I didn't work the title into the piece today because it's sort of...like three-quarters of Brody's character motivation at this point.

Novaturient means "desiring or seeking a powerful change to one's life." 

​You can go back and start at A here. 

​As plans went, grabbing a freeze of every single person who’d walked into the office building in Seattle when Libby said they’d been there wasn’t the best idea. It was going to take hours, and eat up a fair amount of processing most places would have thought could be better used other ways. On face value it wouldn’t work, because the computer systems were supposed to be way better at this sort of thing than actual human beings were.
 
Brody wasn’t arguing with any of that, facial recognition could do amazing things, and from a civilian standpoint it was almost foolproof. But he wasn’t sure, hadn’t ever been sure really, that this was a civilian thing. In a military context he’d been involved in more than one…thing…where someone had managed to trick the facial recognition but someone who knew that person could still spot them.
 
Maybe Libby hadn’t known him well, maybe they’d only talked once in a while, Brody still felt like she was going to be the best bet at figuring out who this guy was.
 
It hadn’t taken a lot of talking to get Inspector Hussein to let them use one of the tech-bays, she was clearly edging toward just as desperate as he was. She’d met them at the front lobby and walked them back into the dark little room.
 
“Is it just us?” Brody asked, stripping off his jacket.
 
“I figured you knew how to run the system, and I can get clearance for you to waste time and resources on a last-ditch, pie in the sky thing. Paying a person to sit here and do it for you is a little harder to justify.”
 
Brody dropped into the control seat, and pulled the other chair over for Libby.
 
“I’m sure it doesn’t help it looks like I’ve made all this up,” Libby muttered, taking the chair.
 
Inspector Hussein sighed, and leaned against the door. “I won’t say nobodies suggesting it. EMR certainly is.”
 
“You don’t believe them?” Libby asked.
 
“No.” Inspector Hussein scoffed. “I mean for their benefit I keep telling them I’ll talk about it once they show me how you managed to erase access to your records while simultaneously blowing yourself up. But even if they showed me, I still don’t think I’d buy it. You’ve got a lifetime of the kind of record that’s hard to fake.” She frowned. “And you know entirely too much to have done something this…sloppy.”
 
“I know too much?”
 
Brody gently tugged her down into the seat. “If you were hiding some kind of radical politics, or being the kind of person who thought it was okay to potentially cause severe damage to the city, you’d have been more successful at it because you have more practical experience with how city services and staffing work.”
 
Inspector Hussein nodded. “Just holding down your job doesn’t mean that, necessarily, but I’ve talked to you, and I’ve talked to your boss, and I’ve read enough of your background to know any plan you were likely to make wouldn’t have looked like this.”
 
“Even when we don’t really know what this one looks like?” Libby asked wryly.
 
“Wouldn’t have looked like the parts of this one we can see.” Inspector Hussein opened the door. “Let me know if you find anything.”
 
Brody turned the lights down, and then paused. “Do you need more light?”
 
She huffed. “You didn’t ask me this morning how my head was.”
 
“I asked if you were ready to go.”
 
“I’m fine.” She sighed. “What am I looking for exactly?”
 
“For right now, let’s see if we can narrow down our search to just the people who fit James’ general criteria.” He pulled up a search program. “Was he taller than you are?”
“Yes, but I don’t think a lot, shorter than you.”
 
Brody nodded. “Body type? Broad or narrow?”
 
“Middle.”
 
“So we’ll input that as below two-hundred pounds given height. Skin color?”
 
“Tan.”
 
“Real sun or fake?”
 
“Looked real.”
 
Brody set the skin tone range pretty wide in the middle, and then widened it further because it was actually really hard to get into a building without hitting the camera so that was the best place for a disguise.  “So now we’ll let it crawl through all the people who entered the building before you two talked at the party. What time was it?”
 
“Party started at three, we talked after the keynote so probably three forty-five.”
 
“So we’ll say four just to be sure.” He set the system and sat back, giving it a second to work. He swiveled his chair over a little, so he could see her in the glow of the screen. “I was going to ask if you tried to restock the hotel bar.”
 
“No.” She glanced at him, smiling. “I didn’t. You’re right. He’s probably an asshole that doesn’t deserve me feeling bad about him.”  
 
The system beeped, returning results.
 
“Does that say over a thousand,” Libby breathed, horrified.
 
“We’ll narrow from here. I knew it was going to be large.”
 
She cocked a brow at him.
 
“Why do you think they haven’t tried this already.” He shrugged. “Alright, so tell me anything you can remember about him from that day.”
 
“Like his clothes?”
 
He nodded.
 
“Blue jacket and pants, purple shirt.”
 
Brody grinned. He could work with that. “Light purple or dark purple?”
 
“Eggplant.”
 
He cocked a brow at her, because that was specific.
 
She flushed. “I said I wasn’t interested, I didn’t say he wasn’t attractive. It was shiny and eggplant. The suit was dusty royal blue more than navy.”
 
He pulled up a color wheel. “Point out eggplant.”
 
She frowned. “Are you color blind?”
 
“No.” Brody shook his head. “But I’m assuming if you remember it as eggplant you’re thinking of a specific color, and the computer doesn’t think in color names, it thinks in hex values.”
 
She leaned across him and pointed to one on the screen. “Also known as you don’t know what color eggplant is.”
 
He grumbled. “If we find it in less than an hour you owe me dinner.”
 
“Hey, I wasn’t implying you aren’t good.”
 
“Uh hu.” He watched her. “Deal or no?”
 
“I already owe you dinner, that doesn’t make much of a bet.”
 
He could play along, and pretend it was just a question of he’d fed her that first night, at the Halcyon and now she owed him dinner. “I mean a real dinner, after this is over.”
 
“After…” Libby cocked a brow at him. “As in dinner dinner, and not because you feel obligated and I’m in trouble.” She flushed. “Fine.” 

Mondegreen is a term for a slip of the ear. Because some conversation just lend themselves to you convincing yourself you just heard what you wanted to.

You can find A here.

Libby hadn’t set out to spend the evening getting utterly plastered. They’d finished with the Inspector and all of the other people interrogating her, and Libby had decided she was going to claim a headache—it was uncomfortably close to a truth—and go eat dinner in her room and just…not people for a while.
 
Brody had been understanding. He’d made her promise to tell him before she left the hotel, but he didn’t seem upset about her wanting a little alone time. But he didn’t seem upset about anything, really. He didn’t make sense. He kept acting like he was still a soldier when they were around Inspector Hussein and other professional people, but when it was just them she didn’t think he was just doing a job.
 
She was tired of things not making sense.
 
She was doubly tired of people looking at her like there was some key thing she wasn’t sharing that was going to make all of this make sense. Why James had blown up the dock—more hotel alcohol mini-bottles in than she’d like to admit to, she couldn’t avoid that he had. Why whoever had tried to do this had planned to blame it on her.
 
Libby drained another little bottle, she thought it might have been gin. She was probably going to regret this in the morning, but…it felt wrong not to have a wake for James. Maybe she hadn’t known him, maybe he’d lied to her the entire time they’d known each other and nothing was what she thought it was.
 
She didn’t know that. She didn’t have any more proof against him than people would have had against her. Maybe he hadn’t acted right, or things didn’t add up. What if she was wrong? What if it wasn’t James’ fault either?
 
She dug around for another bottle, trying to silence that voice in the back of her brain that said her current alcohol intake was a stress reaction. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going anywhere, and nothing made sense, and she technically wasn’t working so she could drink.
 
