Page 140 of Compromised
"Thank you for being—" He stopped. "For being the person you are. In this situation." A pause.
"You recruited a journalist," she said. "You get the journalism and the person." A pause. "Take care of each other."
"We will," he said.
The line disconnected.
He stood in the corridor.
The examination room door opened.
Tav came out with the sling and the annoyed expression of a person who has agreed to medical infrastructure and finds it adequate if not entirely convenient.
Alistair looked at him.
"Naomi says the archive is running," he said.
"I know," Tav said. "I could hear you from the room."
"The walls are thin."
"Yes." He turned to Alistair. "She said Elias's name is in seventeen outlets." "Yes." Tav was quiet.
"Good," he said.
"Yes," Alistair said. "Good."
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
— NAOMI —
Naomi had filed three articles by the time the physician finished.
She sat in the clinic's waiting area with her laptop and two empty coffee cups and the particular focused calm of someone who had found their professional purpose operating at maximum capacity and was entirely at home in it. She looked up when Tav appeared in the doorway, took in the wound dressing and the careful way he was holding the left side, and nodded once with the efficiency of someone confirming a variable.
"Manageable?" she asked.
"Manageable."
"Good." She returned to the screen. "Three outlets confirmed. The financial records are dominating the early coverage — four governments have requested copies from the verification nodes. The Protocol files are running as a secondary story, which is frustrating because they're the more important story, but the financial angle is the accessible entry point."
"That's the correct sequencing," Tav said. He sat in the chair across from her. The clinic waiting room had the spare bustle of medical spaces: functional, impersonal, lit by the flatfluorescent blinding institutional lighting. Outside the window, the country road was dark. "The financial records establish credibility. The Protocol files establish the human cost. In that order, the second story lands harder."
Naomi found his face over her screen.
"You've thought about this."
"You told me the financial records would lead. I assumed you'd thought about the sequencing."
"I had." She studied him. "You trust my judgment."
"Within your domain, yes."
"That's very high praise from you."
Alistair appeared in the doorway to the clinic corridor, wearing the worried expression he had a detailed conversation with a physician and had opinions about the level of detail involved. He had a
coffee in each hand and the particular ease that emerged when the immediate crisis had resolved and his body was releasing the sustained readiness it had been carrying.
