After Caelum left, the kitchen did not immediately recover its ordinary shape.
The service door had closed behind him. Maren had returned to the stock station. The tea cooled in Wren’s cup, and the assignment sheet still sat in the shift binder with Edric’s signature visible enough to feel deliberate.
That should have been enough for one day.
It was not.
One number in Wren’s notes had been wrong. Or possibly wrong, which was worse. She had memorized the binder sequence in the third annex as beginning at fourteen, but while warming her hands around Maren’s tea, she wondered whether the first visible spine had been fifteen instead. Meaningless, maybe. But Wren had built her survival on the difference between maybe and certain.
So she came back.
Alone.
The third annex door resisted her
