Page 25 of The Words Beneath the Noise

“Targeted elimination. That's what they call it in the official reports.”

“And the intelligence for this targeted elimination. It's coming from intercepts, isn't it?” His voice had gone quiet. “From work being done here. From work I'm doing.”

“Probably, yes.”

The silence stretched between us, heavy with implications neither of us wanted to name. Art pulled my coat tighter around himself, and I watched him process what I'd said.

“So my patterns might send you specifically into the field,” he said finally. “My numbers might be the ones that put you in front of a target.”

“Yes.”

“And you're telling me this because?”

“Because I thought you deserved to know. Because when I go, I didn't want you finding out afterward and wondering why I didn't say anything.”

“That's very considerate of you.” His tone was bitter. “Letting me know in advance that I might be responsible for your death.”

“You won't be responsible. The Germans will be responsible. You'll just be doing your job.”

“My job.” He laughed again, sharp and broken. “Everyone keeps telling me how important my job is. How essential. How many lives depend on it. But no one mentions this part. No onementions that the lives I'm saving might cost other lives. That the patterns I find might lead men like you into situations they don't come back from.”

“Men like me know what we signed up for.”

“Did you? Did you really?” He turned to face me fully, and his eyes were wet in the moonlight. “When you enlisted, did you know you'd end up here? Taking orders from men like Finch? Guarding cryptanalysts who can't even manage to stay inside the bloody perimeter? Preparing to kill someone because a mathematician in England found the right pattern in a string of letters?”

“I knew I'd end up wherever the war needed me. This is where it needs me.”

“And if it needs you dead?”

“Then I'll die.” I said it simply, without drama. A fact, not a declaration. “That's how it works. You give everything you have and you hope it's enough, and if it's not, at least you gave it.”

Art stared at me, and I watched him struggle with something, some internal battle I couldn't see but could feel in the tension between us.

“I don't want you to die,” he said, barely above a whisper. “I know that's irrational. I know there are thousands of men dying every day and statistically you're no more important than any of them. But I find that I do. Care. Whether you specifically survive.”

The confession hung in the frozen air, fragile and enormous.

“That's a dangerous thing to admit,” I said.

“I know.”

“Caring about individuals will destroy you in this war.”

“I know that too.”

“Then why tell me?”

He was quiet for a long moment. Then: “Because you told me about the mission. Because you gave me your coat. Becauseyou're the first person in three years who's looked at me like I'm a person instead of a machine.” He swallowed. “And because I'm tired of pretending I don't feel things just because feeling them is inconvenient.”

I didn't know what to say to that. Didn't know what to do with the way his words had landed in my chest, heavy and warm and terrifying.

“His best cryptanalyst.” Art's mouth curved, just slightly. “I'll remember you said that.”

“Don't let it go to your head.”

“Too late.”

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