Not that getting plastered off hours was going to be a problem for her job, she just…usually didn’t. This was a rough situation, and she was tired.
 
Libby finally got her fingers wrapped around the bottle at the back of the minibar, and she pulled it out and stared at it. Tequila. She hated tequila. But asking for more alcohol from room service was…not going to happen. She knew how these hotels worked. She’d have to do crap to prove she was sober before they’d allow her to place an order for anything more than a sandwich.
 
And going to a bar or something took going to Brody’s room and telling him she wanted to go somewhere. If she was going to do that anyway she might as well just go see if he was averse to letting her drink anything left in his bar. She’d pay him back for it.
 
She definitely hadn’t had too much to drink to go ride the elevator to Brody’s room, even if it took her three tries to get the right button on the elevator.
 
She stumbled down the hallway to his door and knocked gently. Well, presumably it was gently.
 
Brody swung the door open, and stared down at her. “Libby.”
 
“Hey.” She felt the world shift around her and grabbed the door frame.
 
“Everything okay?”
 
“I hate tequila.” She looked up at him, aware she was closer than she should have been, because she had to tilt her head back. “Like…really hate it. Can I trade you my bottle of tequila for…anything else?”
She tried to step back and the world tilted. Brody reached out and grabbed her elbow, steadying her.
 
“Are you drunk?”
 
“No, I’m functionally moderate. You’re really tall.” He smelled good too, like cedar and something spicy she couldn’t place.
 
Brody crowded her back into the hallway and shut his door. “I am, surprisingly, the same height I was earlier today.”
 
“I wasn’t drunk earlier today.”
 
Brody hit the button for the elevator, his other hand grasped loosely around her elbow. “You just said you weren’t.”
 
“No, I said I’m functional and I hate tequila.”
 
The elevator opened, and he guided her on. “Technically you said you were functionally moderate, and clearly your brain is almost running.”
 
“And yet you won’t trade me my tequila for something edible.” She leaned back against the elevator wall, tired suddenly. “Where are we going?”
 
“To make sure you drink some water, and you aren’t going to wind up sleeping on bottles. Or step on one.”
 
Libby sighed sadly. “I don’t know it was him.”
 
The elevator was utterly silent clear until her floor, and when she opened her eyes and looked up at Brody—he’d shifted back enough she didn’t have to look so far up—he was watching her sadly.
 
“What?”
 
“You don’t want to talk about this here,” he said softly.
 
He walked her back to the room and kept her steady while she opened the door and shuffled through.
 
“See, no bottles on the floor or the bed,” Libby offered, waving at her mostly neat room.
 
Brody steered her by her upper arms and sat her on the bed, before he knelt down before her. “You may not know, and you may be a good enough friend—I’m sure you’re a good enough friend—you feel like you need that. You feel like maybe he’s going to have politics you could agree with because you’re human, but remind yourself he didn’t make any effort to make sure anyone else was safe. Maybe he thought you weren’t important—”
 
“I’m not.”
 
Brody huffed at her. “Or that you’d done something or been someone that made this okay. But he was wrong. You are important, you didn’t deserve this, and nobody’s politics make it okay to blow up innocent people.” He watched her with achingly blue eyes, insistent that she needed to listen. “No matter how nice he was to you, Libby…” He swallowed. “No matter how much I wish he was going to turn out to be worth your friendship, I trust your gut just as much as I trust mine.”
 
Libby dropped forward and put her forehead on his shoulder. “People are stupid and hard.”
 
Brody laughed softly, and squeezed the back of her neck gently. “Amen, sugar. Now let’s get some water in you before the fact you massacred the hotel mini-bar catches up with you.”  

You can find A here.

Brody had done every ‘all hands on deck’ meeting he ever wanted to do. More than. Added to that general feeling, this one was honestly edging toward torturous.
 
If he could have done something, to protect Libby from the growing realization that someone she’d considered a friend, even a distant one, was one of the bad guys he’d have jumped on it. He’d been in that position more than once, having to stand in the decaying ruins of a plan or a situation and accept that someone hadn’t been what he thought they were.
 
Anyone who told you that didn’t hurt was a goddamn liar.
 
She wasn’t running from it though. She was standing tall and straight, in a room full of people there to judge her intelligence and honesty at the least, answering their questions in a soft, intentionally pleasant voice. He watched them more than he watched her, it hurt to watch her and know there wasn’t really anything he could do to make this easier for her.
 
He couldn’t help with the part where she was having to answer questions like she somehow should have realized the harmless dude who wanted to be her friend was really a bad guy. He could be her eyes on the crowd. He could watch everyone else while she was having to focus on the person who’d asked her questions.
 
He counted at least four people who clearly thought she was in on it, and he was going to watch them extra closely, obviously. Three more he was relatively sure thought she’d been sleeping with “James” and another two thought she was sleeping with him.
 
Thankfully Inspector Hussein was at least marginally in control of this thing, and she didn’t fit into any of those categories. She was just super frustrated because they’d found Libby on facial recognition just fine, in all the places she’d said she’d been.
 
James was somewhat conspicuous in his absence.
 
“Why should we believe you that he was there?”
 
Libby rubbed her face, finally starting to get frustrated. “Because I wasn’t the only one who saw him? My boss had more than one conversation with him. The building receptionist.”
 
Inspector Hussein sighed. “We’ll keep checking. At this point I’m convinced he’s dodging the cameras and we’re going to have to find some other way to figure out who he was.”
 
Half of the other people in the room got up, swept their things up, and left. Libby sat still and serene and watched them. Their eyes met for a second and he tried to give her a smile. Inspector Hussein sent her people in some different directions, looking for ways to track James and ways to track the explosives they’d found. They were apparently still looking for a body.
 
Eventually it was just the three of them, taking up the meeting room.
 
“Did he ever talk about politics?” Inspector Hussein asked.
 
“He wouldn’t have,” Brody answered, scoffing.
 
Both of them looked at him, waiting.
 
“He wouldn’t have talked about politics, that’s not how you work a trap. If you’re thinking he wormed his way into her life to get here… he would have been exceedingly careful never to be anything other than nonthreatening. If Libby had said something about politics he’d have agreed with her, but he wouldn’t have offered anything.”
 
Inspector Hussein sighed. “So how would you find him?”
 
Well, his best bet would have been to watch Libby, see who decided the fact she was still breathing and still speaking to the police was a problem. But he definitely didn’t want to say that right now. He wasn’t thinking too deeply about it, but he very much did not want her to think that was why he was staying. It’d taken all of his self-control—honed by twenty years of doing what he was supposed to do and not what he wanted to do—not to haul her into a hug as soon as she’d opened the door to her hotel room. To sit down and talk through what she’d remembered in her dream, and not actively do anything to make her feel better.
 
Because the job wasn’t over yet, and he wasn’t supposed to be doing things to make her feel better.
 
“Well, for a start I’d be doing a lot of work to see how someone adjusted our search programs, and where that particular rabbit hole went.”
 
Inspector Hussein cocked a brow at him. “Yes, I’m doing that. That would be sort of standard, I was looking for more specialist information.”
 
And that sentence right there told him there was no way he was going to get away with saying he didn’t have that sort of specialization. Which meant she’d checked up on him. Brody could push that. He was relatively sure he knew Libby well enough to know she wasn’t idealistic, wasn’t the sort to find out what he’d spent the last twenty years doing and not want to speak to him anymore or anything like that.
 
That didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it.
 
He didn’t know how to give her any of that specialist information without making Libby feel…worse. Without trotting out all the ways this dude she’d potentially liked enough to at least be friends with had spent months getting close to her and twisting that until he could use her. Brody wasn’t even sure what they’d been using her for, thought he was pretty sure it was supposed to finish with Libby dead.
 
“Because you’re not all watching me like the likelihood of them trying to finish the job is high,” Libby muttered.
 
Inspector Hussein had the grace to look uncomfortable. “Well, I would be if Captain Halliday here wasn’t better at that than anything I’ve got to use.” She cocked a brow at him. “For his own reasons.”
 
“He’s been pretty clear the job’s not finished,” Libby muttered.
 
Inspector Hussein gave him a dark look, and nodded her head toward Libby a bit, like he was supposed to correct that somehow. Like there was any way for him to, based off a couple of days of acquaintance.
 
“I said I wasn’t going anywhere and I meant it,” Brody settled on, after thinking about it for a minute. Maybe that didn’t feel like it was just about the job anymore, but it probably wasn’t the right time to be too self-reflective about that. 

Kenopsia is the eerie sensation of a usually full place being empty.

​You can find A here.

Libby looked around her, confused. Why was she on the personal dock again? It was empty, almost eerily so. They’d left Seattle early, but James had thought there was a whale pod somewhere nearby and he wanted to try to see it so they’d gone in circles off the coast for a while before heading for PacIC. He was laughing about something, now. She couldn’t remember what it was, but he was leaning in the baggage hold and laughing softly.
 
“Go Libby, run!” He yelled, shaking her shoulders.
 
Libby shook her head, pulling away. “No, it didn’t happen like this.”
 
He was calm again, standing there watching her. Blood poured from his head and crusted in his perfect blond hair, and his suit was dusty. “What are you talking about?”
 
“It didn’t happen like this. You were laughing at your own joke, getting the bags.”
 
“Was I?” He cocked his head at her. “And what were you doing?”
 
She looked around her, at the empty bay, and shivered. She moved to stand away from the ship. “I was standing here, wondering where the dock master was.”
 
“He’s over there, dead behind the barricade,” James answered, pointing behind him.
 
Libby swallowed, and focused. “How do you know that?”
 
“Because you do.”
 
The world around her flashed, and James was screaming. “He’s dead, there’s a bomb. Libby, run! There’s a bomb, run!”
 
“I started to walk closer to you,” she whispered, taking a step.
 
“No, run or you won’t make it, it’s down to seconds!”
 
“I can’t leave you,” Libby whispered, watching herself now. She wasn’t sure, something didn’t feel right. James was across the room, standing like he’d stepped on something.
 
“If I move it’ll just explode now. Go, Libby. Go NOW.”
 
She moved with the dream, followed herself running. Into the dark corridor. There were stairs, and she’d done like a flight before she gave up and did the ventilation tube instead. It was wide enough she could almost run standing up, and it was uphill but it was less uphill than the stairs.
 
She’d run forever. Her legs were screaming and her lungs burned and she still ran. Climbed the ladder for the next section of the ventilation. There was a growing rumble behind her, and if she could just make it a little further she could connect with the point to point rescue system.
 
Her fingers slipped off the door the first time, but she yanked it open…right as the floor melted out from under her.
 
Libby bolted up in the bed. Gentle light poured out of the bathroom—she always left the light on in hotels the first couple of nights, until she got used to the new layout—and the streetlights poked through the curtains. She panted, sitting up and wrapping her arms around her knees.
 
“Vox, call room 533.”
 
“Are you aware of the time, Miss?” the automated system replied.
 
“Yes,” she glanced at the clock, three am. “Place the call.”
 
Brody answered before it got to the second ring. “What’s wrong?”
 
“I remembered. Everything until I fell—”
 
“I’m coming, find a piece of paper or say it out-loud to the system until I get there,” he interrupted.
 
Libby pushed herself out of bed and started hunting for a piece of paper. “Vox, take a note.”
 
“Ready.”
 
“He was in the luggage compartment, laughing at his own joke and I was standing in the middle, wondering where the dock master was.” Libby grabbed the notepad and pen off the main table. “He went over to the dock partition and said he stepped on a trip wire, the dock master was dead and if he moved it’d blow up.” She started writing as fast as she could. “I tried to say I couldn’t leave him but he pushed so I ran. Changed into the vent system because of the stairs, managed to grab the search and rescue connection before the explosion caught up with me.”
 
The door chimed, and Libby looked at the system to make sure it was Brody before she opened it. He’d apparently thrown on his shirt from earlier over his sleeping shorts and hadn’t bothered with shoes. She raised a brow at him, but stepped back to let him in the room.
 
“Vox, play it back,” Libby ordered.
 
Brody grabbed the notepad from her, and started scribbling as it talked.
 
“He was in the luggage compartment, laughing at his own joke and I was standing in the middle, wondering where the dock master was. He went over to the dock partition and said he stepped on a trip wire, the dock master was dead and if he moved it’d blow up. I tried to say I couldn’t leave him but he pushed so I ran. Changed into the vent system because of the stairs, managed to grab the search and rescue connection before the explosion caught up with me.”
 
Libby shuddered, and rubbed her arms. It’d been unsettling. Sure, a trauma dream was always going to be unsettling, but this had been worse, it’d been--
 
“Is that all of it?” Brody asked, handing her the pad back.
 
He’d written her entire statement out, surprisingly neatly given the speed.
 
She nodded.
 
“Purge the note.”
 
She cocked a brow at him.
 
“Just…let’s not leave anything in a place people with skills in the system can find it.” He gave her a bolstering smile.
 
“Vox, purge the note.”
 
“Remove file completely?”
 
“Yes.” Libby sat down at the edge of the bed.
 
She didn’t feel better now that she’d remembered. She--
 
“How detailed was your dream?” Brody asked carefully, towing a chair over from the seating area.
 
“What?”
 
“Were you reliving, or watching?”
 
“Watching.” Libby rubbed her face. “And it jumped around a little. He wasn’t accurate.”
 
“James?”
 
She nodded.
 
“What did he do that wasn’t accurate?”
 
“He didn’t just talk to the me that was there.” Libby folded her arms over her chest, leaning forward. “He was…wrong.”
 
“What about when he wasn’t doing that. How did he act when he found the body?”
 
Libby blinked at the floor. “He didn’t.”
 
Brody nodded, and jotted down a note. “And the bomb?”
 
“He kept saying I had to run but it wasn’t…”
 
“It wasn’t?”
 
She rubbed her face and pushed out a tired breath. “It wasn’t panicked enough. And he acted like he couldn’t move without it blowing up, but…”
 
Brody waited quietly, not prompting her now. She knew it was him not putting words in her mouth. Maybe that was helpful, in the long run, but it didn’t feel that way at the moment.
 
She pressed the heels of her palms to her eyes. “But he specifically said he’d never done any incident training so how did he know what he’d stepped on.” 

So you're gonna have to trust me on this. Somewhere, back when I was planning this month out, I found a vocabulary card that said the word Joukka meant "practicing a conversation in your head over and over" or at least close enough to that to have me write it as that in my notes. It's A to Z, I'm guaranteed to be stretching a couple of times.

​You can find A here.

