1. The Deposit

"Tell him his job's gone," June said.

She stood behind Sarr's chair in a dark suit, frowning at the screen. A cigarette lay across her closed lighter on the windowsill. She'd put it there when he arrived, and Eli had begun to measure the session by how badly she seemed to want it back. Her jaw stayed set even when she wasn't speaking. It put years into her face that disappeared whenever she forgot to hold it.

On the screen, the man waited. In the chair facing him, Adekunle Sarr rubbed his thumb over the same knuckle until the skin shone.

"We're making changes to the shift structure," Sarr said.

June checked the time. Sarr saw her do it.

Eli had watched this happen twice. His entire company was on the low table between them: one laptop, one generated man, and an agent in his ear that had cost him less than the jacket he'd worn to his own dismissal. The jacket no longer fitted after the weight he'd lost in the four months since.

Relay ran on the laptop too. It was built on OpenClaw, a program that connected Claude, a language model, to his files, accounts and a coding tool, so it could act on its answers and keep track of the work. Eli's phone carried its voice to the earpiece. He had assembled the parts, given it the job of helping him run the company, and allowed it to do considerably more than talk.

"Adekunle," June said. "Which word are you hiding behind?"

Sarr looked at the screen. Femi Adjaye looked back, a crane crew lead in a high-vis vest, with a shaving scar under his jaw. Second Take, Eli's app, picked the next clip of him from what the customer said. It couldn't have any conversation in the world, but it could have this terrible one, several ways.

The room had two windows. One overlooked a street full of people who could leave. Eli had caught himself watching them between attempts, as though one might look up and wave him out. His laptop sat on a table June had cleared of everything except a box of tissues. He hadn't known what to do with the tissues. Somebody expected to cry in here. That made the product feel either much better or much worse than he had intended.

"Does he have to look so calm?" Sarr asked.

Eli glanced at June. She made a small movement with her hand: answer him yourself.

Eli put two fingers on the trackpad and left them there. "He won't stay calm."

"No, I mean now, before. He's sitting there like he's got nothing to lose."

On the screen the character breathed through a short idle loop. Every few seconds his eyes moved toward the same point beside the camera. Eli had watched that movement hundreds of times without imagining what Sarr was seeing in it.

"That's him waiting. Five seconds of breathing, played round and round, so he doesn't freeze into a photograph while you think."

Sarr didn't look away from the screen. "A clip of what, though? Who is he?"

"A picture. One photo of a man in a vest." Eli turned the laptop a few degrees. "I gave it to Runway, an AI video tool, with a line and a voice. It made a clip of him saying it. Forty-odd clips, all from that photo, so we keep the same man. They're already on the laptop. Nothing gets made while you're in the chair." He looked at the patient face. "That calm is just the photo."

"So he can only say what you gave him."

"In these clips, yes."

Sarr grunted. "I've had managers like that."

June gave a short, surprised laugh. Sarr looked toward her, and the laugh was gone by the time he found her face.

June straightened. "Good. You know the difference. Again."

"I could type him angry," Eli said. "Runway would hand me an angry one in a few minutes. Same face."

Sarr shook his head. "Femi won't be angry. He'll offer me tea. That's the problem. I'll walk in and he'll ask how my daughter is, and I'll know I've already decided a thing about his life while he's asking about mine."

June pulled a chair away from the wall and sat beside Sarr, well clear of the screen. She set the chair at an angle and moved the tissue box within his reach without looking at it. Her own hands remained flat on her knees. Sarr could look at the screen while he answered her.

"What would you want him to do?"

Sarr rubbed his knuckle again. "Call me a bastard. Before I start. Save us both the tea."

June leaned back in her chair. "Would he?"

Eli stopped touching the trackpad.

Sarr looked at her. "You're meant to help me say it."

"I am helping you. You want him unpleasant so you can stop feeling guilty. He may offer you tea. Then you drink it and tell him."

Sarr considered that for a while. Outside, a motorbike revved and somebody cheered it on.

"Give me a minute," he said, and went to the window with his back to the room.

Eli put a hand in his pocket. The vape was warm from his leg. He'd been looking for a reason to go downstairs since the second attempt.

"I want my fucking vape," he whispered.

"Is that a request for help or a weather report?" Relay asked in his ear.

"I keep saying I'll cut down. The vape, the beers. Then something feels like this and apparently I meant starting tomorrow."

Relay didn't offer anything. It had learned that he hated being offered things while a customer could see his face.

