The folder was back on the desk where Dani had left it, and Soren read the column of marks again in the gray light before Selah came back from training.

Soren stood at the window and counted.

He counted the exits the reading room had, three including the one nobody used, and which of them Voss favored when she left.

He counted the windows her moth could reach and the angle each one gave her on the desk where the folder usually sat.

He counted the people in his pack the form had named and the one it had failed to name, Joan, the elective line that came back empty because the framework had never built it.

That gap was still a gap.

It was also the only part of him the Council could not photograph.

He inventoried the rest the way a man walks his own house at night, checking that the doors are where he left them.

Selah in the dorm.

Maren walked away.

Yara in the dark behind his ribs.

Dani’s moth on the ceiling of a room a Council woman used. Mona somewhere under the foundations, smelling only him.

Nothing on the list was a surprise.

That was the point of making the list.

◆◆◆◆

Selah came in pink from the cold with frost still living on her knuckles, saw the folder, and went to wash without asking.

She had learned which mornings were his and which were the pack’s, and this one had a shape she recognized.

He waited until the water ran before he opened the bond a finger’s width and felt Yara turn over in the dark, awake, listening.

Watch the relays tonight, he told her without words.

She did not answer in words.

She answered with attention, a pressure behind his eyes that meant she had already started.

◆◆◆◆

Dani came back at midday and did not knock at all.

She set a second page beside the first.

"You’re going to want to sit for this one," she said.

He sat.

"The moth’s been on the relay every night since I showed you," she said, "and the lean is the same, Voss to one office, every filing, clean."

"So nothing changed."

"The lean is the same." She put one finger on the new page. "The volume isn’t."

He looked.

Two columns now.

Her marks for Voss’s nightly filing.

And a second set, fewer, irregular, falling on nights Voss did not file at all.

"Someone else is sending," he said.

"Someone else is sending from inside the same building, on Voss’s off nights, to the same office." Dani’s voice stayed level.

"Voss isn’t the only eye in Class Z. She might not even know there’s a second one."

A monitor watching his people.

And a second hand he had not counted, filing on the nights the first hand rested, into the same waiting door.

He had made his inventory complete that morning.

He had missed a window.

"You’re sure," he said.

"I clocked it three nights. The frequency isn’t Voss’s. It’s quieter and it doesn’t lean, it just goes."

She closed the folder. "Whoever it is, they’re better than her."

He did not let his face move.

She stayed after the folder closed.

She stood at the foot of the bed with her arms crossed and her moth folded on her shoulder, and he understood that the morning had a second half she had carried since dawn.

"Ask," he said.

"What we did..." She looked at the wall, then at him.

"I felt where the others sit on it. Selah, the wolf, the fox. I’m on the line with them now, all of them, all the time."

"You are."

"I don’t want to share you."

She said it flat, the way she said everything, no heat in it, just the fact set down on the desk like the folder.

He let the room hold it for a moment.

"That’s not a choice you have," he said.

"I can cut the connection for them," she said, her eyes tracking him, cold and sharp. "If I have to. I can isolate you."

"You won’t."

"Try me. It’s sickening how much of you is sitting in my head right now, and I don’t like the clutter of others."

Soren didn’t blink.

He just watched her, completely steady. "The pack is the pack. The line holds all of you because it holds all of you. Take it apart for one and it stops holding anyone. You felt where they sit on it. You felt that it’s load-bearing."

"I hate it," she whispered, stepping closer, until she was inside his space.

She grabbed his shirt. "I want you to myself completely."

"Then you’d have less of me," he said, and he caught her wrist, thumb pressing into the pulse there, forcing her to look at him.

"You want me, or you want a statue? Because if you isolate me, you lose the signal. You’re smart enough to know the difference."

She stared at him, breathing shallow. The possessiveness in her gaze was like a razor, but she didn’t pull away.

"I’ll keep them," she said "But I’m watching them and every second they spend with you. I’ll make sure they know their place."

"That’s not your job," he said calmly. "Your job is to stay on the line."

"I know it."

"Then you already know what I’m telling you." He stood.

"You accept the pack, or you leave the line. Those are the doors. There isn’t a third one and I’m not building you one."

"I logged the logger," she said finally. "I’m not going to log myself out over a thing I already chose."

"No."

"I don’t have to like the others."

"You don’t."

She picked up the folder.

The moth lifted off her shoulder and crossed the room to the ceiling, settling over the door, taking up its post.

"Two watchers," she said at the door. "I’ll find the second one’s name."

"Find it before Lior knows you’re looking."

She left without answering, which from Dani was the same as a yes.