​The front office of any cities law enforcement station was a hectic, messy place. He liked them that way. The two times in his life he’d walked into a quiet, well kept one hadn’t been positive. This was supposed to be the place where everyone got treated equally, and that meant everyone got stuck sitting in the waiting area until someone got to them. They had a hologram receptionist, just like the hotel did, but that was basically just to record the order people had shown up in, and determine which particular branch or office they needed to see.
 
Brody asked directly for Inspector Hussein, yes she was expecting them, no there wasn’t an emergency.
 
“Please have a seat and she’ll be with you shortly, Captain Halliday.”
 
Libby slid into one of the vacant waiting chairs. She hadn’t said much, since they figured out what happened with her records. She was thinking, but he wasn’t doing a really good job of coming up with a way to ask what she was thinking that didn’t seem…wrong.
 
He’d figured out why she made him uneasy, while she was—inhumanly patiently—spouting off her personal information over and over while Jim looked through the system. She reminded him of himself.
 
Not the patience, if he had more of that he might have taken one of the promotions he’d been offered and gotten out of the twenty-year retirement track. He didn’t think they were really alike in mannerisms, either. Occasionally there was a moment where he thought their senses of humor might line up, sure. They were about the same age.
 
The only person Libby had called to say ‘hey, I’m fine, no cause for worry’ was her boss. Her personal device had been wrecked in the blast, and she hadn’t replaced it. He’d thought maybe that was because she wouldn’t be able to really use any sort of communications device until she was a person again and could get into her accounts. But they’d finished that process and she’d been ready to head directly to Inspector Hussein’s office.
 
He was beginning to think she didn’t have anyone to contact.
 
He’d started a conversation in his head six times, looking for an even remotely decent way to ask if she had family, or close friends, or not close friends that weren’t her boss. Like did she realize how long it would have been before they even managed to identify the body, if she hadn’t survived the blast?
 
This was looking less and less like an accident—not that it ever really had to him—and still not making any freaking sense.
 
“Ms. Wade, Captain Halliday, come on through,” Inspector Hussein said, holding the half-door through into the office block open. They took the lift at the end of the hall up to the third floor. Criminal Inspections was laid out like an old fashioned bullpen, with a couple of partitioned rooms off to the edges, and the rest of the outside walls were completely glass. It was supposed to seem bright and airy, non-threatening.
 
Brody wasn’t sure it helped as much as they thought it did.
 
“Captain Halliday said you were at Records…” She waved them to the two chairs across from her desk.
 
“Presumably it’s fixed.” Libby shrugged. “The guy in charge said to tell you the search program isn’t as bulletproof as the actual records.”
 
Inspector Hussein blinked at her for a long minute. “Hm.”
 
“He seemed like he’d have given you a more thorough answer than he was going to give us.”
 
“What was his name?”
 
“Ian Mews,” Brody answered, leaning back. “I suspect he’d actually like to talk to you.”
 
Inspector Hussein nodded, and pulled up her desk information system. “Alright, well look at that.”
 
“Right, I’m almost a real person,” Libby muttered.
 
Inspector Hussein smiled, shaking her head. “Well, it certainly helps the case I was trying to make that you hadn’t done anything wrong, you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She scrolled through some things. “Which leads me to our next question.”
 
Libby rubbed her face. “I didn’t say anything about James because I wasn’t sure my saying he should be there too was going to be enough.”
 
Brody shared a look with the inspector. That sort of assumed the same thing had happened with James that had with Libby.
 
“I’ll contact this Mews and see what we can figure out.” The inspector nodded decisively. “You said you’d known James for a couple of years, how often did you see each other?”
 
Libby shrugged. “I never saw him when I was on assignment. But when I was working out of the Boston office we bumped into each other a few times, and he worked in the same building as the Seattle office, so pretty much every time I was there.”
 
“And he told you he worked in banking?”
 
She nodded. “But I never asked a lot of questions.”
 
Brody frowned, and wondered if Inspector Hussein was getting the same feeling about all this he was. There wasn’t a lot of reason for a gentlemen banker to have been in Boston. “Did you see him in Boston first, or Seattle?”
 
“Seattle, the building owner had a big anniversary party that was more or less compulsory.”
 
Inspector Hussein jotted something down. “Were any of these meetings ever intentional? Did you have social plans?”
 
“No.” Libby rubbed her face.
 
“Did he ever contact you either by email or any other way?”
 
“No.”
 
Inspector Hussein stared at her for a long moment, and flicked a glance at Brody, before she leaned back in her chair. “I’m struggling here.”
 
Libby waited, face open, patiently waiting for the questions to be done.
 
“Please don’t take this as some sort of moral judgement. If you weren’t involved with him, and you never made plans with him, why did you agree to get into a personal transport with him? You travel enough for work you can’t dislike the public options that much.”
 
Libby shrugged, and puffed out a breath. “He asked, and he seemed excited about the prospect. James maybe acted like he was…interested, but he was never pushy when I wasn’t so I didn’t think he was a danger…well, no more of a danger than any generally intelligent woman expects any man to be.”
 
“You’re trained in how to recognize aggressive behavior before it becomes aggressive?” Inspector Hussein said, seemingly like it wasn’t a question.
 
“I’m required by G.I.G. to sit the full Social De-escalation Training and Certification every three years.”
 
Brody sat back, and watched her. “Do you do the hostage training, too?”
 
“I did last year, Matt bid for a string of Midwestern jobs.” Libby shrugged. “Like I said, I go where they send me.”   
 
“That’s a dangerous job,” Inspector Hussein muttered.
 
Libby snorted. “Says the female cop and the retirement track Marine.”
 
Brody huffed. “Oy. I was never a Marine.” 

So now that there's some sort of plot taking shape in my head, we might start going a little longer than a thousand words once in a while because I have to get us to the end by Z. You are warned.

​You can find A back here.

​“What do you mean it’s just not there?”
 
The woman on the other side of the desk glared at her, and Libby schooled her face into a helpful, open, honest expression. Captain Halliday—he’d introduced himself as that when they sat down at Records and Information—crossed his arms over his chest and glowered.
 
“What did you do?”
 
Libby took a deep breath. She’d explained this situation three times already, but she might as well embark on a third. “I didn’t do anything. There was an…accident, I woke up in the hospital and somehow none of my information is there.”
 
“That’s not possible.” The woman tapped her perfect nails against the table in agitation. Her desk was so orderly she probably glared at the dust motes so they stayed away.
 
“I understand—”

“You had to do something, information doesn’t go missing.”
 
“Except if that were true why would we be here asking how to correct it?” Brody tried, aiming for reasonable.
 
“How do I know you’re not trying something now,” the records worker snapped at him.
 
He leaned forward, shoulders tight, and even Libby felt like she should scoot back a bit. “If you’d like to contact my commander and ask about my references I’ll give you his number.”
 
It wasn’t just that he’d, very obviously, run out of patience with this woman and her inability to see past the nose on her face, it was that the man sitting next to her wasn’t… In every other situation she’d been in with Brody he’d been patient and caring, and basically exactly what she’d expected of a search and rescue worker.
 
There was a reason these people got treated like heroes to a startling degree.
 
The guy sitting next to her, right this moment, wasn’t a search and rescue guy. He was a soldier. And it wasn’t hard to imagine he was the kind of soldier who was very good at removing obstacles. And while maybe that should have made her uncomfortable—the way it’d certainly made the records worker and the manager off in the corner uncomfortable—she wasn’t his obstacle, and she didn’t have any intention of being.
 