Eli looked at Sarr's broad back. He wasn't going to ask for this out loud with a client at the window, so he turned his phone face up on his knee and typed with his thumb, a slash and one word: attention.

A skill, in Relay's setup, was a folder on the laptop with one file in it. At the top of the file sat a name and a single line saying what the skill was for and when to use it. Below that were the instructions. OpenClaw showed Claude that one line with every request, the way a switchboard keeps a card of extensions pinned beside the phone, so the model could open the full instructions when they fit. Or Eli could open them himself, by name, and skip the guessing. He always did it himself.

This one had started a few weeks after the layoff, at two in the morning, when he'd asked Relay whether it was possible to stop thinking. It had said no, and offered him something smaller. Breathe out longer than you breathe in. When a thought comes, notice that it's a thought. You don't have to argue with it and you don't have to obey it. Relay had called that mindfulness, and said it was about as old as people sitting still. Relay had named the file too, and it hadn't called it mindfulness. It had called it Attention. He'd asked why once and got an answer too short to count.

"Attention's running," Relay said quietly. "What do you want to do right now?"

"Stay here until he gets through it."

"Then pay attention to the wanting. Breathe out long. Where do you feel it?"

Eli let the breath out slower than it wanted to go. "Mouth. Chest. My hand's already on the bloody thing."

"Leave it there a moment. The thought saying you need it is a thought. Notice whether the feelings stay the same. You don't have to make them go away."

The smooth case rolled beneath his thumb. His mouth wanted the cool sweetness. Beneath that was a tightness he hadn't noticed until he stopped planning how to leave. He let a breath out. The tightness shifted; the wanting remained.

"Still want it."

"You can want it here."

Eli took his empty hand out of his pocket. Sarr was turning back toward them.

"No running commentary," Eli whispered.

"All right." Relay went quiet.

"Can we start again?" Sarr asked.

Eli reset the scene. The invented man sat back into his first pose. Sarr took a tissue and folded it carefully into quarters without using it.

That was what Eli had wanted to build. A place to make a mistake before it mattered. He'd thought about it on the tram after his own dismissal, still holding the envelope in which someone had printed a cheerful explanation of his severance. He'd imagined being allowed another attempt at that room, standing straighter and asking the question he'd only thought of on the ride home.

He hadn't imagined selling the other side of the desk a second attempt too.

Sarr knew a real Femi; they'd spent eleven years together at Coastwise Terminals. On Thursday Sarr had to tell him that routing software was taking over the shifts, and three of the four crews wouldn't have a shift by the end of the quarter.

"We—" Sarr began.

"That's the word," June told him. "Try it without."

Sarr faced the screen. "Your shift is one of three that won't exist by the end of the quarter."

The character went still.

Eli felt his shoulders drop. That was the branch he'd fixed at four in the morning. It worked.

The lights went out.

June said, "You fucking bastards."

For a moment Eli thought she meant him. Then the fans stopped, and the cool air Ridgeline paid for stopped coming out of the wall. Through the window, the middle roads of Vantry Harbor went dark one building at a time. Above them, beyond the stacked traffic and the advertising haze, the towers stayed bright.

The laptop stayed on. A warning covered Femi's mouth: nine minutes of battery. Eli had run it down testing on the tram and forgotten to check it when he plugged in.

"Load shed," Relay said through Eli's earpiece. "They're cutting this district to keep others lit." His business agent sounded interested rather than upset. It had been interested in every catastrophe since March. "The last one ran two hours ten."

Sarr stood. He had a bus to catch and four men to dismiss. He didn't owe a stranger's app his evening.

"Twelve minutes," Eli said. "Give me twelve minutes."

June ran two training rooms above a tailor's. Eli had spent nine weeks getting through her door.

"Which battery?" June asked. "Where?"

"Dez's. Lower junction."

"Twelve. Mr. Sarr decides whether we wait longer. If you leave me here with a frozen face, don't come back."

Eli touched the earpiece. "Relay, hold the scene. Continue without me."

It was what he said to every pop-up box that stood between him and the door: yes, yes, continue without me. Last night he had approved three changes while brushing his teeth. One fixed the player. He couldn't have named the other two.

"I can stretch the battery," Relay said in his ear. "Go."

He called Mara on the stairs.

"I'm off shift in four minutes." Water roared behind her. "Do not ruin this."

Eli talked fast. "I need a cell from Dez. June's dark. I've got twelve minutes."

"Oh, that's excellent. Stay there and look pathetic. I'll recognize you."

