I didn't ask for two

Episode 4

POV: Kim

The room they let me into for lunch was nicer than the room they'd kept me in, which was already nicer than my apartment, which meant the Den operated on a sliding scale of hospitality that I was choosing not to think too hard about.

The dining room was long, low-lit, and full of people who all seemed to know each other without looking like they were talking.

That was the first thing I noticed. Half-glances across the room that carried full conversations. A nod that meant something specific.

A woman at the far table who turned her head a half-second before the man behind her spoke, like she'd heard him before he'd started.

The second thing I noticed was the cold.

The air conditioning was running at a level that suggested the thermostat had been set by someone with very different ideas about comfortable temperatures. I wrapped both hands around my water glass and tried to look like a person who was not currently considering stealing a tablecloth for warmth. Nobody else seemed to notice. A man in a light shirt two tables over was leaning back in his chair with the relaxed expression of someone sitting in July sunshine.

The third thing I noticed was Jake.

He was at the bar. He hadn't looked at me since I sat down. He was very specifically not looking at me, which was a different thing entirely, and I was extremely annoyed at myself for knowing the difference.

Frank was at the far end of the room. He also wasn't looking at me.

I was not looking at either of them.

I was looking at the menu.

* * *

This is textbook, Voice of Reason said. I want to put that on record.

STOCKHOLM SYNDROME, Panic confirmed. I HAVE THE DIAGNOSTIC CRITERIA. SHALL I READ THEM.

Please don't, I said.

CRITERION ONE: POSITIVE FEELINGS TOWARD THE CAPTOR—

I don't have positive feelings. I have situational awareness.

CRITERION TWO: THE CAPTIVE BEGINS TO SEE THE CAPTOR AS HUMAN—

He brought me coffee, I said. That's not humanization, that's— it's coffee. Coffee is a basic human—

CRITERION THREE—

I put down the menu.

In my defense, Adventurer said cheerfully, criterion three is about identification with the captor's goals, and I've been trying to identify his goals since yesterday and I have some very interesting preliminary—

You've been doing what, I said.

Research, she said. Reconnaissance. It's productive.

Voice of Reason made a small noise of agreement that I decided to ignore.

I was not developing feelings. I was trapped in a building with two men who occupied space in ways that made it difficult to think, and my brain was doing what brains did under prolonged stress, which was find patterns in the available data, and the available data happened to be—

Jake laughed at something the bartender said. Low, genuine, the kind of laugh that wasn't for anyone else.

I looked back at the menu.

The menu had not changed.

* * *

"Is this seat taken?"

The voice was easy. Warm. The kind of voice that belonged to someone who hadn't recently trapped anyone in a room with excellent pillows and a locked window.

I looked up.

He was maybe twenty-five, with an open face and the kind of smile that arrived before he'd finished deciding to smile. Brown eyes.

Unremarkable jacket. He looked like someone who worked in an office somewhere and had opinions about coffee that he shared voluntarily.

He looked, in other words, completely normal.

"Go ahead," I said.

He sat. Flagged down the server with the ease of someone who'd done it in this room before. "Mason," he said, extending a hand across the table.

"Kim."

"You look like someone who had a more interesting night than they planned for," he said.

I laughed. An actual laugh, the involuntary kind. "Is it that obvious?"

"Little bit." He leaned back, comfortable, no agenda visible. "Frank's guests usually look one of two ways. Either like they own the place, or like they're calculating the exit routes."

"Which one am I?"

"Honestly?" He tilted his head. "Neither. You look like you're trying to figure out what the question is before you decide whether to answer it." He smiled. "I find that refreshing."

The server arrived. I ordered something with protein because I hadn't eaten since the bus, and Mason ordered like he already knew the menu, and for approximately eight minutes I had a normal conversation with a normal person about entirely normal things and it was so profoundly, deeply ordinary that I felt some muscle behind my sternum unclench for the first time in twenty-four hours.

* * *

"So," Mason said, at some point between the bread arriving and the main course. Casual. Still easy. "Frank said you're a courier."

"That's one word for it."

"What's another word for it?"

"Currently unemployed, if I don't get back to the office today." I broke a piece of bread. "I had a delivery. Wrong room, long story, Frank decided I should stay for— actually I don't know what I'm staying for."

Mason nodded sympathetically. "These things happen around here."

"Do they?"

"More than you'd think." He paused. "The delivery — was it for someone here? At the Den?"

"The address was the Den, yeah." I shrugged. "I don't know who specifically. I just had the envelope."

"What kind of envelope?"

I looked at him.

He looked back. Still easy. Still warm. The kind of face that was very good at being a face.

"The paper kind," I said.

He smiled. "Fair enough."

His mouth smiled. But the muscles around his eyes didn't move. It was a perfect, practiced mimicry of friendliness, and my stomach did a slow, cold roll. I knew that look. I'd seen it on bill collectors and bad dates. It was the look of someone fishing.

* * *

I don't know why, Voice of Reason said, but I'd like to note that she was suddenly quite alert.

At the bar, something changed.

I caught it in my peripheral vision — the thing my brain had been tracking since I sat down, the thing I was pretending I wasn't tracking. Jake had been talking to the bartender, glass in hand, smile in place.

The smile was gone.

Not faded. Gone. Between one second and the next, like someone had reached over and switched it off. The air around the bar suddenly felt heavier. A sharp, metallic tang of ozone and something wild hit the back of my throat, making my pulse spike for absolutely no logical reason.

He wasn't looking at Mason. He was looking at his glass, and his jaw had done something specific, and I had the sudden conviction that whatever was currently happening behind his expression was nothing like what had been there before.

At the far end of the room, Frank reached out and moved his glass.

Not picking it up. Not drinking. Just — moved it. Half a centimeter to the left. Slow. Deliberate. The way someone moves something when their hands need something to do that isn't what their hands want to do.

The temperature in the room, which had already been wrong, got somehow wronger.

Nobody else seemed to notice.

I noticed.

I looked back at Mason, who was buttering his bread with the calm of a predator who thought he was the only one in the room.

He was wrong.

I smiled at him and picked up my fork and made a note of exactly where the kitchen door was.

He was wrong about a lot of things. The temperature in the room was about to drop a lot further, and I was sitting exactly in the blast radius.

The only question was whether I'd still be sitting here when it did.