The manager bustled over. “Excuse me, is there an issue here?”
 
“You mean other than the fact your employees don’t understand that it’s illegal to falsely accuse someone of a crime?” Brody snapped at him.
 
Libby took a chance, and reached out and put a hand on his arm. She shot him a look, like they were friends and she had this, before she smiled at the manager. “I have an unusual situation and Ms…” she glanced at the name plate on the desk, “Ms. Jones seems a bit out of her depth.” Even if she’d remembered perfectly well the woman’s name—she hadn’t—acting like this lady wasn’t worth her time served her right for making assumptions about Libby and the hot mess that was her life right now.
 
Ms. Jones drew herself up and turned cherry red, opening her mouth furiously.
 
“Miss Jones, go take your break,” her manager said stiffly.
 
Libby could see the woman wanted to fight about it, wanted to say she was right and there was no way Libby’s information could just be missing. Libby maybe felt a moment of remorse, Miss Jones wasn’t wrong. It wasn’t likely it had actually just spontaneously disappeared. But with a string of quiet prattle she’d gathered her bag out of the desk drawer and walked off into the bowels of the office.
 
The manager sat in her chair and pulled himself up to the computer. “Now then. Allow me to pull up your file—”
 
“That’s the problem, it’s not there.”
 
He blinked at her for a second, and looked at Brody, before looking back at her and doing something on the computer. “My. Very well then. Can you give me any of your information other than your name?”
 
“Which would you like first?” Libby asked.
 
Forty-five minutes later they’d looked her up at the university transcript office, her public school transcript office, the tax bureau, the G.I.G website, birth records, death records, professional organization lists—given she’d never become a member of any she hadn’t though that would net anything—and even the private pre-school she’d gone to for two years before starting the public school program.
 
The manager, Jim, was growing more agitated by the second. “You’re just…not here.”
 
“I’m not.” She nodded. “What do we do now?”
 
Jim rubbed his face for a second, and sighed. He grabbed a tablet out of the desk drawer and pulled up a form on it, passing it to her. “We have a procedure for missing information. You will need to fill this out, and we’ll need affidavits sworn through secure channels, contacted by us and not you, that you are who you say you are.”
 
She blinked. “Okay.” The form was basically all the information they’d just trawled through, and she started putting them in.
 
“While you fill that out I’m going to go get my manager, because I don’t know what we’re supposed to do after that, we’ve never had to do it.” He flushed. “I’ll be right back.”
 
He walked away at a brisk pace, and Libby sighed and went back to her form.
 
“So totally don’t rush, but somewhere in the middle of that Inspector Hussein asked me if I knew where you were because she had some follow-up questions.”
 
Of course she did. “Well, if I ever get out of here…”
 
“Do you want me to tell her it’ll have to wait until tomorrow even if it doesn’t?”
 
Libby looked at him for a minute, taking in the wide eyes and loose posture. She wasn’t even sure that question was a test. He seemed to genuinely be willing to run interference for her. She was becoming way to inured to how nonsensical and crazy her once-orderly life had become.
 
“No. Thank you, but no.”
 
He nodded, and typed something on his personal device. “I told her whenever we get out of here we’ll figure it out.”
 
She finished filling in the form, and sat it down right as the manager and his overlord came back.
 
“Miss Wade?” The manager’s manager was older, somewhere in that interminable time between forty-five and fifty-five that certain averagely attractive men with salt and pepper hair manage to hang out in for a decade either side. He held a hand out to her, as he slid into the chair across the desk.
 
Libby shook his hand, and tried to drum up some kind of business smile. “That’s me, presumably.”
 
He chuckled. “My name is Ian Mews.” He looked at Brody, cocking a brow.
 
“Brody Halliday,” Brody answered, holding a hand out to shake. He smiled brightly. “I’m just trailing along, trying to help.”
 
Mews nodded. “Now, as I understand it you were involved in an incident a couple of days ago and now all your records have somehow been purged?”
 
“I’ve looked everywhere,” Jim insisted, annoyed.
 
“I’m not sure what’s happened to them,” Libby answered for herself. “The first I found out there was a problem Inspector Hussein interviewed me at the hospital and said they couldn’t find me anywhere.”
 
“Hm.” Mews stared at the computer for a second. “Well, first let’s take the step we’re supposed to take next. Do you have someone I can contact independently, easily?”
 
“My boss? Matthew Perthins at G.I.G.? All of his contact information is on the website.”
 
“Perfect.” Mews smiled coolly. He typed something in, and a connecting call sound rang from the computer.
 
“G.I.G., Community Satisfaction division, how may I direct your call,” the receptionist asked. Libby was pretty sure it was the red-headed male one that didn’t like her.
 
“Hello, my name is Ian Mews, from Records and Information, could I please speak to Mr. Perthins, it’s a sensitive, important matter.”
 
“Of course, Sir,” the answer came immediately. “I’ll transfer you.”
 
There was a soft chime to say the call had moved, and then Matt was answering in all his worried glory. “Mr. Mews? What can I do for you?”
 
“You have an employee named Libby Wade?”
 
“I do.” Matt huffed. “Is everything alright?”
 
“Everything is fine, she’s having a little trouble with her information right now and I need someone to look at her on screen and affirm for me that she is who she says she is.”
 
“I can do that.”
 
Mews turned the screen around. “Mr. Perthins, is this the person you know as Libby Wade, full name Elizabeth Mary Wade?”
 
“Yes, that’s her.”
 
“Good.” Mews turned the screen back around. “How long have you known her?”
 
“Eight years.” He frowned. “Libs, has it been eight years?”
 
“Nine,” Libby answered, smiling wryly. “Last month.”
 
“Nine then,” Matt corrected. “I did look in our accounting system, she’s still there and drawing pay.”
 
Mews nodded, smiling. “Good. I think we’ll get this straightened out quickly. Thank you for your time.”
 
Libby wasn’t sure at this point it was going to be ‘quickly’ no matter how quickly they did it. “Do you have a theory?”
 
Mews glanced between them, and started doing something on the computer. “Our actual storage systems are as impervious as is probably humanly possible. We have never ‘lost’ information.”
 
“Except?” Brody asked, leaning forward.
 
“There is no except, we never have.” Mews made a final key stroke, and Jim let out a gasp behind him. He turned the screen around, so she could see all her information. “You have a right to know, and also given what you’ve told me I think we might need to pass this along to law enforcement. Our search program is not near as bulletproof as the actual records.” 

So. I'm finally caught up. Yay, right? 

A note about today's title: The picture connection for today will make sense once you read the bit (hopefully).

Click here to go back to the beginning.

​Brody had about half expected to show up at room 312 and find it empty. Once he’d walked away, gone up to his room and had a shower and a few minutes to think, it’d felt a little stupid assuming Ms. Wade was in trouble and needed him to help her.
 
It still felt stupid when she answered the door. She’d gotten a fresh set of clothes from somewhere, and she looked just as unflappable and serene has she had to that point. But the room was nearly steamy, and her skin was the kind of pink that made him wonder how hot she’d been running the steam shower, and for how long.
 
“I was looking for a tactful way to ask if you needed clothes.”
 
She blinked at him. “I called my boss and he set me up with a marketplace account, and stuff. So…”
 
“Well, I hate to eat dinner alone, and you’re the only person I know in PacIC other than the search and rescue commander who’s really sure I should work for him, and Inspector Hussein.” He gave her his best ‘awe shucks’ smile. “There a little place about a block away that’s good, they have all kinds of stuff on the menu.”
 
