Page 22 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“I'll be ready,” I said.

“I know you will. That's why Command requested you specifically.” Finch collected the file and locked it back in hisdesk. “Dismissed. And Sergeant? Not a word of this to anyone. Including Mr Pembroke.”

“Understood.”

I left the office and walked out into the cold, letting the winter air fill my lungs. The weight of what I'd just been told settled into my shoulders like an old familiar burden.

A mission. A real mission, not guard duty or escort work or training exercises. The thing I'd been built for, the skill that had made me valuable, being called back into service.

Part of me felt relieved. This was something I understood, something I knew how to do. The clarity of a target, the simplicity of a shot, the clean mathematics of distance and trajectory.

Another part felt sick.

Because I'd have to look at Art across the grounds, knowing that his work was helping to plan my mission, knowing that if I succeeded a man would die and if I failed I might not come back. And I couldn't tell him. Couldn't explain why my mood would shift, why the weight I carried would get heavier, why I might look at him sometimes like I was memorising his face.

I found myself walking toward the perimeter path without consciously deciding to. The route I'd been taking every night when sleep wouldn't come. Past the fence line, along the treeline, through the section where I'd found Art standing coatless in the cold.

Whitmore was there, as it turned out, doing his rounds. He nodded as I approached.

“Sergeant. Thought you'd be warming up after that session.”

“Needed the air.”

“Know the feeling.” He fell into step beside me, matching my pace without asking permission. “Mind if I walk with you? Gets lonely out here.”

I should have said no. Should have maintained the distance that kept things simple. But something about his easy manner, the lack of pressure in his presence, made me nod instead.

We walked in silence for a while, boots crunching through snow, breath fogging in the darkness. It wasn't uncomfortable. Just two men doing their jobs, sharing space without needing to fill it with words.

“Can I ask you something?” Whitmore said eventually.

“You can ask.”

“The demonstration earlier. The way you read Davies, predicted where he was looking.” He paused. “Is that something you can turn off? Or are you always watching like that?”

I considered the question. “Always, mostly. It becomes habit after a while. You stop seeing people as people and start seeing them as patterns. Tells and tendencies.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

“It is.” I hadn't admitted that to anyone before. “But it's also why I'm still alive. The times I stopped watching were the times people died.”

Whitmore was quiet for a moment. “My da used to say something similar. Said the job never left him, even when he came home. He'd sit at dinner and clock everyone who walked past the window, work out their routines, notice when something was off.” He smiled slightly. “Drove my mum mad. But he caught three burglars that way, just from noticing patterns in the neighbourhood.”

“Why are you telling me this?” I asked.

“Because you look like someone who doesn't have many people to talk to. And because I know what it's like, growing up with a father who couldn't stop being a copper long enough to just be a dad.” He shrugged. “Thought maybe you could use someone who understood. No pressure. Just... the offer's there.”

It was such a simple thing. An offer of connection, freely given, with no expectation attached. I'd forgotten people did that. Forgotten that not every interaction had to be transactional, strategic, weighted with ulterior motives.

“I appreciate it,” I said, and found that I meant that too.

We finished the patrol route together, talking occasionally, comfortable with silence when words ran out. By the time we parted ways at the guard station, something had shifted. Not friendship, not yet, but the foundation of it. The possibility.

I went back to my billet and sat on the edge of my bed, thinking about the mission.

The war had taught me to be a weapon. Had stripped away everything soft and left behind only the parts that could kill efficiently and survive the killing.

But maybe, in this strange place with its codes and secrets and people who carried their own impossible weights, I was learning to be something else too.