The memory cards weighed nothing. Six small rectangles of black plastic, each no larger than his thumbnail, and yet Finch could feel them in his pocket as if they were stones. They pressed against his thigh when he walked. They dug into his hip when he lay on the thin mattress. They were the only things in Blackwood that mattered, and he had no idea how to get them out.
He had not slept after returning from the yard. The confrontation with Sorin had left him hollow and trembling, the adrenaline ebbing slowly into a cold exhaustion that would not resolve into rest. He lay on the bed and watched the rectangle of yellow light on the ceiling, and he thought about Kessel in the isolation wing, and Bashir in the interview room, and the laundry van that left every morning at six.
The address was burned into his memory: 42 Harrow Street, Third Floor. Clara Vance. A solicitor who would know what to do with the evidence. But the address was useless unless he could get the memory cards onto the van, and the van was in the loading bay on the far side of the Centre, a part of the complex he had never seen and had no legitimate reason to visit.
The morning bell rang at seven. Finch rose and washed his face and put on his grey uniform. The routine was automatic now, the movements of a body that had learned to function without the direction of a mind. He joined the other Block D detainees in the corridor and walked to the common room, and he did all of this with the same mechanical precision, but his eyes were moving constantly, cataloguing the guards, the doors, the windows, the possibilities.
Bashir was not at breakfast. Neither was the young man with the hollow cheeks who had been at Bashir's table the day before. The common room felt emptier than it should have, as if the state had already begun its work of excision, removing the troublesome elements one by one.
Finch ate his porridge without tasting it. His mind was in the laundry, with the driver named Pavel who was incurious, with the van that left at six, with the memory cards that needed to be on it. He needed a way to reach the loading bay. He needed a reason to be in the laundry before six in the morning. He needed a plan, and he had no plan.
The morning workshop was a torment of inaction. His hands assembled the plastic components, but his mind was running through the layout of the Centre, the routes he knew, the routes he did not. The laundry was in the basement, but the loading bay was at ground level, on the north side of the complex. There must be a service corridor connecting them, a lift or a ramp for the laundry carts. He had seen the carts in the corridor outside the laundry, large canvas bins on wheels, filled with sheets and uniforms. If he could get into one of those carts, or if he could find a way to accompany one to the loading bay—
The thought was interrupted by the arrival of a guard at the workshop door. It was Sorin. He stood in the doorway, his scarred face expressionless, his eyes moving across the room with the slow, methodical sweep that Finch had come to dread.
“Finch,” he said. “Come with me.”
Finch set down the plastic component he was assembling. The other detainees did not look up. Their hands continued to work, their faces blank. They had learned long ago not to notice when someone was taken.
He followed Sorin into the corridor. The guard walked ahead of him, his boots precise on the concrete, and Finch matched his pace. They did not speak. They passed through the security door at the end of Block D, through a short corridor that Finch had not seen before, and into a small windowless room with a table and two chairs. An interview room.
“Sit,” Sorin said.
Finch sat. Sorin remained standing, his back to the door.
“I have been thinking about our conversation in the yard,” Sorin said. “You knew my name. My real name. You knew about VIDA. You knew about my time undercover. That information should not have been accessible to you.”
“I am an archivist. I find things.”
“You found a personnel file that was supposed to be sealed. Someone gave it to you. I want to know who.”
“No one gave it to me. I found it in the basement, in the old archive. The same place I found the photographs and the memoranda and the survey maps. The state is not as good at hiding things as it thinks.”
Sorin studied him for a long moment. His eyes were pale grey, almost colourless, and they gave nothing away. “The basement has been sealed. The boxes you found have been removed. The photographs Kessel took have been erased. Whatever you think you have, you no longer have it.”
Finch felt the memory cards in his pocket. They were still there, a small hard weight against his thigh. Sorin did not know. The state had sealed the basement and removed the boxes, but it had not found the camera in the laundry cupboard. It had not found the six memory cards in Finch's pocket. The information was still alive.
“If that is true, then why are you questioning me?” Finch asked.
“Because I want to know who else is involved. Kessel is in isolation. Bashir is in isolation. But you were not working alone. Someone left you a note under your hotel door. Someone told you to go to the river to meet Elias Crane. Someone has been guiding you from inside the system.”
“I do not know who that is.”
“I think you do. I think you know more than you are telling me. And I think that if I keep you in this room long enough, you will tell me everything.”
Sorin pushed himself off the door and walked around the table. He moved slowly, deliberately, the way a man moved when he wanted you to understand that time was on his side.
“I have been doing this work for fifteen years, Dr. Finch. I have questioned dozens of detainees. Scholars. Journalists. Activists. People who thought they could expose the state's secrets. Every one of them talked eventually. The only variable is time.”
