Seun came on at eight with a tray of pastries and a lanyard that said COMMUNITY in letters tall enough to read from the street.

"Good morning, my darling night owl, my little bat of the lobby," he sang, shouldering through the door. "I have brought you the custard ones. I have brought you the cinnamon ones you pretend you don't like. I have brought you news, and the news is, Friday is now a Whole Thing, because Hearthwell has sent a run sheet, and the run sheet has a section called Emotional Welcome."

Zee was sitting behind the desk with her sleeve pulled down to the knuckles and the glove back on. She had changed her shirt. She had eaten nothing since the cheese toasties, and the custard smell turned her stomach in a slow, tidy circle.

"Morning," she said.

"You look like a ghost made of paper."

"Noted."

"No, I mean it nicely, you look like a very elegant ghost, like a ghost with a pension." He put the tray down on the desk. His hands were already moving, because Seun's hands were always moving; he rearranged the pastries, the pens, the little brass bell, the dead fern's saucer. "Okay. So. I have a list. Item one, I need the lobby to look not-haunted by Friday, so can we please do something about the floor, there is some kind of white mark by your chair that I think is a spill, I'll get the cleaners to—"

"Don't touch it."

He stopped. He looked at her. For a moment the brightness slid, the way a shop shutter slides when someone is rattling it from the other side.

"Right," Seun said. "Okay. Not touching the floor."

He reached for the custard tart instead, and as he reached, his sleeve brushed hers, and her arm jerked back. It was a reflex, a thing she had trained out of every other part of her body. It had been two years since anyone had caught her out with it.

The glove had ridden up an inch.

She watched him see it. She watched his eyes go to the line, the pale watercolour margin on her wrist, and then stay there. Seun had a face that held information the way a bucket held water, in a rush and without much regard for the floor. It all came spilling out of him at once: confusion, then the first prickle of fear, then a terrible bright effort to find the nicest explanation, and failing, and trying a worse one.

"That's a vitiligo thing," he said. "Right? That's a skin thing. People get that. My cousin's got that."

"It's not vitiligo."

"Is it a burn? From the, from the sunburst thing, from the light? Did you put the wrong cream on the—"

"Seun."

"Because Zee, I have said this, I have said it a hundred times, you can go to a doctor, the building has a health stipend, it's in the welcome pack, it's page nine—"

"Seun. Look at it."

She peeled the glove back. She did it slowly, so he'd have time to look away. He didn't. She held her hand up under the desk lamp and let him see the bleached fingers, and the veins, and the faint shadow of the brass lamp base showing through the heel of her palm like a coin under milk.

He did not say anything for what she counted as eleven seconds.

Then he said, very quietly and in an unfamiliar voice, "How long?"

"Since before the lobby. Since the first few jumps."

"So you've had this for days and you've been, you've been standing here saying good morning to people." His voice cracked at the end, an adolescent crack, almost comic. "I did your birthday card. I did a whole card, Zee. The residents signed it. Bastien drew a cat."

"I know. It's on the locker."

"You didn't tell me."

"I'm telling you now."

"No, you're showing me because I caught you!" He had his hands up and open, as if he were being robbed. "That's different! That's a completely different thing! Do you know how many times in the last two weeks I've asked you if you're all right? I've asked every day! And every day it's, noted, noted, noted, like you're a very tired printer!"

She had no reply. It was a fair description.

He walked to the other end of the lobby and back, three long strides each way, a thing he did when his lists failed him. The morning light was coming across the floor now and the post boxes shone like a row of small brass teeth. When he came back to the desk his mouth was set and wet.

"Okay," he said. "Okay. You don't want to be helped. I get that. I've known you since the second week and I get that. But you could at least, at least, have trusted me not to mess it up."

"It isn't about that."

"Then what is it about?"

"It's about the fact that every time I tell somebody, something happens to them." It came out flatter and faster than she'd meant. "Gus got a number on a lift. Pip's got thirty days. Rui lost his teacher's recorder this morning. I'm not in the business of finding new people to put in the blast radius."

"I'm already in the blast radius, I live here. I run the chat. I'm the person who said, in writing, please watch the clip, you'll love it, it's a mood."

He had gone grey around the lips. He sat down, abruptly, in the visitor's chair, the one with the wobble, and the chair wobbled under him and he didn't notice.

"I need to tell you something," Seun said. "And I want you to hear the whole thing before you do the face."

"I don't have a face."

"You have a very specific, very quiet, door-closing face. It's like a vault with eyebrows." He pressed his fingers into his eyes. "Okay. So. In March, Hearthwell asked me to be a Community Pilot. It's a, it's a wellness thing. It's a form. Weekly. I give them a little summary of the residents' mood and engagement, no names, just trends. 'Sentiment around quiet hours.' 'Interest in the compost scheme.' It's lovely. It's a paid thing, a small one, it's a stipend, and there's a track, if the pilot goes well. A regional role. Community Director, South Atlantic. Zee, it's a whole title. It has a car."

