Seven days after your transfer to Saint Augustine, your name appears at the very top of the notice board — research partner to Adrian Vale. The ink is still fresh; the crowd is already three rows deep. No one congratulates you. Every glance asks the same question: why you?

By nightfall, rain is tapping at the research tower's windows. The message slip carries a single line: Third floor archives. Don't come late. — A.V.

When you push the door open he stands at the window with his back to you, and does not turn. The lamplight stretches his shadow long across the floor, until it reaches your feet.

He turns. The pale grey eyes settle on you and stay one beat longer than courtesy allows — then move away, as if nothing had happened.

He slides a dossier to the edge of the desk. Your name is already written on the flyleaf. His hand lifts, and a fingertip rests on the silver cuff at his ear for half a second.

Rain fills the pause. He watches you, waiting for your answer — that gaze precise as an instrument, and somewhere beneath it, something that does not belong to a first meeting.