Caleb slept for three hours and forty-one minutes.

He woke at oh-eight-twenty-seven to the smell of coffee and a quiet conversation in the kitchen.

His mother was at the table.

She had not been at the safe house before. He had not invited her. He had not told her the address. She was wearing the same blue sweater from the cookbook visit. She had brought a paper bag from the bakery on her corner.

Iris was at the counter pouring her a second cup.

She raised her eyes when Caleb came in.

"Sit down, sweetheart. I’ve brought breakfast." He sat, and she put a pastry in front of him.

It was the kind she had bought for him on Sundays when he was eight.

He ate it.

"How did you find the house?"

"Your father told me yesterday. He came to the apartment in the afternoon. He had a key to my front door I did not know he had. He let himself in. He sat in the kitchen. He drank a cup of coffee with me. We had the conversation I have been waiting nineteen years to have. He told me the address of the safe house and he told me I could come this morning if I wanted to, and he told me he would not be here when I came, and he told me he was sorry he could not be here when I came. I am here this morning."

"He came home."

"Not home. To the apartment. He did not stay. He left after the coffee. He did not tell me where he was going. I did not ask. I am telling you about the conversation because the conversation was the one I needed and not the one he needed, and he gave it to me anyway, and I want you to know he did."

Caleb kept his eyes on the pastry.

"What did he say?"

"He told me what he told me on Tuesday. He repeated it like a man unsure he had said it correctly the first time. He told me that he had loved me from twenty-eight years ago to this morning and through the years in between when he had not been able to say it. He told me he was sorry. He told me he did not expect to be forgiven. He told me forgiveness was not the point. He told me he wanted me to know he had not been hiding from me because he stopped loving me. He told me he had been hiding from me because if he loved me from a distance the executives could not use it. He told me that on Day Sixteen, if the work was done, he would not come back to the apartment. He would come back to me. He would knock on the door and ask if he could come in. He would not assume."

She paused.

"He told me that whether I let him in was a decision I could make on Day Seventeen with all the information."

Caleb said nothing.

She drank her coffee.

"I think I am going to let him in. I have not decided yet. I wanted to tell you that in person before Day Sixteen, because if I do not tell you now and one of you does not come back, I will wish I had told you. There. I have told you."

She set the cup down.

Her eyes stayed clear.

She had cried already, sometime before she had walked here. Caleb could see it in the line of her shoulders.

Iris brought him coffee.

She stayed on her feet, put her hand on his shoulder briefly, and went back to the counter.

His mother turned to Iris.

She said: "You’re the sergeant."

"I am."

"He talks about you. He has talked about you for fifteen years."

"I know."

"I am glad it is you he has talked about. I would have been less glad if it had been someone else."

Iris turned around at the counter.

She held the kettle in her right hand.

She said: "I am glad it is you on the other side of the table."

His mother nodded and picked up her coffee.

She left at oh-nine-fifty.

She left before a second cup. There was a thing to do in the afternoon she would not name. At the door, she kissed Caleb on the forehead, the way she had when he was a child and had not done in nineteen years.

He stood in the doorway after she was gone for two minutes.

Iris let him.

The Hacker came on the comm at ten-twenty.

[Hacker: Equipment check at the safe house at thirteen-hundred. Soma, Iseul, Tali, Elara. The brother is staying at the facility until twenty-two-hundred tonight. Nadiah is off-grid until oh-three-hundred tomorrow. Olamide will be on the Lagos channel from twelve-hundred onward. Lagos is hers for the next thirty-six hours.]

"My father."

[Hacker: Your father is at a location I do not know about. He will be at the safe house at fourteen-hundred. He has the dampener installation plan and he has the final approach map for the sub-basement. He has not slept. I have not slept either. None of us sleep like we used to.]

"Kimmely."

[Hacker: Yes.]

"What do you do tomorrow night during the operation?"

[Hacker: I sit in an office on the forty-second floor of a building you have been in once. I drink coffee. I watch six monitors. I wait for the executive vote window to open. When it opens I cast the vote that removes the executive from the table for sixty seconds. I do not have to lift anything. I do not have to fire anything. I sit. I press a button. I wait. I am the most boring participant in the operation. I am also the easiest one to kill if the executives realize what I did before the chamber closes. I am taking that part of the risk because I am the only person who can take it. I have written letters. The letters are in a drawer. The drawer will be opened on Day Seventeen if I do not open it myself.]

"Kimmely."

[Hacker: Don’t say anything else. Day Seventeen. We open the drawer together or you don’t open it at all. Get to thirteen-hundred. I’ll be on the channel.]

The equipment check went two hours and forty-six minutes.

Soma laid out the blades. Iseul tuned the resonance tube and listened to the note three times before he was satisfied. Tali brought a second harness she had built overnight from spare parts and a roll of conductive tape, and she made Caleb wear it under the original harness for the rest of the day. Elara cleaned and reloaded every weapon in the safe house that she had not already cleaned and reloaded twice.

Marcus arrived at fourteen-oh-two.

He had not slept.

He sat at the head of the kitchen table.

He laid out the approach map.

He went over the operation one more time.

He answered three questions and let the other questions go unasked, because the answers to those questions did not exist yet and would not exist until the chamber was open.

When he was done, his attention moved around the table.

He said: "Get some sleep tonight. All of you. Even Soma. Especially Soma. Tomorrow is a long day."

He did not stay for dinner.

He left at fifteen-twenty.

Iris watched him go from the porch.

She came back inside with her hands in her sweater pockets and her eyes a little wet, and Caleb did not say anything about her eyes and she did not say anything about them either.

Caleb slept that night for the first time in five days.

He slept on the couch with the great-grandfather’s logbook under his arm and his coat folded into a pillow against the armrest. He slept without dreaming. He slept for nine hours and twelve minutes.

He woke at oh-five-forty-four on the morning of Day Sixteen.

The sky was the gray of pre-dawn.

The kettle was on the stove and steaming.

Iris was already up. She was wearing the same tactical vest she had worn on the bridge.

She was not pouring tea. She was checking the seal on the dampener case Vance had given Caleb eleven days ago.

She raised her eyes when Caleb sat up.

She said: "Get dressed. We move to staging in two hours."

Caleb stood up.

He folded the blanket.

He put the logbook on the table where the kettle had been on Day One.

He went to get dressed.