The following day found them beneath the great vaulted concourse of Grand Central with what seemed to Mrs Hargreaves like half of New York attempting to leave the city at once, while the other half had apparently arrived for the sole purpose of standing in the first half's way.
Morning had filled the terminal long before the three of them entered it. Voices rose beneath the immense ceiling and returned softened by distance, announcements dissolving into the general murmur before they could be properly distinguished from the calls of porters, the complaints of children, the impatient questions of travellers and the occasional bark of a railway employee attempting to persuade several hundred independently minded human beings to behave as though they belonged to a single organised system. Porters in brass-numbered caps threaded through the crowd with luggage carts piled high enough to hide most of the men pushing them, somehow finding openings where Nathan could see none, while families gathered beneath the departure boards with trunks, hatboxes, valises and children distributed around them in quantities that seemed to require constant recounting. Fathers checked tickets and then checked them again, mothers discovered at the last possible moment that a glove or scarf had vanished into a case already fastened shut, businessmen hurried past with newspapers folded beneath their arms and the fixed expression of men who believed the entire railway had been built specifically to inconvenience their appointments, and soldiers in khaki stood among civilians with canvas kit bags resting against polished boots, some travelling alone and others surrounded by relatives reluctant to surrender the last few minutes before another departure.
Beyond the concourse, where the covered platforms swallowed the trains beneath iron, glass and shadow, locomotives announced themselves through sound before Nathan could properly see them. Steam escaped in long sighs that rolled beneath the roof and reached the concourse as warm dampness touched with coal smoke, while couplings struck together somewhere out of sight with a metallic violence that made several children turn their heads. The air carried damp wool from coats recently exposed to the morning weather, tobacco smoke trapped beneath the high ceiling, hot coffee from counters doing a brisk trade among travellers who had risen too early, perfume, leather, machine oil and the faint mineral smell of steam settling upon stone. Every few moments another current of colder air arrived from the platforms and disturbed all of it, bringing with it the harsher scent of coal and hot metal before the terminal swallowed that too.
Nathan had been looking upward again.
Mrs Hargreaves noticed almost immediately.
He stood beside their luggage with his travelling coat folded across one arm and his hat sitting properly upon his head for the moment, his attention wandering from the windows to the vast ceiling and then toward the streams of people disappearing beneath the signs for the platforms. He had already examined Grand Central the previous evening with enough interest to make Mrs Hargreaves threaten to lead him through New York by the sleeve if he continued staring at buildings instead of watching where he walked, yet apparently sleeping several hours had restored the building's capacity to fascinate him. His eyes followed a porter through the crowd, shifted toward a departure board, then returned to the structure above them with the quiet concentration she knew far too well.
T—Joseph to her now, although the name still felt strangely private after months of knowing only the black-armoured figure called T—waited beside him with considerably less interest in the architecture. He had returned to the armour before leaving the hotel, the face Mrs Hargreaves had finally seen over dinner hidden once more behind the dark lenses and severe black shape that made people unconsciously give him more room than New York generally seemed willing to give anyone. His luggage rested beside one boot, one gloved hand hooked around the handle of a case while his head moved only occasionally, yet Mrs Hargreaves had spent enough time around him now to recognise what the stillness concealed. He knew where the nearest platform entrances were, had already looked at the stairways and doors, had noted the uniformed railway men, the policemen and probably half a dozen people Mrs Hargreaves herself had never noticed. Even waiting for a train, Joseph seemed incapable of entering a place without quietly learning how he would leave it.
Nathan, by contrast, was about to leave with his waistcoat crooked.
Mrs Hargreaves decided that one problem was within her authority to correct.
"You've managed to pull this crooked again," she told him as she stepped into his line of sight and caught the lower edge of his waistcoat between her fingers, tugging it straight before smoothing the shirt beneath it with the brisk efficiency of someone correcting a mistake that should never have survived the hotel room. "How a man capable of running laboratories full of people cannot dress himself properly without supervision remains one of life's great mysteries, and before you tell me that you dressed yourself perfectly well, no, you did not, because I am looking directly at the evidence."
