Page 107 of In the Dark of the Past

The door closed behind us as we entered to fluorescent lights and familiar smells.

“Interview Room 1,” I said to Atlas. “Keep her comfortable, but don’t push yet.”

He nodded and steered Jordyn down the hall—she went without resistance.

River stood beside me in the lobby. Her eyes were still streaming slightly from the chemical agent, but the rest of her face was set in the expression she’d had since we burst out of the building into the cold. It wasn’t shock. Or grief. It was something past both of those, the place you arrive at when there’s nothing left to be surprised by and you’re deciding what to do with what you know.

“Interview room,” I said. “Not because you’re a subject, but because it locks.”

She came.

I locked the door to Interview Room 2, drew the blinds, and stood with my back to her for a moment as I braced my hands on the table.

The room was small and cold, and I was aware of every inch of it. The two-way glass we kept dark during non-interviews, the fluorescent bulb that had been flickering for three weeks, the chair River had settled into without being asked, assuming the posture of someone allowing herself to sit down only because the alternative was her knees giving out.

I thought about what Grant had said. Not the part about the Fund, or the protocols, or the other things he said with the calm of a man who genuinely believed the words. The part about Marta.

She was under care. Her deterioration was well-documented. Her death was reviewed and closed.

They’d had her in that building, had completed the paperwork themselves, signed it, and filed it with a state office that reported to Grant’s office. And then he stood in front of Marta’s daughter tonight and described it as appropriate protocols.

I was aware of my hands pressing hard enough into the table that the edge cut into my palms.

“Finn.”

I turned. She was still in the chair, but she’d leaned forward, her elbows on her knees as she watched me.

“Talk to me,” she said.

“I’m okay.”

“I didn’t ask if you were okay. I said talk to me.”

I exhaled, then pulled out the chair across from her and sat.

“He had her in that building,” I said. “He had your mother in that building, and he killed her while she was in his custody. Then he processed the paperwork and closed the file. And tonight, he stood twenty feet from you and described it like he was reading meeting minutes.”

“Yes,” she said. “He did.”

“I wanted to put him through the wall.”

“I know. I watched you decide not to.” Her voice was level. “It was the right call.”

“Doesn’t feel like it.”

“I’m sure,” she said. “But that’s how you know it was right.”

I looked at her. Took in the streaming eyes—mostly cleared now—the set of her jaw, the way she was sitting—not collapsed, not rigid, just present, both feet on the floor, a person occupying their own body with full intention.

“How are you doing this?” I asked.

“Doing what?”

“Sitting that straight. After…all of that. After he said what he did about your mother.”

River was quiet for a moment. “Because if I stop remaining upright,” she said carefully, “Grant wins that minute. And I’m not giving him anything.”

The tightness in my chest didn’t leave, but it shifted. It turned from the kind that crushes to the kind that steadies.