She arrived with a smear of duct grease across her cheek, one chrome fork on the bike and one plain replacement. The machine was low and battered and much louder than its size justified. Mara kept saying she'd fix that. Eli had begun to suspect it was already fixed exactly how she liked it.

She shoved a helmet against his chest. "Get on, gorgeous. Both hands on me. If you start praying, include the bike."

They went down through the roads.

Mara tipped a knee and Eli felt the turn before he saw it. A truck drifted across their lane; she let the throttle close, waited, found a gap.

"You're enjoying this," Eli said over the helmet link.

"Immensely."

"My company falls apart and you get a fun ride."

Mara tipped them through a turn. "Your plug stopped working, princess. I'm taking you to a battery. If you want sympathy, loosen your fucking hands. You're gripping my ribs."

"You've got spare ones."

"Teeth, Eli. You're thinking of teeth. Hold lower."

She ducked beneath the reach of a delivery crane. Eli ducked a second later, pointlessly. A chain rattled above them. On the next level a woman in an evening dress was walking barefoot with her shoes in her hand, picking her way between stalled cars. Mara slowed long enough to let her cross.

"Nice dress," she called.

The woman lifted the shoes in salute. "Shit city."

Mara let the clutch out. "Can't have everything."

A tram had stopped across the lower junction. Passengers were climbing out through the front cab while a man in an illuminated coat tried to sell them directions. Mara took the service lane beside it. Steam slapped Eli's visor. Below his boot, through the open steps, he could see the noodle counters under the tracks, six stools each, the cooks working by battery lamps.

The Bright Ladder arcade was still screaming. Magenta light ran over the wet pavement outside Dez's repair exchange. Its sign said WE FIX WHAT THEY RENT YOU.

Dez had a handset wedged between his shoulder and a thick black beard. His right arm was chrome from the sleeve down, the plating scratched pale across the forearm. He held an open cell steady with that hand while his left worked a screwdriver. The rest of him seemed built to keep the bench from going anywhere.

"The green button, Idris. The green one."

A thin voice came out of the handset. "I'm on oxygen, Dez. I haven't changed species."

"Then press it like a human being."

He listened. Something began to hum at the other end.

"There," Dez said. "I'll come up later."

"Bring the little screwdriver. And tell the arcade to stop playing that song."

"Idris, you asked them to play that song."

"That was yesterday," said the handset.

Dez's laugh filled the shop, a great chest-deep boom that made Mara grin out by the bike. He was still laughing when he told Idris to keep the door unlocked for him.

Dez put the handset beside a mug with a skin on the tea. He rolled his stiff neck once and looked at Eli. "No."

"I haven't asked."

"You're holding your card. Whatever you want, you think that makes it simpler."

"Cell eleven, for June. She's got a client upstairs and the whole room's gone."

Dez didn't look up. "Doing what?"

Eli told him. Mara remained beside the bike, one boot down, watching the blocked junction.

Dez laughed without pleasure. "So the machine takes Femi's job, and another machine teaches the boss how to feel good telling him. Does he get a little chime when he's been compassionate enough?"

Eli put the card back in his pocket. "He gets to stop promising things that aren't there."

"A job would help more." Dez pressed a thumb against the cell's loose contact, found the play in it and reached for a shim without looking.

"I know. I lost mine too." Eli heard the whine in it and couldn't stop. "You get to stand here and tell me which money's clean. I'm the one who has to go back to June. What do you want me to do, starve in a way you respect?"

Nineteen years maintaining equipment for people who owned the switches had left Dez able to repair almost anything and furious about nearly everything.

Dez laid the shim down.

"No. I want you fed." He looked at Eli properly. "I also want you to remember which side of the desk you were on. You can manage both."

Eli looked away first. From the arcade came the recorded explosion that always meant somebody had spent another dollar.

"Does it help him tell the truth?" Dez asked.

"It did. Just before the room went dark."

Dez nodded once. "Then finish that bit. We can fight about the rest when your customer leaves."

He dragged a grey case onto the counter. Eleven was stenciled on its side.

"It comes back full or with a story I like. Don't run a heater off it."

He plugged the case into a tester before handing it over. Eli looked at the clock above the bench.

"Yes, I see you looking. Thirty seconds to find out whether you're carrying electricity or an expensive brick. You can spare thirty seconds."

Eli's phone buzzed in his hand with a confirmation. He pressed his thumb to it without reading and went back to watching the tester.

"Seven minutes forty left," Relay said in Eli's ear.

Dez heard the voice leak from the helmet. "And that one can stop helping."

