I bent close to his ear and told him, so quietly that no monitor could have picked it up, that I understood, and that I was going to fix it.

His fingers tightened once more.

Message received.

I have often thought that everything I became in the days that followed started in that squeeze.

Not because it gave me information — I already had Winifred’s whisper, the tracker, the shape of the thing.

But because it gave me something I’d been without for so long I’d forgotten its name: an ally.