Votive at Blackridge

Shohei’s hand spread over Corin’s hip.

“Are you close?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want me to finish?”

“Yes. Stay with me. Condom on.”

Shohei gave one final, deep thrust. Corin came first, release spilling over his hand and the blanket as his whole body tightened around Shohei. Shohei followed with a broken sound, holding him through the last movement and then going still.

For several seconds, neither moved.

Shohei withdrew carefully, removed the condom, and tied it shut before placing it in the waste bag. He returned with water, a damp cloth, and the blanket.

“Any pain?” he asked.

“No.” Corin took the water and drank. “No. I am very, very all right.”

Shohei cleaned him with the same composure he brought to weapons checks and radio logs, except his hands were gentler now.

Corin caught his wrist. “Stay.”

“I am staying.”

They lay side by side beneath the blanket, knees touching. The dark relay console kept its silence. The radios waited within reach.

“At that premiere,” Corin said after a while, “I wanted to leave every minute. People kept telling me they wanted me there. What they meant was that they wanted a version of me they could use.”

Shohei turned toward him. “I want what you choose to give.”

“That is a dangerous thing to say.”

“The tomato soup was more dangerous.”

Corin laughed into the wool blanket.

“Tomorrow,” Shohei said, “we go back to the dossier and the routes. Nothing about my duty changes without a conversation.”

“Tomorrow, then.”

“And tonight?”

Corin took Shohei’s hand and placed it open against his own.

“Tonight,” he said, “you are here.”

Tonight, he was here.

For four quiet minutes, the chalet permitted Corin to believe the night might remain theirs.

Then the county radio screamed.

“BLACKRIDGE EMERGENCY SERVICES. STRUCTURAL FAILURE AT PATROL CHALET. EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY THROUGH THE FRONT ENTRANCE. PROCEED TO THE ROADWAY.”

The synthetic announcement repeated, bright and courteous. Shohei was off the cot before Corin had found his trousers. He killed the lamp, put the wool blanket around Corin’s shoulders, and pressed his boots into Corin’s hands.

“Clothes. Boots. Boiler corridor.”

The third message broke apart in static. Something scraped along the roofline. A small sharp snap followed. The carrier light on the radio died.

“Someone cut the mast line,” Shohei said.

“Is the order real?”

“No.” Shohei opened the lockbox and took out his pistol, checking it with movements so practiced they seemed spare rather than frantic. “County notices name a zone, not a preferred exit. And their maps call that door east access. Only our site brief calls it the front entrance.”

“Masato had the site brief.”

“Yes.”

Corin dressed in the dark, fingers clumsy at buttons. The chalet smelled of cooled soup, wet wool, and the hot-metal bite of a damaged cable. A moment ago his body had been loose beneath a blanket beside Shohei. Now every sound seemed capable of carrying a man toward them across the snow.

Shohei touched two fingers to the wall, listening. “No exterior lights. No phone. If there is a team outside, they want us crossing the open ground.”

“Boiler corridor,” Corin said. “Then the tunnel.”

“Maybe.” Shohei looked at him. “First, we hear Lachlan.”

He went to the supply locker and brought out a narrow gray case from beneath the repair kit. Its seals were intact. Inside lay a palm-sized burst handset, its antenna folded flat along one side.

“I didn’t know you had that.”

“It does not use dispatch infrastructure.”

“You planned for the firm to be compromised?”

“I planned for an order to become doubtful.”

It was a very Shohei answer: no drama, no comfort offered cheaply. Corin found it steadier than comfort might have been.

The handset woke under Shohei’s thumb. Its screen showed a string of numbers, then a message appeared.

Venn. Do not use Voss channels. Rusk is compromised. Audit team found a dispatch mirror on his credentials and payments routed through Quade campaign intermediaries. Your chalet grid was posted at 00:41. The breach began inside my company.

A second line arrived.

I gave Rusk access. I missed what he was doing. That failure is mine. Get Corin out.