"I dressed myself perfectly well this morning," Nathan replied, lowering his eyes toward her hands but making no genuine attempt to stop her as she worked her way upward, and when Mrs Hargreaves reached his collar he obediently lifted his chin despite the faint amusement beginning around his mouth. "You simply disagree with the arrangement, which is not quite the same thing as the arrangement being wrong."
"I disagree with it because it was wrong," Mrs Hargreaves said, straightening the collar and brushing a piece of lint from his shoulder before giving his lapel a final pat that carried considerably more force than the task required. She leaned back just enough to inspect him, found nothing else immediately objectionable and nodded with satisfaction. "There. Now you may go to Chicago without disgracing England."
Nathan's smile broadened as he looked down at himself, then back at her. "An enormous burden removed from my shoulders. I had been concerned that the Americans might judge the entire nation by the alignment of my waistcoat."
"They might if you insist upon introducing yourself as Professor Drake before behaving strangely," she replied, reaching up once more to correct the angle of his tie by less than half an inch. "You do tend to make yourself memorable."
"That is a malicious exaggeration," Nathan told her, although the ease with which he stood there and allowed her to fuss over him made the denial useless, and when his eyes moved briefly toward Joseph he found the black helmet angled toward them with unmistakable attention. "And you needn't look so entertained."
"I haven't said anything," Joseph answered, the familiar dry voice emerging from behind the helmet while one gloved hand remained on the luggage.
"You don't need to anymore," Nathan said, borrowing Mrs Hargreaves's accusation from the previous evening and earning a quiet, satisfied sound from her as she finally released his tie.
For all the people around them, for all the shouted destinations and rattling luggage carts, the whistles sounding beyond the platforms and the constant percussion of shoes crossing stone, something about the moment was so ordinary that Nathan felt the terminal recede from him for a few seconds. Mrs Hargreaves stood before him checking his clothes as she had done in the entrance hall at The Knapp before dinners, journeys, Cabinet meetings and occasions upon which she had decided he was too distracted to be trusted with his own appearance. Nathan tolerated it with the same mixture of amusement and affection he had spent years pretending was resignation, while Joseph waited nearby with the air of a man determined not to involve himself despite having already accepted an entirely unreasonable quantity of authority from her the night before. If Nathan ignored the enormous station above them, the American voices, the unfamiliar city waiting outside and the fact that an ocean now separated them from Dorset, he could almost imagine they were standing at home.
Almost.
A locomotive gave a long resonant whistle somewhere beneath the ironwork, and the sound rolled through the terminal deeply enough that Nathan felt it in his chest before steam billowed along the far end of one platform, turning passengers nearest the edge into pale moving shapes behind the cloud. Porters began calling more urgently, and the atmosphere around the platform entrances changed in the subtle but unmistakable way railway stations always did when waiting became departure. Newspapers were folded, conversations shortened, tickets emerged from pockets and handbags, parents gathered wandering children and people who had spent ten minutes saying goodbye suddenly discovered they had only two minutes left in which to finish.
Mrs Hargreaves glanced toward the sound before looking back at Nathan, and some of the humour left her face.
"You will write," she told him, adjusting the ribbon beneath her bonnet even though she had already done so twice since entering the station, and when Nathan opened his mouth she raised one finger before he could answer. "And by write, Professor, I mean actual letters. I do not mean three lines informing me that you remain alive, that the weather is adequate and that you have been busy, followed by a signature so hurried that I have to decide whether it is your name or evidence of a medical emergency."
"I was intending something considerably more elaborate," Nathan assured her, shifting the coat over his arm before bending slightly so that neither of them had to compete with a porter shouting behind her. "I thought perhaps four lines, although now that you've established such demanding standards I may have to reconsider the entire arrangement."
Mrs Hargreaves stared at him with an expression of such profound disappointment that Nathan maintained his composure for barely two seconds before his smile betrayed him.
"I'll write every day," he promised, and this time the joke disappeared naturally from his voice as he reached down and covered one of her gloved hands with his own. "Properly. I promise."