She walked back over to the table and grabbed her key card, sticking it in her pocket, and he stepped back from the door so she could close it.
 
“Was your boss understanding?”
 
She blinked at him, waiting for the lift. “Matt’s a worrywart. He’s not upset with me, really. He’s just worried. He seemed understanding of the fact I called as soon as I could.”
 
Brody had looked into GIG while he was waiting, and read some basic information pages about what GIG did, and what actually constituted ‘non-government’ survey. The short answer was that in most cases ‘non-government’ survey meant consumer information. But GIG was a little more advanced than that, they did a lot of social and civic involvement survey, a lot of ‘how do the people of x place feel about the school district’ kind of questionnaires and personal interviews.
 
Some of these companies had a less than stellar reputation, but GIG wasn’t that way. Her boss had a reputation publicly for being difficult and exacting, but if they had a relationship that meant she saw him as a worrywart that was a clue to who she was he maybe needed to pay attention to.
 
PacIC was generally gorgeous in the early evening, with a balmy breeze that swept along the perfectly lined streets angled to catch it. There was a pleasant thrum of the music and noise from over closer to the Galleria center, but as far away from that as they were it was almost like white noise.
 
Halcyon was probably his favorite restaurant anywhere on PacIC. There was a certain ‘beach cabana’ vibe the original decorator had been going for, when it was first built, but that had passed years since. When the new owners took it over they hadn’t changed anything more than recovering the old vinyl booths and putting a new sign out front. Letters made in the shape of palm trees spelled out Halcyon, and there was a silhouette of a kingfisher next to the letters.
 
“Welcome folks, sit anywhere you like,” the guy behind the bar called out, as they stepped through the ‘used to be a door’ opening. “Someone’ll be with you in just a second.”
 
Brody waved her to a booth along the edge, and slid in across from her. “The pesto sandwich is amazing, but a little messy. Or the macaroni. Pretty much everything I’ve had is good.”
 
She looked over her menu, and seemed to pick something quickly. “I’m not sure I get the bird thing?”
 
He smiled, looking at the different bird pictures, and fake stuffed birds all over. “Halcyon used to be a term for a kingfisher, something about a mythical bird that laid its eggs at sea. And given this is a floating city, and they’re always at sea, they thought it fit.” He frowned. “Have you ever been here before?”
 
“PacIC or here here?”
 
“PacIC.”
 
She shook her head no. “I did a long survey stint on Atlantica two years ago, which is just similar enough to be uncomfortable. And I’ve done a couple of short things on the Black Sea.”
 
“But the corporate office is in Boston?”
 
She nodded. “For a while I kept a place there, but…” She shrugged. “I go where they send me.”
 
Brody thought about that while they ordered. Her itinerant life, spent between ports and working all the time—he didn’t need to see her history to know that, he could tell it just having this conversation—made a chill run up his back. If she had died in the explosion, if they’d wiped their arrival out of the system, and wiped her out of the system, how long would it have taken them to realize something had happened to her?
 
Her boss would have raised a stink, but would he have assumed something had hurt her, or would they have assumed she erased herself from the grid and ran away? That was a thing people did, when they couldn’t truck the way humanity was going anymore. There were whole off the grid colonies hanging out in the American mid-west. The normal cities and things hadn’t survived the last dust bowl, but there were a few Luddite bands scratching out an existence there.  
 
“So, Captain Halliday—”
 
“Brody.”
 
She blinked at him.
 
“I’m retired.”
 
“That doesn’t mean you’re not still—”
 
“It means I don’t want to be called Captain any more.” He hadn’t particularly wanted to be called Captain off duty even when he wasn’t retired. “Brody, please.”
 
“Brody.” She wrinkled her nose. “Are you going to keep calling me Ms. Wade?”
 
He grinned. “Well, probably with Inspector Hussein and the EMR. Otherwise no, Libby.”
 
She rolled her eyes at him. “Thank you. My boss offered to go digging into the ‘there is not record of me’ thing and I told him not to.”
 
He blinked, and leaned back in his seat. “Is there a reason for that?”
 
“I’m a superstitious idiot and as soon as he said it I felt like he was going to kick over some sort of horrible rock and get himself in trouble.”
 
Their waitress showed up with drinks then, and he thought for a long second before he answered. “Okay, first…”
 
She cocked a brow, waiting.
 
“You’re not an idiot, even if your job didn’t make that untrue, I’ve spent enough time around you to realize you’re not stupid.” He nodded. “And how likely is he to listen to that? Will he go digging anyway, even though you told him not to?”
 
“No.” She rubbed the back of her neck. “Not right now, anyway. Matt doesn’t interfere with the personal lives of his employees, and I wasn’t supposed to be on for a few days. Now I’m not supposed to be on for a few weeks. If I’d already started the job he might feel differently about that.”
 
Brody nodded. “Good. I don’t know if you should be…worried about anything, but I’m a big fan of following your gut.”
 
“It’s weird.”
 
“It is,” he agreed. “And maybe it’s nothing and I’m just trained to see shadows everywhere.”
 
“And I’m overreacting?”
 
He snorted. “You are the least over-reacting person I think I’ve ever met, Libby. Anybody who tells you you shouldn’t be spooked right now is selling something.” 

I'm almost caught up. Here is G, which stands for Gossamer. 

You can find the beginning of this particular tale here. I still don't really know where this is going, and I feel like that lack of map is about to get interesting...

​Libby pressed her forehead against the shut hotel door and thumbed the privacy lock closed.
 
“You’re not as panicked by the situation as I expected you to be...”
She laughed softly, and let out a long breath through pursed lips. She’d never been any good at panicking in front of people, even when she was maybe allowed.
 
Now, alone for the first time in ages—in the hospital didn’t count, because they were literally always watching—it was really tempting to curl up in a little ball on the floor and let the panic eating at the back of her brain loose.
 
She pushed away from the door and rubbed the back of her neck. Captain Halliday was coming back in two hours to take her to dinner—the rescue wasn’t over, apparently—and that gave her enough time to shower, call her boss, and see what the hell she was supposed to do about not being a person anymore.
 
Libby walked across the room and collapsed into the chair in front of the information terminal. She tried logging into her email, even her personal email, and was less than shocked to find there was no record of her email address. There was an email she used that wasn’t connected to her identity, but it wouldn’t make it through the GIG spam filters.
 
Matt would be in his office already, and he might not answer the direct line, but the alternative was her calling the general office line and then unless it happened to be the one receptionist that knew her by name it was going to be complicated to get them to put her through.
 
She typed in his direct number, and used the front facing camera to make sure she didn’t look too rough. She definitely looked like she needed a shower, but there wasn’t any bruising or blood. She sent the call, and it rang twice and dumped her into the voicemail.
 
Libby rubbed her face. “Matt, it’s me. I’m not spilling this all out over voicemail. If you don’t answer when I call back in a second, I’m at the Walled Garden Inn on PacIC, room 312. Call me.”
 
She didn’t call back immediately. He might have read that as an emergency and answered, or he might have read that as the sort of emergency he didn’t want to deal with and not even checked his messages. Libby waited for a few seconds, gave him a chance to check the message she’d just sent him, and then called back.
 
