He called the number on the card from the corridor outside Sands' office.
It rang twice.
"Yes," said a voice. Flat. Awake. The voice of someone who had been awake for a while already.
"My name is Kael Voss. I work at St. Arden General. Dr. Sands gave me your card."
A pause. Not surprised. The pause of someone running a calculation.
"How long have you had yours?" she said.
"Two days."
"And you went in."
"Once."
Another pause, shorter. "There's a diner three blocks from the hospital. Clement Street. I'll be there in twenty minutes."
She was already in a booth when he walked through the door, a coffee in front of her, long-sleeved shirt despite the April morning, hands folded on the table. He knew her by the mark before she said a word.
She was wearing the sleeve the way he was wearing his: not to hide it exactly, but to control when it was seen and by whom.
He slid into the seat across from her and she pushed her sleeve up without waiting for him to ask.
Her mark was denser than his. Not as dense as drawer twelve. Somewhere in the middle. The branching lines covered the inside of her forearm and wrapped slightly around the wrist, and the counter beneath them was not zero. It read 14.
She saw him looking at it.
"Fourteen outstanding," she said. "I've paid four. So eighteen total, if you're keeping score." She pulled the sleeve back down. "Which you should be."
She was twenty-two. Former medical student, he had already found that much from the card. She had the manner of someone who had been through something that required her to completely rebuild how she moved through the world, the specific kind of stillness that was not calm but managed.
"How long?" he said.
"Two years, three months." She picked up her coffee. "I found a crack in my apartment building's basement. Thought it was a structural issue. Went to look."
"Naturally."
"I was studying medicine. I investigated things." She drank. "I went in twice before the mark appeared. The third time it was there when I came out."
Kael filed that. "The system waited until the third entry."
"Or the third entry was when I did something that triggered it. I still don't know which." She set the cup down. "You've been in once."
"Once. Last night."
"And you already have Resonance."
He looked at her. "How do you know that?"
"Because I have it too, and the only people I've met who have it got it on their first entry." She studied him with the focused patience of someone running a differential. "It's a perception ability. Low cost, which is probably why the system gives it early. It wants you to be able to gather information. It wants you to keep coming back."
"Why?"
"Because the system needs entries to function. More entries, more debt, more collection." She folded her hands on the table. "It is not on your side. It is not against you either. You are a resource it is managing."
Kael thought about the room with the carved text.
RETURN WHEN READY.
"What else do you have?" he said.
She looked at him for a moment, measuring.
"Why would I tell you that?"
"Because you came," he said. "You could have ignored Sands. You kept the card active, which means you wanted to talk to whoever she sent eventually." He watched her face. "You've been doing this alone for two years. That's not sustainable and you know it."
A pause.
"Three abilities," she said finally. "Resonance. One other perception ability I call Threading. I can follow a frequency to its source through walls and other barriers. And one active ability." She stopped.
"The active one has a cost," he said.
"The active one has a significant cost." Her jaw tightened slightly. "I've used it four times. Each time I lose approximately six hours of memory. Not random hours. Recent ones. The system takes the last six hours before I used the ability."
Kael thought about that.
"So you use it and then you don't remember using it."
"I don't remember the circumstances around using it. I wake up and there's a gap. I've started leaving myself notes." Her voice was flat and even, the way a person spoke about something they had made peace with because the alternative was falling apart. "It works. I just have to live with the gaps."
"What's the ability?"
She looked at him for a long moment.
"I can stop something from moving," she said. "Anything in the Rift. For approximately thirty seconds. Everything in its body locks." She paused. "It is extremely useful and I hate it."
Kael was quiet for a moment.
Then he said: "I'll buy breakfast." Something in her expression shifted. Not warmth exactly. Recognition.
"Fine," she said.