She waited.

"And three weeks ago," he said, "I put in the report that the residents had begun sharing a, a viral clip, a weird one, internal, and that engagement in the chat had gone up forty percent, and that people were saying they could hear their speakers. I put it in the section called Delight Moments. I put your name in it, because it was your clip. It was your face. I said, a long-standing member of the team. I said, a good-natured resident-staff relationship. I thought they'd love it." He gave a little laugh without any air in it. "They did love it. The next day they asked for the file."

"What file?"

"The clip. The, the forty-five-second one. With the, with the lobby. I sent it. I thought it was a funny file. It's a funny file, it's a very funny file, it's you, being a legend, being, being the Blink and then not being the Blink in the lobby, and then it was fifty-six seconds, and then it was two minutes, and I went to bed that night and I thought, that's quite long for a joke."

The lobby clock ticked over. Somewhere in the lift shaft a cable creaked.

"Seun," Zee said.

"I know."

"When did you send it?"

"Two days before the, before the Anticipation thing." He lowered his hands. His eyes were red. "I swear I didn't know it did anything. I thought it was a joke file. I thought it was, a thing that grows. A meme that grows. Every meme grows, that's what they are."

She thought of the Marseille file in Thandeka's USB, the same breath under a different sky. She thought of the beta, fourteen months of recording, and the dashboard, and the little tag that said priority subject. She thought of how Calista Vorster-Anand would be standing in this lobby on Friday with a warm, patient face, saying we.

"You gave them a copy," she said.

"I gave them a copy."

"And a play on their servers adds eleven seconds in a room."

"I know that now." Seun was crying, quietly and without much fuss, the way a leaky tap cries. "I know that now, I do the sums, I'm not an idiot, I read everybody's messages. You think I didn't see you in the middle of the night? You think I didn't see you, and Rui, and Pip's mum coming home from nights saying her daughter is acting weird and I said, oh, teenagers? I saw. I just kept telling myself it would be okay if I kept it nice."

Zee looked at him, her oldest friend in this city, a boy in a lanyard with custard on his thumb. Part of her wanted to say he was a coward. Part of her knew precisely how heavy the same word would land on her own chest, and where it would sit.

"You're not the only one who kept it nice," she said.

He wiped his face with the heel of his hand. "What?"

"I've been hiding things from you for a week. You were lying by omission to the building, and I was doing the same to you. We could have a prize." She stood. It took more effort than it should, and she let the desk take some of her weight. "The thing in the lift. The number. Gus has days, not weeks. Pip has thirty. Neither of them has a way out yet. If Hearthwell has a copy of the clip, they have a way to play it, and every play adds eleven seconds somewhere, and I don't know where. Possibly in the room that most needs not to have it."

"Oh my God," Seun said. "Oh my God. Okay. List. We need a list."

"We need a different list than the one you've been writing."

"I know. I know, I know." He stood up too fast and the visitor's chair tipped. He caught it without looking, with a courtier's reflex. "I'm going to call them. I'll say I want to withdraw the file, I'll say there was a mistake in the, the consent language, I'll make up a legal thing. I'll be so boring at them they'll give it back to make me stop."

"They won't give it back."

"Then I'll find out what they've done with it." He grabbed the tray, then put it down, then took the custard tart, absently, and held it like a talisman. "Zee. Please let me. Please. Let me do one thing right and tell you after, I promise, I'll tell you immediately after, I'll message you in the form of an actual voice note."

She should have said no. Every instinct she had, built over eleven years of watching doors, said no. But he was shaking, and it was eight in the morning, and she was tired in the specific way that makes a person honest.

"One call," she said. "You tell me what they say. Word for word."

"Word for word. Cross my heart."

"And you don't tell them about the hand."

His face crumpled and straightened. "I would never."

"You'd never have told them about the clip, either."

That landed. She saw it land, and she watched him take it, and she did not take it back. He nodded once, sharp as a school boy being caned, and went off to the lift with the custard tart in his hand and his lanyard swinging.

The doors opened for him before he pressed anything.

He froze in the doorway. The little amber display above his head said PENDING: 3, and under it, in the same cold type, the names. His own name was not among them. But beneath the third line, where there had been blank screen all morning, a fourth line was slowly assembling itself, one letter at a time, the way a typist would key it.

S. H-L.

The letters stopped. The cursor beside them blinked, unhurried, patient as a pen.

"Zee," Seun said, without turning round. "I didn't answer anything. I swear I didn't."

"I know."

"Then why is it writing my name?"

She came out from behind the desk. She did not hurry. She counted her steps: nine, ten, eleven. When she reached the lift, the display had finished the line.

S. H-L. SPONSOR. FILE SENT.

"That isn't a pending," Zee said slowly. "That's a different column."

Beyond the lobby windows, a blue van with a white logo was pulling in to the kerb, and Seun, who knew the make of that van the way a man knows a tax inspector's car, made a small noise in his throat.