Thursday. Five fifty-eight a.m. The city not yet fully light.
Elara sat at the kitchen table already dressed, the keycard in her jacket pocket, her notes on the archive structure memorised the night before and the physical copies left in her room. If the system was being monitored, she needed nothing on her that could document what she was looking for or what she found.
Rowan came in at exactly six. She had begun to notice that he was almost never late, not from rigidity, she thought, but from the particular self-discipline of someone who considered unpunctuality a form of disrespect. He looked at her across the kitchen, took in that she was already dressed and positioned, and something settled in his expression. The acknowledgment of: we both understand what today is.
He made coffee. S
