"For now," I said. "Until there are enough of you to not need me to be."
After the session, Nassiri was waiting in the corridor with the expression of someone who had listened through a door and was running the implications.
"Twelve to fifteen thousand," he said.
"Rough estimate. Could be higher."
He looked at the ceiling for a moment. Then back at me. "Is this a problem or an asset."
"Both," I said. "In the short term, it's a management challenge — people developing abilities they can't control in a crisis environment is a liability. In the medium term, if they can be given a framework fast enough, it's the single most significant force multiplier available to Earth's defense. In the long term—" I paused. "In the long term, it changes what Earth is."
He absorbed this with the same controlled patience he brought to every piece of information that required revision of his operating model.
"What do you need from me," he said.
"Legitimacy," I said. "A formal designation within your command structure that means when I ask intake workers for information and when I pull people from operations for hour-long sessions, there's an official reason that doesn't create confusion."
"Advisor to Eastern Sector Coordination on anomalous energy phenomena," he said. It was so fast I understood he'd been thinking about it since Day 30.
"That works."
"It means you report to me."
"Within operational boundaries, yes."
He looked at me. "Define operational boundaries."
"I'll tell you what I'm doing and why. I'll follow your resource constraints. I won't endanger your people." I met his eyes. "But I have objectives that extend beyond the eastern sector and some of them involve information I can't fully disclose to a military chain of command without creating political complications above your authority level."
A pause. "The place you went. The thirty days."
"Yes."
"Which is related to the gates."
"Directly."
He was quiet for a moment. Then: "The full version. You said you'd give it when you had more."
"When I have more," I agreed. "I'm still missing pieces." I thought about the Architect's locked final message, the Maw Gate anchor forty meters below the harbor, the trigger conditions I hadn't yet met. "But I'm working on them."
He nodded. Not satisfied, exactly. Committed to the arrangement despite incomplete information, which was a thing Nassiri was apparently very good at.
"Zone Four," he said. "You need the rest of the morning?"
I looked at him. "You know."
"Miriam is very thorough about her intake records." He looked at his watch. "Hour 9. Zone Four is six blocks. You have until Hour 11 before I need you for the northern sector assessment." He paused. "Take the time."
I took the time.
---
Zone Four at Hour 9 was doing what cities do at nine in the morning when cities have survived something — feeding people, organizing the day's work, building the small structures of routine that keep the social architecture functional. I found the intake coordinator Miriam had named, gave her the reference, and waited.
My father came out of a building three minutes later. He was carrying a crate. He was wearing clothes that weren't his — borrowed or donated, the kind of thing you end up in when you've been somewhere unexpected for a month. He looked exactly like himself, which was something I hadn't been fully certain about until I saw it.
He put the crate down when he saw me.
He didn't say anything for a moment. Neither did I. We looked at each other across ten meters of Zone Four's morning activity.
He looked older than he had at the port. He looked tired in a specific way — not broken-tired but the tired of someone who had been doing difficult work for a long time and had found a sustainable pace for it.
He looked at me the same way. I watched him read the changes — the posture, the shoulder, whatever quality the training had built into how I occupied space.
"You look different," he said.
"I know."
"Where did you go."
"It's a long story."
"I have time." He looked at me steadily. "Are you alright."
The question landed in a specific place. *Are you alright* from my father meant: are you injured, are you safe, and also: are you still the person I recognized, and also: was whatever happened to you something you can live with.
"Yes," I said. "I'm alright."
He picked up the crate. "Help me with this. I'll get your mother. Then you can tell us the long story."
I took one end of the crate.
We walked into Zone Four together.