Four Minutes Forty

“You'll listen to her die for three thousand strangers?”

Castellane pushes. The lever drops one notch. Two left. I don't answer: the question is already in his file, written in his own hand eleven years ago, at the bottom of another order.

I close my fist.

The implant at his left temple opens under my command like a badly locked drawer. I push. His fingers release the handle one by one, index first, thumb last. He drops to his knees without a sound. A smell of singed hair rises from his neck. His eyes stay open on me, and behind mine, a file empties to pay for the door: the date I met Vassili. I keep her name. I lose the day.

I raise the lever. Three thousand beds start breathing again in the west sector. The counter turns back to green.

The transmitter stays on.

“Marga… they're on the stairs.”

I lay both hands flat on the console. A rifle butt strikes a door. The door gives. Vassili coughs, backs away, her spine hits a shelf.

She stops calling me. She counts under her breath, the way Pavel did each morning in the tunnels. Twelve. Thirteen. The blows land at the rhythm of a stamp on a ledger. At nineteen, the number breaks into two wet syllables.

Then the breath. Short. Shorter. A leaking valve.

I log the time: 03:11. The duration: four minutes, forty seconds. I open a line in the Alpha Register and enter her Dissolved serial number, no adjective. My eyelids do not move. The Law asked me to watch; I watch the speaker. A round grille. Thirty-two holes, dust in each one.

Castellane drools on the concrete. His lips keep their smile.

Nine seconds of silence.

On the other end, a hand picks up the transmitter. A man's voice, calm, polite.

“Praetor. She talked before the end. We know where you keep the names.”