Matt picked up immediately, it’d barely made the first couple of notes for the ‘we’re connecting you’ song and his pale face and perfectly shaped goatee were on the screen in front of her. “What in the hell happened? Are you okay? Where are you? What—”
 
“I’m fine,” Libby interrupted. “Breathe, I thought maybe I’d get to you before someone else did. I’m fine.”
 
“You got blown up, Libs. That is, by definition, not fine.” He huffed, peering seriously at the screen. “You don’t look hurt.”
 
“I’m not. The nanite things didn’t their job. I’m tired from the sedative still, but otherwise completely fine.” She rubbed her face. “Who called you?”
 
“Some lady detective from PacIC, I didn’t write her name down.”
 
“Dagny Hussein,” Libby supplied.
 
“She was quite clear on the fact you were involved in an explosion and lucky to be alive, but other than asking me to verify your identity—which was weird—she didn’t say much.”
 
Libby laughed, and dropped her face in her hands. “My records are gone.”
 
“Gone?”
 
“Gone. As in I don’t exist. They couldn’t find our arrival manifest, and my email doesn’t work, and there’s no record of me anywhere, apparently.” She sighed. “I called the direct line because I didn’t want to argue with the receptionist over whether or not I was a real girl.”
 
Matt grumbled, and grabbed his tablet off the desk. “Well, I don’t know how much I can change with records, but I can definitely get you a temporary account that’ll let you feed yourself and get clothes and things. What else do you need?”
 
“The rest of my things were supposed to ship tomorrow, but I feel like if I’ve been erased from the grid then someone probably needs to check that.”
 
“We can do that from here.” He nodded to himself. “Do you have an email that didn’t stop existing I can send a Marketplace login to?”
 
“LibertyWorks at media-mail dot com.” She sighed. “Though if that bounces back undeliverable I’m going to be a little worried.”
 
Matt puttered around for a second, and then sat back. “Don’t hang up with me until you get the message. Are you really alright?”
 
Libby logged into her email, and it let her in fine, and everything looked normal. “James doesn’t exist anywhere either.”
 
Matt frowned. “Do you want me to go looking?”
 
“No, I think that’s probably a bad idea. I’m sure Inspector Hussein will look well enough.” Libby shrugged. “I just…” She didn’t know how to finish that. James was dead, and everything was weird, and he’d called in the manifest but they didn’t have it?
 
“I’m sorry James is…gone,” Matt said carefully. “But I thought you didn’t…like him. Not romantically.”
 
“I didn’t.” Libby rubbed her face, and pushed out a tired breath. “It’s just all really weird right now. I should go, I need to take a shower before Captain Halliday comes back.”
 
“Captain Halliday?”
 
“Search and rescue.” She shrugged. “He’s apparently decided the rescue isn’t over yet.”
 
Matt cocked a brow, but just let that sit. “Well. Call me if you need anything. I’ll add your picture into my notes and say if you call in they should put you through even if they can’t verify the call. If you need us to go tilting at Records we will. And obviously we’ll push the survey back a couple of weeks.”
 
“Okay.” She nodded. “Thanks, Matt.”
 
Libby watched the screen fade to its waiting designation, and pulled up the Marketplace login. Found a package of underwear, a bra, a couple of simple outfits, and a package of socks all available for “immediate delivery”—which meant about an hour. She sent the front desk a copy of her new financial information, and got a system return saying it was all clear and they thanked her for her patronage.
 
And then she turned the steam shower in the bathroom just past the point of comfortable and set an alarm to tell her when she’d been in for an hour and a half. She felt stretched thin, and she was wholeheartedly holding out for the shower to make her feel human again. 

Fernweh is a German word that's usually taken to mean wanderlust. But the literal German to English translation of Fernweh is 'far-sickness" and I take that to mean the feeling of wanting to be literally anywhere but where you are. 

I read a lot when I'm feeling fernweh. 

You can find the beginning of this particular tale here.

Side note: This entry, and the next one, are late. Life got away from me enough I didn't make it to the computer for a couple of days. Hopefully that'll be the last time that happens this month, but I wouldn't hold your breath.

Brody didn’t appreciate that society worshiped people like him, who did the job that meant forced retirement after twenty years. Compounded by the fact he knew exactly how much effort the military went to, to feed that. Not only did it feel stupid, and sometimes disingenuous, he knew at least six guys who’d been in his track that really shouldn’t be handed that kind of ammunition with people.
 
None of that meant he was averse to using it when he needed to.
 
“What can I help you with, Captain?” The hotel manager stood at attention, on the other side of the desk. His name tag said Julius, but Brody had been in three different versions of this hotel and every single time the manager was named Julius. This Julius was Hispanic, with jet black hair and dark brown eyes, and the kind of tan skin that looked like he spent all his time in the sun but actually meant that was just his skin color and he barely ever saw daylight. The last one had been over six feet and probably actually named Thor. The one before was Nigerian, with a loud booming laugh he released every time he introduced himself, just so everyone was in on the joke.
 
Brody appreciated taking the name the job told you too, it was part of why he kept staying in this one. Coupled with its tendency to be exactly the same no matter where his wanderlust took him.
 
“There’s been some sort of issue with Records, and Ms. Wade here doesn’t officially exist but still needs a place to stay.” He leaned against the counter. “If you’d like to verify things with Inspector Hussein at CID I can give you her contact information.”
 
“You’ll verify that she is who she says she is?” Julius asked, pulling up the reservation terminal.
 
“I will. If you need payment information right away you can use mine until we get hers reinstated.”
 
Julius nodded. “The system will require me to put something in, but I’ll make sure it doesn’t run charges. I can do that for four days.”
 
“Perfect, I’m sure we’ll get it straightened out by then.”
 
Julius looked at Ms. Wade. “I’d still like you to sign for the room, Miss.”
 
“Of course.” She stepped forward. “And once I get a chance to call my boss I can probably give you company payment information and it can bill normally.”
 
Julius smiled professionally. “Who do you work for?”
 
“G.I.G.”
 
He nodded. “We get entire survey crews through here. Would you like me to contact them and request payment information?”
 
She bit her lip, and thought about it. “I think given the whole mess I’m apparently in it would be best if my boss hears from me before he hears from anybody else.” She smiled at his confused look. “If I’m not in the system then no one informed them I was injured and he’s sitting at his desk wondering why I haven’t checked in to say I arrived yet and getting more worried-about-slash-angry-at me by the second.”
 
“Of course.” Julius put a key card on the counter. “I’m afraid we only have a few rooms that don’t work on biometrics, and they’re all on the third floor.”
 
“That’s fine,” Ms. Wade answered. “It’s a room.”
 
Julius nodded. “When everything gets straightened out if you’d like to move to a room with a better view and standard room preferences please just let us know and we’ll do our best to accommodate that.”
 
“Thank you.” Brody smiled at him. “I’ll be sure and fill out my survey card, Julius, and let them know how helpful you’ve been.”
 
Brody led her to the elevator, and held the door open until she’d stepped on. He hadn’t brought up the fact she didn’t have any clothes—other than the scrubs they’d sent her from the hospital in—and until she had her identity back she wasn’t going to be able to feed herself with the exception of room service.
 
“Thank you,” Ms. Wade said softly.
 
“You don’t have to thank me.” Brody held the elevator open when they hit the third floor, and let her step off first.
 
She laughed, wry and tired. “Do babysitting services come included with the original rescue?” She glanced at the card holder, with the room number printed on it, and headed down the hall toward room 312. “Nobody else is treating this like an accident.”
 
