close to the frosted glass after Caleb's answer.
He leaned forward in the leather chair and rested his forearms on his knees. Dinner sat heavily in him. His shoulder had stopped shaking, but the cold room was making it ache again.
"I'm not good at this conversation," he said. "I scrubbed gutters for five years to keep my family fed. I don't know your corporate games."
A finger tapped the other side of the partition.
"You dropped a capsule worth millions on a disposal worker. You paid the hospital. You feed me restricted stimulants. Then you hack the grid and humiliate a recruit who's under orders to watch me."
The tapping continued.
"There are a hundred people out there with better armor and higher sync. You could sponsor any of them. Instead you shut my feed and push me into things that nearly kill me. What do you want?"
He waited for an answer. The room's cooling unit clicked overhead.
"Are you trying to keep me alive, or waiting for me to slip? Is this a conversation, or another show?"
The finger stopped.
A magnetic lock disengaged. The frosted partition slid aside, and the woman came through the opening. He heard her heels on the tiles before she reached the chair.
"A show," she said.
He could see a dark dress below her shoulders, but the red lighting left her face indistinct. She stood close enough to block his view of the open partition.
"The Defense Force wants a runner they can regulate. Those children want medals. I know what's inside your ribs. I watched your heart stop in the containment bay. I want to see the monster grow."
"That's not an answer."
She caught his lapels, pulled him to his feet, and kissed him.
For a beat, Caleb held still. His hands had gone to her waist before he decided what to do. Her grip pressed the wool against his injured chest. Heat flared behind his ribs, sharp enough to make him catch his breath.
His phone vibrated against his leg.
He caught her wrists and pushed her hands away from his jacket. Then he stepped back. The leather chair struck the backs of his calves, and he moved around it rather than sitting again.
"Don't pull me around."
He took the phone out. Its screen read 20:46.
[SEVENTH DIVISION. MOBILIZATION AT 0800 TOMORROW.]
Caleb put it away and reached for the wall dial.
White light filled the room.
Her black dress, bare arms, and dark hair came into focus. A thin neon-green strand ran through the hair. Her face did not clear with the rest of her. A patch of shifting interference covered it above the shoulders.
He blinked and looked again. The distortion stayed in place.
"What the hell is that?"
She smoothed the front of her dress. The blurred face tilted toward him.
"You'll know who I am when the time is right. Make sure you don't die before then."
Caleb kept the chair between them. She had told him what she wanted to watch, not why she had chosen him or what would happen if he refused. Even here, standing a few feet away, she would not let him see her face.
He rubbed his taped knuckles against his jaw and asked for something she could actually give him.
"I need Rank C. A hundred thousand engagement points. Rank F won't cover what my family owes."
"You have ambitions."
"I have a payment date. One private viewer won't get me there. If you want me at tomorrow's event, let people watch."
She moved back toward the partition. Caleb stayed on his side of the chair.
"You're right about the points," she said. "But I hold your streaming rights. You don't get to make the rules."
"Then give me a way to meet them. Nobody can watch something amazing through a closed gate."
The woman paused in the opening.
"I'll authorize public coverage of this event. A trial, Caleb. Do something amazing and I'll unlock access beyond it. Otherwise the gate closes again."
"And tomorrow's viewers count?"
"It's a public event feed. The ownership stays with me."
He watched her hand reach for the door beyond the partition. He had wanted an answer about the food and the machine. He had obtained permission to perform for more people instead.
The door opened behind her. She went through it and left him alone.
Caleb stood beside the chair until the footsteps stopped. His shoulder still throbbed. He pulled his jacket straight, checked that the chip remained seated behind his ear, and left by the door he had entered.
***
The waiter had gone from the restricted corridor. Caleb followed the service signs away from the restaurant and found a lift that took him to the lobby.
Outside, cold air reached through the wool at his collar. He headed toward the crosswalk, looking for the transit entrance.
Tires shrieked behind him.
Three corporate security cruisers mounted the curb and stopped across the spire's entrance. Armed contractors came out with their rifles raised. They passed Caleb without stopping him and pushed through the glass doors.
He waited at the edge of the crossing.
Through the lobby windows, he saw the team spread around the lifts. One contractor held a hand to his earpiece while another kept his weapon trained on the service corridor.
Several minutes later, they brought the woman out between them. Her dark dress and the green strand in her hair were clear under the lobby lights. The interference still hid her face.
A contractor fastened magnetic binders around her wrists. She let him turn her toward the doors. She did not pull away or try to run.
Caleb watched them put her in a cruiser.
He had just seen her make restaurant staff move at a word. Now she was doing what armed men told her. He could not tell whether someone had finally caught her or whether she expected to get something out of the arrest.
If they took her into a military holding room, she would be closer to the equipment Oswin had tried to protect. But Caleb could not see a military insignia on the cruisers. He did not know who had called them, what charge they had brought, or where they were taking her.
The contractors shut the car door. Caleb stepped back from the curb.
His phone showed the mobilization notice again when he checked it. Eight tomorrow morning. He still had to collect his kit and get some sleep.
The chip stayed quiet.
He turned toward the transit entrance. Following the cruisers would not tell him how to survive the deployment. It might only leave him farther from his gear when the report time came.
He took the train back to the barracks.
***
Caleb hung the wool suit beside his bunk and put the returned armor where he could reach it. The burned helmet was still gone. He would need a replacement at the staging bay.
He lay down with his phone beside the pillow. The meal had settled, but his shoulder woke him whenever he rolled onto it. Each time, he checked the hour and lay back on his other side.
The arrest kept returning when he closed his eyes. He knew what the binders had done to her hands. He knew nothing about what they had stopped her from doing through a network.
The night passed in short stretches of sleep.
At 06:00, the phone sounded beside his head.
[SEVENTH DIVISION. 0800 MOBILIZATION. TWO-HOUR REPORT ALERT.]
He sat on the edge of the bunk until the pull in his back eased. Outside the room, boots struck the corridor and somebody called for the washroom to clear.
He checked the report location, picked up his kit, and went to catch the Sector Four train.