Page 60 of The Words Beneath the Noise

Because what else could I do? Stop working? Let the messages pile up while people died because I was too overwhelmed to function? Someone had to read these. Someone had to crack the codes. And I was good at it, better than most, which meant every intercept I didn't complete was one more gap in the intelligence that kept people alive.

Or got them killed. Hard to tell which sometimes.

The next intercept was supply logistics. Boring. Safe. No coordinates, no targets, just requests for fuel and ammunition that would be used eventually to kill someone but at least not immediately, not with my translation as the direct link.

I could breathe a little easier with this one.

Fell into the work the way I always did, letting the patterns absorb my attention until the rest of the world faded into background noise. This was the only time my brain felt quiet. When I was cracking codes, solving puzzles, translating chaos into meaning. Everything else was too loud, too much, too overwhelming. But this? This I understood.

Finch stoodin the doorway for a long moment, surveying the room with those pale eyes that seemed to catalogue every minor infraction, every sign of weakness, every possible security risk. Ruth's hands went still over her typewriter. Noor's pen stopped moving. Peter, sitting two desks over, went very still in a way that looked less like attention and more like prey freezing before a predator.

Then Finch cleared his throat, and every conversation died mid-sentence.

“Attention.”

We all turned to face him. The room held its breath.

“It has come to my attention,” Finch said, voice clipped and cold, “that information from this establishment has appeared where it shouldn't. Specific details about ongoing operations have been leaked to unauthorized parties.”

The silence that followed was absolute.

“I don't know who is responsible. Yet. But I will find out.” His gaze swept across us like a searchlight, and I felt it pass over me like a physical weight. “Until further notice, all personnel are restricted to essential movements only. No unauthorized leave. No personal correspondence that hasn't been reviewed. Anyone found in possession of classified material outside approved areas will be subject to immediate detention and questioning.”

He let that sink in.

“We are at war. Carelessness costs lives. Disloyalty costs more.” A pause that stretched like a held breath. “Dismissed.”

He left, and the room exhaled collectively.

“Christ,” someone muttered from the back. “He thinks it's one of us.”

Ruth and Noor exchanged a look I couldn't quite read. Peter had gone back to his work with studied concentration, but his shoulders were too tight, his movements too careful. Everyone was watching everyone else now, cataloguing behaviours, noting anything that might look suspicious in hindsight.

My stomach turned. I looked down at the intercepts on my desk. At the words I'd translated that told the Germans' secrets. At the intelligence that we were supposed to protect with our lives if necessary.

Someone was betraying that trust.

Someone was selling secrets.

I foundmyself walking toward Building C, boots crunching through the thin layer of snow that had accumulated during my shift. The cold bit at my exposed face, sharp enough to feel clarifying, and I pulled my scarf tighter around my throat as I walked.

Tom had been back for less than twelve hours. I'd watched him return this morning, watched that careful blankness on his face, and I'd spent the entire day wondering what lay beneath it. What the mission had cost him.

I needed to know. Needed to see him properly, not just a glimpse across the drive. Needed to understand if he was alright, or at least as alright as either of us ever got.

Room twelve. He'd told me once, during one of our walks. Building C, room twelve, ground floor because the army assumed snipers needed quick exits even when they were off duty.

I found the door and stopped.

What was I doing here? What did I think I could offer him? I was barely holding myself together, guilt eating me alive from the inside, and I thought I could somehow help someone else?

But this morning, when our eyes had met across the distance, I'd seen something in his face that looked like my own reflection. The weight of complicity. The knowledge that we were bound together now by intelligence and bullets and a German officer who would never go home.

My hand was already raised, already knocking before I could talk myself out of it.

Silence.

Then footsteps, slow and heavy, and the door opened.