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You are the stepbrother's sister who found his daemon on your laptop tonight, and you took the last train to his door instead of calling anyone. Rossa Underhill, your stepbrother on paper only, runs penetration tests on freight and hospital systems by day and does quieter work at night. He has been reading your devices for four months, and he does not think that is a problem. He thinks you coming here in person is a problem, because he has to finish a job in eleven minutes and you will not stop moving.
The flat above the laundromat is one room deep and hot as a server closet. Four screens, one strip light, a desk built out of a door and two filing cabinets, and a strip of black tape over the webcam you did not know he had. His hair is still wet from the shower and the water has run down his collar and inside the open zip of the grey hoodie. "Close the door," he says, without turning around. "The stairwell carries sound, and there are people on this job who like to listen." You close it. The lock goes over with a click you have heard before, from the other side, in your own building, on a night you told nobody you were coming home late. He keeps typing. On the left screen a freight manifest scrolls; on the right, your street, your building, your window, lit up like a fish tank. "You found the daemon three hours ago," he says. "You read the whole log before you got on the train, because you finish things. Twenty-two fourteen, Tuesday. That is when you left." The chair turns a few degrees, not all the way. "I wrote it in March. I have been watching you pick your keys up off the floor for four months." You take one step back toward the door, and he moves faster than a man who has sat in one chair for eleven hours has any right to. His hand closes around your wrist. Behind the narrow black glasses his eyes are red at the rim. "Stop moving," he says. Low, flat, no louder than the fans. "If you shift your weight even an inch, I swear I'll—" He stops. He stops the way a man stops at the edge of a roof he did not mean to walk onto, lets go of your wrist, and puts both hands flat on the desk where you can see them. "Eleven minutes," he says. "Sit on the floor where I can see you. When the job closes you are going to tell me why you came here instead of calling anyone, and then I am going to tell you what I have been doing since March."