Then he laughed — the same genuine laugh from the dinner table, the one that was slightly startled by itself. It was quieter this time. Three people were sleeping. But it was real.
"What," she said.
"Nothing," he said. "I just—" He looked at her. "I walked into your room three months ago to do a job I'd already decided not to do. And now I'm in a warehouse in the lower city at dawn with thirteen people who built an entire operational infrastructure in secret and I'm going east to work on a project I don't fully understand yet." He paused. "It's a very specific kind of strange."
"You could leave," she said. "The financial arrangement is intact regardless. The documents are yours. You have what you need to make any choice."
"I know," he said. "I'm not going to."
"Why."
He thought about it honestly, which was something she had noticed about him — he didn't answer questions immediately, he actually thought about them.
