Rogue agents 2: Deepfake election

*Willow* The fluorescent tubes hum at a frequency that lives somewhere between a mosquito and a headache. I have learned to stop hearing it, mostly. The half-cup of coffee beside my keyboard went cold an hour ago, a skin of something pale floating on the surface. I underline a Mandarin phrase on the polling brief with my mechanical pencil, the click of the lead advancing satisfying in a way I would never explain to anyone here. I am twenty-four years old. I am small. I am easy to overlook, and I have made a quiet art of being overlooked. The art consists mostly of keeping my head down, answering questions only when asked, and never, ever volunteering an opinion in a room full of senior analysts who have been screaming at each other about turnout models since before I finished high school. The bullpen stretches across the third floor in a grid of cubicles the color of old oatmeal. Someone in facilities once tried to brighten the place with a potted plant near the coffee machine. The plant died within six weeks. Nobody replaced it. The coffee machine, however, grinds on, a low growl every eleven minutes as another analyst refills a mug that says something like "I'd Rather Be Golfing" or "Ask Me About My Spreadsheet." A wall-mounted television cycles cable news on mute. The presidential election is ninety-four days away, and the chyrons are getting more frantic by the hour. I watch the silent mouths move for a moment, then look back at my brief. My sister Holly is three thousand miles away in London, doing things she cannot tell me about for an agency whose name she uses only when she wants to end a conversation. I think about her sometimes when the bullpen gets loud, which is always. She chose a life where the stakes are visible. I chose this. Fluorescent tubes and cold coffee and the soft click of a pencil. Safe. Quiet. The kind of life where nobody shoots at you, and nobody asks you to carry secrets that could get someone killed. I wonder, not for the first time, whether I chose the safe path or just the one that looked safe from a distance. "Thompson." I look up. It is Marcus, one of the senior analysts, leaning over my cubicle divider with the expression of a man who has misplaced something and intends to blame whoever is closest. "The Pennsylvania cross-tabs. You finished those?" "On the shared drive. I sent the link this morning." He blinks, as if I have spoken in a language he does not recognize. "Right. Good." He is already walking away before the second word leaves his mouth. I let the satisfaction stay private. It is better that way. The last time I corrected a senior analyst's error in front of anyone, I spent the next three weeks pulling data-entry shifts that started at six in the morning. I learned. The building teaches you, if you pay attention. I turn back to the polling brief. The Mandarin phrase I underlined is a mistranslation in the third paragraph, something a junior staffer on the foreign-policy desk probably pulled from a machine translator without checking. The original Chinese reads "strategic recalibration." The brief renders it as "tactical withdrawal." The difference matters. I fix it in the margin and make a note to flag it in the morning meeting, quietly, to the right person. Then I notice Caleb Sullivan. He is two rows over, at a desk angled toward the fire door. Caleb is a data analyst, twenty-six, sharp enough that the senior staff actually listen when he speaks, which is rare for someone our age in this building. He is also Black, which means he has learned a different set of survival skills than I have, and I have never asked him what they cost. He has been off for days. I watch him check his phone under the desk, the screen's glow catching the underside of his jaw. His thumb moves fast, too fast for casual scrolling. He closes the phone. Opens it again. His other hand rests on his mouse, but the monitor in front of him is dark. He has not logged in yet. It is nearly ten thirty. Yesterday I walked past his desk on my way to the printer and he closed his monitor so fast the hinge made a snapping sound. I pretended not to notice. He pretended I had not seen anything. We are both very good at pretending. Today he is worse. His shoulders are high, pulled toward his ears. His free hand taps a rhythm on the desk that has no pattern. Every few seconds he glances at the bullpen entrance, the glass doors that lead to the elevator bank, as if he is expecting someone. Or afraid of someone. The two things look the same from the outside. I should look away. I should go back to my brief, finish my coffee, wait for the morning meeting. That is what the art of being overlooked requires. Do not stare. Do not ask. Do not get involved. I get up and walk to the coffee machine. The carafe is half full. I pour a fresh cup, black, no sugar. I do not know how Caleb takes his coffee. I realize this as I am pouring it, and the realization makes me pause with the cup in my hand. I have worked two rows away from him for eleven months. I know he is good at his job. I know he stays late on Tuesdays. I know he has a sister in Baltimore he visits once a month. I do not know how he takes his coffee. I grab a handful of sugar packets and a creamer from the basket beside the machine and carry the cup to his desk. "You look like you need this more than I do." Caleb looks up. His eyes are bloodshot. He has not slept, or he has slept badly, or he has been staring at a screen in the dark for hours. His hand stops tapping. "Thompson." He says my name like he is placing me in a lineup. Then something in his face shifts. "Yeah. Thanks." I set the cup down beside his keyboard. The sugar packets and creamer I leave next to it. He looks at them, then at me, and for a second his mouth opens. I see the words forming behind his teeth. I see him decide to say something, something that matters, something he has been carrying alone. "Caleb, you got a second?" Marcus again. He is standing at the end of the row with a tablet in his hand and the look of a man who has found another thing to misplace. "The Wisconsin dataset. The weighting looks off. Can you pull the raw files?" Caleb's mouth closes. The moment breaks like a thread stretched too far. He looks at me, and his expression is something I cannot name. Not fear, exactly. Not anger. Something that lives in the space between those two things, where a person has realized they are alone in a room full of people. "Give me five," he says to Marcus. To me, he says nothing. He just holds my gaze for one beat longer than is normal, then turns to his monitor and logs in. I walk back to my desk. The coffee I left behind is still cold. I drink it anyway. It tastes like metal and something faintly sour, and I set the cup down harder than I mean to. A few drops spill onto the polling brief, blurring the Mandarin phrase I corrected. I blot it with my sleeve and do not look up again for a long time. The bullpen hums around me. The television cycles through a poll showing the race tightening in Ohio. The coffee machine grinds. Someone laughs three rows back, a sound with no joy in it. I sit very still and carry the weight of a conversation that did not happen, a door that opened a c***k and swung shut before I could see what was on the other side. At eleven fifteen I notice Caleb's desk lamp is still on. The glow spills across his keyboard, his empty chair, the half-finished cup of coffee I brought him. He went to the printer alcove twenty minutes ago to pull the Wisconsin files. He has not come back. I wait. The lamp stays on. The chair stays empty. The bullpen hums at its mosquito frequency, and no one else looks up.