ALESSIA
The eleventh of January arrived on a morning that was cold and clear and indifferent to its own significance.
I had been awake since four. Not from anxiety — or not only from anxiety. From the specific alertness of someone whose body has understood that something is about to change and has decided that sleep is less important than preparation. I lay in Logan's old room in the dark and went through everything in sequence, the way Carter had taught me: gait, posture, register, the shoulder, Alex's way of responding to direct address, Alex's way of moving through a crowd. Running the checklist not because I expected to fail it but because the running of it was itself a form of steadiness.
By six I was dressed. By six-fifteen I was in the kitchen.
Ryker was there.
He looked at me