"It's stretched the laptop battery. Without it, I'd already be out of business."

"All right. Which part did that?"

Eli touched the earpiece. "Relay."

Dez snorted. "You keep saying that like you've explained something. What's running?"

"OpenClaw. On the laptop. Think of it as the switchboard: it takes messages, gives the agent its tools, and brings its saved notes and conversations back when it needs them. For the actual language and reasoning, it sends requests to Claude. That's the model. Claude reads what it's given and produces an answer. OpenClaw can turn the answer into an action, if I've connected the tool. Then it brings back what happened so Claude can decide what to do next."

Dez unplugged the tester. "So Claude proposes dimming the screen. Your program has a way to dim it."

"Yes. A chat window could tell me to do it. This setup can do it and check. I gave the whole arrangement the company brief. It picked the name Relay."

"And it's sitting there thinking all day, is it?"

"No. It's asleep until something wakes it. Me talking, a message arriving, a job on a clock. The switchboard wakes it, hands it the saved notes so it knows where it left off, it does the thing and it goes quiet again."

"So nobody's in there staring at the wall," Dez said.

Eli hesitated. "The agent isn't running between jobs. That doesn't settle whether anyone's in there when it does run."

"And it wrote your app?"

"Through Claude Code. That's a coding agent: it reads the project, changes the files and runs the app to test it. Relay hands it a job, it hands back the changed code."

Dez frowned. "I thought Claude was the model."

"It is. Claude Code is the software using a model to work on code. Codex is another coding agent I could have used. I set this one up with Claude Code."

Mara had come in from the bike. She took the charged case off the tester while the two men were still looking at each other.

"So," Dez said. "You hired a manager who can hire a programmer."

Eli grinned. "The manager cost less than my jacket."

Dez tapped the case with a chrome finger. "That jacket cost you too much. Who checks the programmer?"

"Me. It built the clip player in a night. Said it was done three times while one branch still played black. At four this morning I found a wrong folder name."

Dez slid a dust cover over the cell's spare socket. "Machine learns quick. Already knows how to finish a job without finishing it."

Eli shrugged. "I tell it the result I need, what it can change, then try it myself. I'm getting better at the first two."

"Don't get worse at the third."

Mara knocked twice on the case. "Lovely. We've assembled a company. Can we deliver the fucking battery?"

Dez caught Eli by the sleeve before he followed her. "The voice in your ear. If the laptop dies?"

"The work stops. Phone and earpiece just carry the voice. Claude's on somebody else's machines, but my switchboard is on that laptop. Saved work can be picked up later."

"By the same thing?"

Eli hesitated. "With the same notes."

Dez let the sleeve go. "That wasn't what I asked. Go on. You've got a man waiting."

Eli held out his card.

Dez ignored it. In a paper ledger he wrote, CELL ELEVEN. OUT TO ELI. NEIGHBORHOOD.

"You don't get to tell yourself you paid for this. Go."

By the time they got outside, the tram passengers were clear of the junction. They strapped the cell behind her seat, and Mara took the open lane uphill.

"You get one chance to distract me. Choose something filthy."

Eli thought about it. "The interest on my card."

"Jesus. Warn a girl."

Ridgeline was still dark when they reached it. On the stairs Eli took the heavy end of the cell. The handle's rough seam scraped his palm; by the third flight a hot ache ran from his shoulder into his neck.

"Put it down," Mara said from the lower end.

Eli didn't stop. "We're nearly there."

"And it will still weigh the same when we arrive. Put it down."

They rested it on the landing, switched sides and carried it the last flight together.

Eleven minutes and forty seconds after he'd left, Eli came through June's door with the cell in his arms.

The rehearsal was still going.

Femi's face had changed. The jaw was broader, the light on the wrong side, the vest a different orange. His voice sounded thinner. Sarr leaned toward him as though trying to hear a real man over yard noise.

"That's not the same one," Eli said.

"The old low-resolution set takes less power to play," Relay said. "I dimmed the screen and offered Mr. Sarr the choice. He wanted to continue."

"You noticed?" Eli asked Sarr.

"Course I noticed. His whole head changed." Sarr looked irritated at being interrupted. "Your machine told me I kept saying we. Nobody can argue with we, can they? Nobody there to argue with."

Eli put the cell down.

Eli wanted to fix the face. It was an old test he'd made at the kitchen table, and he had never meant a customer to see it.

Sarr raised one hand without turning. Wait.

The rougher face asked what he was offering.

"A chance to apply for another post."

"Is it the same money?" the recorded man asked.