For a second Corin saw Masato as he had appeared on a secure check-in during their first week: sleeves rolled neatly, a chipped green mug at his elbow, making a dry complaint about Shohei’s timing reports. Corin had liked him for that; normality had felt precious during a life arranged around exits and armored vehicles. The memory now had a stained edge. Masato had not merely known where Corin went. He had turned each route into merchandise.

“How much did he give them?” Corin asked.

Shohei typed with one thumb.

The reply came fast.

Routes, vehicle changes, emergency codes. We are tracing the full archive. Quade’s operation bought live coordinates. I cannot promise the chalet perimeter is clear.

Another message followed, longer.

Narrow route: boiler hatch to service tunnel. Take tunnel downhill to lower lift station. Snowcat Four is fueled in the maintenance shed. Use Mill Creek Cut, eastbound, to Whitecap Gate. My vetted crew will reach it at 04:15. Do not transmit except through this handset. If the route closes, reach the lift maintenance panel and send the evidence in pieces.

“He’s asking us to take the tunnel,” Corin said.

“He is giving us the least visible route.”

“Those are not the same thing.”

“No.”

Shohei’s answer held no argument, only the fact. Corin appreciated that more fiercely than he could say.

A faint pressure touched the front door. Not a knock. Someone testing the latch with patience.

Shohei drew Corin farther into the corridor. The handset’s screen lit again.

Your call, Venn. Your client is not freight. Tell him the risks. Let him decide with you.

Corin looked at the words until they blurred, then looked at Shohei. “At least Lachlan is learning.”

“He has never been fond of being right too late.”

“I am not leaving the dossier.”

“I did not ask you to.”

“You were about to tell me not to take the laptop.”

“I was.” Shohei glanced toward the worktable. “It is large, trackable, and can slow you down. The drive is another question. Tell me what it contains.”

Corin took the steel drive from the pouch by the cot. Its edges bit into his palm. “The two backups are encrypted copies. Useful only if someone has the separate key and the ledger cross-reference. This one carries the decoded archive: audio, names, payment chains, everything a journalist or investigator can open without me standing beside it.”

“So this stays with you.”

“Yes.”

“It makes you a more valuable target.”

“Quade already wants me erased. This means I can make that harder.”

Shohei considered him, then set the folded route map on an upturned crate. “All right. We plan for the drive to stay with you. We plan for you to use the lift panel if we lose the snowcat or the rendezvous. Can you operate it?”

“Not yet.”

“Then I teach you now.”

The corridor was scarcely wide enough for the map and both of them. Shohei pointed to the lift station diagram, explaining the maintenance cabinet’s red uplink port, the order of its switches, the short window before it would report its location. Corin repeated each step until Shohei corrected nothing.

“One transmission,” Shohei said. “Break the archive into packets. Send the ethics office first, then the reporters on your list.”

“And if someone is shooting at the building?”

“Your judgment. Not mine.”

Corin looked down at the map. The tunnel symbol ran like a black stitch beneath the chalet, then opened at the lift station far below. He hated narrow places. The thought of packed stone above him made his ribs tighten. But the front door offered open snow and waiting rifles. The rear stair lay buried. Fear did not make the choice unclear.

“The tunnel narrows halfway down,” Shohei said. “You do not have to take it because I recommend it.”

“Do you have a safer route?”

“No.”

“Then I choose the tunnel.”

Shohei gave a single incline of his head. “You lead on the dossier. I lead on movement. If either part of that changes, we say it.”

“We do not separate unless one of us has no other option.”

“Agreed.”

Corin slipped the steel drive inside the inner pocket of his thermal layer. He placed the two encrypted backups in separate caches: one behind the boiler’s access panel, one beneath a loose board under the table. They might survive a search; if they did not, their contents would remain locked.

Shohei handed him a flashlight, a spare battery, and a thin coil of orange guide line.

“Keep this in your left hand. It runs through the tunnel to the lift station. If the lights fail, it gets us out.”

“Very romantic.”

“I save my romantic gestures for better architecture.”