The folder is still open in front of me.
Expected contact: Dryden Sands.
I've read that line too many times for it to still have any chance of being a misreading.
Rhayne stays seated beside me, looking at the same page while the café moves around us. Cups hit the counter. A coffee machine hisses a few yards behind us. Two people argue about transit near the entrance.
Nothing about this place matches the feeling that somebody just pulled another piece of the floor out from under us.
I turn the page.
I'm not looking for my name anymore.
I'm looking for hers.
Rhayne's section is thicker than it looked when we opened it. Some of it is only copied records: civil documents, her parents' history, orphanage data, first Dive, medical evaluations. Other pages carry Arthur's handwritten notes.
It's on a page near the middle that I find something different.
There's a code in the upper right corner.
AION-02.
The word catches me again, immediately.
"AION."
Rhayne looks over.