“Then you have a problem. Because I have already told you everything I know.”
“You have told me nothing.”
“Then perhaps there is nothing to tell.”
Sorin stopped. His pale eyes were fixed on Finch with an intensity that was almost physical. “Kessel is gone. Bashir is gone. Craven is an old man in a cottage in the moors, and we can pick him up whenever we choose. Helena Mire is in hiding, but we know where she is. The only person left is you. And you are in a room with no windows and no cameras and no witnesses. Do you understand what that means?”
“It means you can do whatever you want.”
“Yes. And I will, if you do not give me what I want.”
Finch looked at the scarred face, the cold eyes, the hands that had held the radio in the yard. He thought about Kessel in the isolation wing. He thought about Bashir in his own interview room, somewhere else in the complex. He thought about the memory cards in his pocket, and the address on Harrow Street, and the laundry van that left every morning at six.
“I want to make a deal,” Finch said.
Sorin's expression flickered. “A deal.”
“I will tell you who helped me. I will tell you about the note, and the meeting at the river, and everything else. But only if you let me send a message to the outside. A single message, to a solicitor. I am entitled to legal representation. Even under Section 47, I am entitled to contact a solicitor.”
“You are not entitled to anything. You are a security threat.”
“Then I will tell you nothing. You can keep me in this room for as long as you want. You can do whatever you want. But you will never know who else is involved. And someone else will continue the work. Someone else will publish the photographs. Someone else will expose the truth about the Aethonians. You cannot stop it by keeping me here.”
The bluff was enormous, as it had been in the yard. Finch had no idea whether anyone else would publish the photographs. He had no idea whether Clara Vance would even accept the memory cards if they reached her. But Sorin did not know that. Sorin was an informant, a man who had spent his career mapping connections, and the one thing an informant feared most was a connection he had missed.
For a long moment, the two men stared at each other across the table. Then Sorin stepped back.
“One message. To a solicitor. I will read it before it is sent. If it contains any information about the Centre, or the evidence, or the investigation, it will not be sent. Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
Sorin produced a pen and a sheet of paper from his coat. “Write your message.”
Finch took the pen. His hand was trembling slightly, but he steadied it. He wrote:
To Clara Vance, 42 Harrow Street, Third Floor, Veridia. I am being detained at the Blackwood Immigration Removal Centre under Section 47 of the Immigration Security Act. I require legal representation. Please contact me as soon as possible. Alistair Finch.
He pushed the paper across the table. Sorin read it carefully, his eyes moving slowly over each word.
“Clara Vance. The human rights solicitor.”
“Yes.”
“She is known to us. She has been a nuisance for years. She takes cases no one else will take.” Sorin folded the paper and put it in his coat. “Your message will be sent. But it will not reach her before tomorrow. And tomorrow, things may be different.”
“What things?”
“Tomorrow, the Interior Ministry will issue a new detention order. You will be transferred to a different facility, one that is not subject to the same oversight as Blackwood. Once you are there, you will not be able to send messages. You will not be able to receive visitors. You will simply disappear.”
Finch felt the cold settle into his bones. Tomorrow. He had less than twenty-four hours.
“Take him back to his cell,” Sorin said to the guard outside the door. “And search him. Thoroughly.”
The guard stepped into the room. He was young, with a face that had not yet learned to be cruel. His name badge read: KOVACS.
Finch stood. As he passed Sorin, the older man spoke again, his voice low and cold.
“Whatever you have hidden, we will find it. Whatever you have planned, we will stop it. The state has been protecting its secrets for sixty years. You are not the first to try to expose them. You will not be the last to fail.”
Finch did not answer. He followed Kovacs into the corridor, and the door closed behind him, and he walked back toward Block D with the memory cards still in his pocket and the clock ticking down in his mind.
The search was thorough. Kovacs made him strip to his underclothes, turned out his pockets, checked the seams of his uniform, the soles of his feet, the inside of his mouth. Finch stood motionless, his heart hammering, certain that the memory cards would be found.
But Kovacs was young and inexperienced, and he was looking for paper, for photographs, for something large enough to be contraband. The memory cards were too small, too flat, hidden in the waistband of Finch's underclothes where the elastic held them tight against his skin. Kovacs did not find them.
When the search was over, Finch dressed again and was led back to Cell 47. The door closed behind him, and he sat on the bed, breathing, the memory cards still safe.
Tomorrow, Sorin would send him away. Tomorrow, the window would close. Tonight was his last chance.
He needed to reach the laundry. He needed to find the van. He needed to get the memory cards out of Blackwood before the state made him disappear.
He waited for the night, and the darkness, and the sound of the ventilation system cycling through its endless rhythm. And when the lights dimmed and the corridor fell silent, he rose from the bed and took the bracket from beneath the mattress and went to work on the lock.
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