I run the number before I respond.
This is instinct and practice, the operational reflex that has kept me alive for fifteen years. Unknown numbers get run. Unknown routing gets traced. The specific, unhurried process of finding out what a thing is before deciding what to do with it has never failed me and I am not abandoning it now because the compound feels settled and the alliance is signed and the afternoon light is good.
Reth has the routing identified in twenty minutes. He brings it to the operations room with his phone and the expression that has a specific meaning I have learned to read, not the four word message expression, not the complicated news expression. The careful expression. The expression that means what he is about to say requires handling.
"The routing is clean," he