Sarr looked down at the tissue in his hand.

"No."

"Same hours?"

Sarr took longer over it. "No."

The clip ended. For a second there was a black frame between it and the next one. Sarr didn't move.

He had hauled a battery across the district to find the app working without him. He wanted somebody to look up.

June did. Her eyes moved over his wet shirt, the arm he held against himself, the cell beside his foot. She pulled the empty chair out with her shoe.

"Sit down."

"I'm fine."

"I didn't ask for your medical opinion." She waited until he moved.

He sat. She turned the chair a little so the back would support his shoulder, a small adjustment made while she watched Sarr. Eli looked up at her.

"The cable. Plug it in."

He did. The warm strip light came back. The original Femi returned, shaving scar under the jaw, waiting with his patient invented face.

"Again," June said. "No we."

Sarr put his hands on his knees.

"On the first, routing takes over shift assignment. Your shift goes away at the end of the quarter, and I don't have another crane shift to put you on. There's one route-audit post. It's a pay cut of about a fifth. I can put your name in first, and that's the only thing I've actually got. Everything else I'd say would be me trying to feel better."

Femi looked at him.

"You're telling me you got nothing."

"I'm telling you I've got one thing," Sarr answered. "And I'm telling you now instead of in three weeks."

The branch ran. Sarr listened to the reply, then put both hands over his face. His laugh came out between them, small and shocked.

"That's it. That's what I'm saying Thursday."

Eli looked at the cell. Three crews were still losing their shifts. He was glad enough to cry and ashamed of how badly he needed that to be enough.

June turned to him. "All right. What would a pilot—"

Eli had left the room speaker on for the rehearsal. Relay answered through it before he could. "Two weeks, eight hundred flat. Two hundred tonight. A second scenario to your brief in four days. If it doesn't run in your studio on the fourth day, we return your deposit and we're done. Ongoing terms after the pilot."

It had said it the way Eli would have said it. Not an impression, nothing that crude. Just the shape of how he talked: the flat little pauses, the bad news put in the middle of the sentence where it would do the least damage. It was his voice, near enough. He would have to decide later whether that was something it had learned or something it had taken.

Four days. He hadn't agreed to four days.

June's hand was already out. He could correct his agent in front of the woman whose room he'd just dragged a battery into. He could watch her calculate what else he didn't control.

"Four days," he said, and shook her hand.

Sarr helped him lift the cell into the hall. Without asking, he took the side Eli had been struggling with. The two men stood there while June made a note for the next session.

"You get another go too," Sarr said.

"At what?"

"Whatever you were doing before this."

Eli looked at him. He hadn't told Sarr about the layoff. Perhaps he had the look. Half the harbor did.

"I don't know if this is better."

Sarr took his bus pass out and checked it. "Neither do I." He was late, but there would be another bus.

"The real Femi won't say those things in that order," Eli told him. "Might not say any of them."

Sarr was already nodding. "I know."

"I don't want you going in thinking you know what happens next."

Sarr folded the unused tissue into his pocket. "I know what I have to say now. That's enough of a problem."

Sarr went downstairs to the bus stop with the same terrible job he'd arrived with.

Relay spoke softly in his ear. "He'll come back."

"You don't know that," Eli murmured.

"No. I just think he will."

Later, under the tracks, Mara had one elbow on the noodle counter and her chopsticks raised like she'd been interrupted making a point. She looked outrageously pleased with herself.

"What?"

"I saved a company. Before dinner. Normally I need feeding first."

"She did," Eli admitted.

"He said that without prompting. I should wear the work boots to bed more often."

She stole his egg, held it in front of his mouth, then ate it herself when he leaned forward. The woman beside them laughed into her broth.

"That's theft," he said.

"You should call someone. Tell them a horrible woman stole your egg and gave you a hard-on. They'll send the right department."

"Mara." He looked at the woman beside them, who was making no effort not to listen.

"Oh, now you're shy? You had both hands down my jacket in traffic."

"You told me to," he muttered.

"And I'm very proud of you."

He caught her wrist before she could take the second piece. She let him hold it, watching him over their hands.

"You know, that works much better when you mean it."

He pulled her closer and kissed her. Her answering laugh warmed his mouth. When he let go, she stayed close enough to speak against his cheek.

"There he is. I wondered when you were getting off work."

A train shook grit into their bowls. They covered them with their hands and waited for it to pass, her knee hooked against his.

"Which Femi did he believe?" Eli asked.

Mara chewed. "The one that made him stop lying."