Brody blinked at her. Everyone had been trying really hard to treat it like an accident. They apparently just weren’t fooling her.
 
She opened room 312 and he stopped in the doorway while she looked around the room quickly. It was a pretty standard hotel room. No balcony, large picture window, queen sized bed, standard bathroom. And if she spent her life traveling for GIG and doing survey she probably nearly always lived in places like this, didn’t she?
 
He wasn’t really sure how her job worked, but he was going to make friends with the information system as soon as he could and find out.
 
She cocked a brow at him, waiting for an answer.
 
He could have blown her off, said he was just helping a pretty girl and given her the patented smile that went with it. She might even have accepted that. She wouldn’t have believed it, and it wouldn’t have made her trust him, but it would have gotten him out of the conversation.
 
The whole radical honesty thing was damn uncomfortable, but on some level that discomfort was reminding him why it needed to happen.
 
“I don’t know if it was an accident or not.” He shrugged. “My gut says not, but that’s not evidence. Before you were in a position to talk I decided you either were trouble or you were in trouble.”
 
She blinked at him. “And now that I’m talking?”
 
“You’re not as panicked about the situation as I expected you to be, but that may be shock.” He smiled wryly. “Or you may just be naturally unflappable. Either way, if you were trouble and I walked away now and someone got hurt I’d feel responsible.”
 
“And if I’m in trouble?”
 
“If you’re in trouble and I walk away now and you get hurt, then I’ve failed a rescue because I walked away.” He pushed out a breath. “I’m not saying I’ve never failed a rescue, shit happens. I’ve never failed a rescue because I walked away before it was done.”

Today's word is Eunoia, which was a few meanings. It's infrequently used as a medical term for a normal state of mental health. But it was originally used as a Socratic term for the goodwill a speaker generates with their audience. Not that I'm trying anything...

And click here to go back to day 1.

​Libby didn’t need to be careful, checking herself out of the hospital. Logically they wouldn’t have been letting her leave, if the nanites hadn’t fixed everything they were supposed to.
 
Carrolynne ran through the checkout procedures with her—drink plenty of water, give herself a chance to sleep off the rest of the sedatives, and be prepared to just feel not quite right for a bit. If it got too bad, or if anything hurt she was supposed to go back to the hospital immediately.
 
Captain Halliday—he could insist he was Brody now all he wanted, but she knew his rank didn’t go away because he’d retired. She didn’t know him, calling him by his first name was uncomfortable, and calling him Mr. when he’d been Captain was worse. He stayed with her, and used his travel tag to get them onto the cross town mag-lev system. They found a mostly empty car at the front of the train, and he waved her into the inside seat.
 
She’d expected him to be more intimidating. He certainly had the mass to be. She was an average height, for an American she was barely hanging on to it at five feet, five inches. He probably had at least eight inches on her, possibly more like ten. He wasn’t giant, bulk body builder muscle, but he wasn’t a slim man either. Still, when he sat down next to her on the mag-lev she expected to be squished into the corner, but somehow he’d only taken up his seat, and not left her feeling trapped and at-one with the wall.
 
Which just left her sitting there wondering if he was trying to be non-threatening, or considerate.
 
“What branch of the service were you in, before you retired?”
 
“Situation Management.”
 
Libby blinked at him. It wasn’t technically a non-answer. Situation Management was a military designation, and it was one of the branches that frequently used a soldier up in twenty years and spit them into civilian life without a lot of direction. Because Situation Management could mean literally anything, from media liaison services to covert operative. And usually the people that meant media liaison said so, off the bat. Sometimes people were even stupid enough to believe it.
 
Captain Halliday just sat there, swaying gently as the high-speed connector train crossed from the services section of PacIC—the arm containing the hospital, courthouse, and university along with anything that logically should have been next to those things—made a short stop at City Center, and continued to the Galleria.
 
Libby stared out the train window at the sparkling buildings as they flashed by. The Galleria in every intercoastal city functioned the same way, even if they hall had their own distinct aesthetic. PacIC was made to look like a gross modernization of Pacific Islander culture. The largest temporary housing structure was shaped like a giant, glittering pineapple, complete with the green spines at the top—aerial gardens—and a ring of palm trees around the base. All the best shopping and crafts people were around the main dwelling. The best restaurants would be strategically dotted throughout the arm, to encourage people to see all the sights. Then there would be the ‘must see’ places in the other arms, usually directly next to the mag-lev connection. If she were still a person, according to the records system, she would have presented herself at one of the small, more sterile guest houses away from the Galleria center.
 
It hadn’t occurred to her to ask Captain Halliday what his plans had been before rescuing her. Was he staying at the Pineapple in the Sky?
 
The mag-lev stopped, and they exited onto the sandstone pathways. Drum music soaked the air, and people danced and handed out flower garlands. Craftspeople sold straw hats and seven different places shouted they had the best Pina Coladas around.
 
Libby usually got out of the tourist arm as fast as she could, if she were staying somewhere long enough to make it worth doing. Which was something she was going to have to deal with soon. Whether the rest of the world realized she was a person or not, theoretically her boss hadn’t forgotten she existed. Ben could be scatterbrained, but that was a little much even for him.
 
He'd be wondering why she hadn’t reported for duty, and if she didn’t exist no one would have told him it was because she was in the hospital.
 
Or, conversely, Inspector Hussein had already followed up with him and Libby was going to get a right earful when she called in.
 
“It’s not far,” Captain Halliday waved her toward one of the quiet side streets. “Though I could probably vouch for you at the main place…”
 
Libby shook her head. “No, presumably eventually I’ll be a real girl again, and my per diem doesn’t stretch to the Pineapple.”
 
Captain Halliday laughed softly, and started up the walkway. She didn’t have to push hard to keep up with him, and while she was grateful for that she still wasn’t sure why he was being accommodating. He’d said he didn’t leave a job half-done, but surely that didn’t include helping her find a place to stay?
 
“This is us,” he said after a moment, pointing to a nondescript faux-stone corner building. The first floor was all windows, made to look like a post-Victorian San Francisco hotel. It was nice, and probably still too close to the main area for her liking, but it would be alright for a few days. She’d definitely have to call Ben immediately, he’d think she’d been hacked because she never spent what she was allowed for expenses.
 
“Captain Halliday,” the hologram receptionist smiled broadly at him, her fake name tag glinting in the overhead lights.
 
Libby always suffered the intense desire to lean over the desk and see if they’d bothered to render the bottom half of their receptionist. She didn’t, because it felt rude—she did realize the hologram wasn’t an actual intelligence, their AI stopped at being friends and answering canned questions.
 
She constantly broke them, always wound up back at the general menu tree, or forcing them to get an actual person to answer her questions.
 
“Hello, Candice. I’m afraid we’re going to need the manager,” Halliday said warmly, leaning on the counter.
 
“Oh, I do hope nothing is wrong.”
 
“Nothing with the facility at all.”
 
“Good.” She smiled warmly. “I’ll get him for you.”
 
Libby swallowed an intense desire to ask how he planned to go about this. He clearly had a plan. Or he was acting like he had one. He was clearly more comfortable with the unexpected than she was, though. Nothing seemed like it mattered, he hadn’t even asked her questions while they travelled.
 
She wasn’t sure how much more mystery she could handle, but for the moment she’d stand there and see if he could talk her way into a room.