Page 79 of Cap
She blinked. “Ghost said you’d say that.”
“Ghost is a smart man,” I said.
She looked at Sunshine again. On the monitor, the girl shifted like she’d remembered what legs are for and then thought better of it. A cup sat on the cart. A camera stared. A lock sneered. My hand did a thing in the air like it wanted to grab the screen and tear it open.
“How many downstairs today?” I asked.
“Three in that room,” she said. “Two in the corridor. A sixth in intake. Seven if you count the one who… didn’t make it.”
I let the number hit. Numbers are freight. You load them careful, or you drop them, and they explode in your head.
Amanda’s jaw set in a way I’d come to recognize. People talk about brave like it’s loud. Sometimes it’s a woman in an office, wearing a badge that lies, memorizing the rhythm of a shredder.
“Then we don’t stop,” she said.
“No,” I said. “We go ghost.”
Her eyes cut to me. There it was. The plans we hadn’t said out loud because saying things conjures them and we didn’t need the devil to have a calendar invite.
We ghost in. We ghost out. We live inside their blind spots long enough to open the right doors and walk people through them like daylight. We make it look like paperwork. We make it look like an accident. We make itstick.
A door banged somewhere down the hall. The building breathed. I leaned back, rolled the chair, squeak-squeak, the exact wrong amount, the exact right routine. Amanda took one step back, then another, and by the time the IT kid poked his head in to ask if I’d seen a toner box, she was a temp again and I was a bored guard complaining about vendors.
“Check the dock,” I told the kid. “People hide fun stuff in pallets.”
He laughed because I said it like a joke and left because he’s twenty-two.
We stood in the humming box for half a breath more. Amanda tapped the clipboard twice. That meant later. That meant drop. That meant hold.
At the door she paused and angled her body so anyone who happened by would see a woman checking a checkbox and not a sister making a war.
“You were right,” she said, voice small enough to be safe. “They’re still moving them.”
“I know,” I said. “So are we.”
She went back to her desk with the OKAYEST mug, and the temp badge and a stack of forms designed to get people to stop asking questions.
I took my lap.
On the feed, the basement stayed what it was: a promise I intended to break.
Outside, a truck with the heart logo pulled into Bay 3 and sat there idling, pretty as a lie. I checked my badge, checked my reflection in the glass, practiced the forgettable face again, and smiled without humor.
The war wasn’t over. It had just gone underground.