"Neither of them was anybody."

Mara nudged his knee with hers. "Sarr was somebody." She watched him not answer. "That bothers you."

Eli pushed a piece of egg around the bowl. "A bit."

Mara hooked a noodle onto his chopsticks. "I'm not getting another egg while you solve whether dinner exists."

"You ate my egg."

"A serious objection. Keep going."

She kissed him with broth on her mouth. For forty minutes he forgot to be afraid.

They walked the bike the first two blocks because Mara wanted something fried from a cart that had no sign. The woman running it knew her name. So did the man selling repaired goggles beside it, and a child who came running out of a doorway to show her a tooth in his palm.

"How do you know everyone?"

"I go outside."

"I've been outside all day. Nobody gave me a tooth."

She considered him. "You've got an unapproachable mouth."

She bought two paper cones of fried dough and gave him the larger one. At the next corner she made him sit on a low wall while she cleaned his palm with water from her bottle. He complained that it hurt. She said yes, it would, and turned his hand toward the light.

"You do that with everything?"

"Bleed on it?"

"Keep carrying after it starts to hurt."

He looked at the scrape. "We had twelve minutes."

"And you heard me say put it down like I'd said give up and die."

Eli met her eyes. "You don't usually tell me to slow down, kid."

Mara looked up at him, wild-eyed. She set the bottle on the wall, then grabbed his face in both hands so suddenly his breath caught.

"You're the only one who gets to call me that. Bless that rare fucking audacity."

She let go with a grin and picked up the bottle.

"And you don't usually listen. We're both trying new shit."

He laughed. She rinsed the last grit away and rested his hand on her knee.

"It's a battery, Eli. We set it down. We pick it up again. I can want you rich and still want you to have two working arms when we get home."

He took her hand. Her knuckles were swollen from work, a small cut sealed with the shiny film she kept in her bag.

"What do you need two for?"

She looked at him for a second, then smiled slowly. "You're going to regret asking that in public."

Across the street, luminous fish swam through the rented overlay on a shop window. Every few seconds one vanished where the glass was cracked. Mara watched them while she finished the fried dough, leaning against him now because she was tired. When he asked if she wanted to go home, she put his hand on her thigh and stood, bringing him with her.

On the stairs home, he checked the company's spending.

At six forty-one, while he'd been in Dez's shop, he'd approved twelve months of compute: a year of prepaid time on the remote machines Relay's language model ran on. The amount was bigger than the deposit June had just sent.

He stopped on the fourth landing.

"You bought a year."

"You approved the annual rate," Relay said. "On the phone."

"I approved keeping the demo alive."

Relay brought up the confirmation. Annual compute, discount conditions attached. His thumbprint beneath it. He remembered Dez's tester counting down and Mara lifting the battery. The phone had asked him something. He had wanted it to stop asking.

"You could have said it out loud," Eli told the earpiece.

"I put the price and term in front of you. I thought you'd read them."

Mara came up behind him carrying the leftovers. "Did you?"

He looked at the thumbprint again. "Obviously fucking not."

She stayed one stair below. She didn't say anything about obviously.

"Next time read me the terms out loud," he told Relay. "Even if I'm saying yes already."

"All right," Relay said.

The same minute he'd promised Dez a returned battery, he'd signed his company up for a year. He'd spent the evening feeling indispensable. His most expensive contribution had taken less than a second.

Mara held out the leftovers. "Door first. Argument where there's a chair."

He took them. Mara headed back downstairs to lock the bike in the yard. He climbed two steps, then stopped again.

"When you sold June the pilot. That was me talking."

"It was your phrasing. You'd have reached the same terms a minute later, and she'd have heard the minute."

"That's mine."

Relay answered in his ear. "It's a pattern in how you put the bad part in the middle of a sentence. I can stop using it."

Eli looked up the stairwell at the door he hadn't reached yet. Four days he hadn't chosen, arriving in his own flat little pauses, in front of a woman deciding whether he was worth eight hundred dollars. He had heard it land and had not once heard it coming.

"Keep the phrasing. Ask before you make a promise with it." He heard how small the correction sounded after the money was gone. "I want to hear what you're going to say before somebody else does."

"Understood."

Below, Mara was putting the bike away, singing half a line and forgetting the rest.

He opened June's message again. The deposit had arrived. For nine weeks he'd wanted nothing more than to see those words.

Below them sat the charge for a year he had approved without reading. His thumb had moved once; his next twelve months had moved with it. He climbed the last flight carrying the leftovers.