Her expression changed only slightly, but Nathan knew her well enough to see it. Mrs Hargreaves had never been a woman inclined toward displays that required an audience. Affection from her had spent years disguising itself as meals left outside laboratory doors, fires laid before Nathan remembered he was cold, clean shirts appearing before he noticed the old ones had become stained, letters placed where he could not possibly forget them and increasingly severe lectures whenever he treated sleep as an inconvenience rather than a biological necessity. Concern usually arrived wearing irritation because irritation was practical and could be acted upon, whereas worry merely sat with a person and waited.
"So you say," she replied, withdrawing her hand only to straighten the cuff of his sleeve, although there was nothing visibly wrong with it now and both of them knew she had simply wanted something else to do with her hands. "I shall consider myself fortunate if Chicago returns you in approximately the condition in which I sent you."
"It isn't Chicago I'm worried about," Nathan said, turning his head toward Joseph with deliberate suspicion.
Joseph looked back at him through the dark lenses without moving anything else.
Mrs Hargreaves followed Nathan's gaze, and whatever private sadness had begun creeping into her expression retreated behind sudden purpose. "That reminds me," she said as she stepped away from Nathan and approached Joseph, who seemed to recognise the danger several seconds before Nathan did. "Look after the Professor, please. Make certain he eats something resembling proper food rather than coffee and whatever can be consumed without putting down a report, make certain he sleeps occasionally, and if he disappears into a laboratory for fourteen hours and forgets both of those things, you have my permission to remove him."
Joseph regarded her in silence long enough that Nathan began to hope professional loyalty might yet prevail.
Then Joseph gave one firm nod.
Nathan turned toward him. "I don't remember granting that authority," he said, looking from Joseph to Mrs Hargreaves as though one of them might suddenly realise the constitutional problem they had created, but Joseph merely bent, picked up one of the cases and tested its weight while Mrs Hargreaves looked enormously satisfied with herself. "Joseph."
"Your objection has been noted," Joseph replied as he straightened, the helmet turning toward Nathan for only a moment before he reached for the second case.
"It has not merely been noted; I am explicitly denying you permission to physically remove me from anywhere," Nathan said, following the case with his eyes when Joseph deliberately moved it out of his reach. "I am your employer."
"And I have permission," Joseph answered as though the matter had therefore been resolved.
"From my housekeeper."
"Precisely," Mrs Hargreaves said, folding her hands with such satisfaction that Nathan immediately understood he had lost. "That settles it."
"It settles absolutely nothing," Nathan told them, although the protest weakened when Mrs Hargreaves smiled, and he was still considering whether the chain of authority at the Institute had somehow been catastrophically altered overnight when another whistle sounded much nearer than the first.
The platform reacted at once. Conversations that had survived the earlier warning were cut short, cigarettes disappeared beneath shoes, a woman hurried past with a child clinging to one hand and a hatbox in the other, and conductors leaned from carriage steps calling for the last passengers while porters lifted trunks and cases aboard with the practised violence of men who had no time to indulge sentimental attachment to luggage. Behind the moving crowd waited the Twentieth Century Limited, its long line of carriages stretching beneath the roof until distance and steam swallowed the far end, polished sides catching broken reflections of coats, uniforms and station lamps. Somewhere ahead, the locomotive breathed beneath the ironwork, steam curling around wheels and rods while the low mechanical vibration of the engine travelled through rail and platform until Nathan could feel it faintly through the soles of his shoes.
Mrs Hargreaves looked toward the train and then back at Nathan, and this time he saw the sadness before she could hide it.
It was not dramatic. She did not begin crying or clutch at him, and Nathan would have been more alarmed if she had, but something tightened around her eyes as the reality of the departure replaced the comfortable business of correcting his clothes. Only the previous night they had sat together over dinner in New York, Mrs Hargreaves finally seeing Joseph's face and learning his name, all three of them laughing over Nathan's alleged inability to keep himself alive without supervision before walking together to the theatre. Now Joseph was going with him and she was remaining behind, and although the separation might amount to only a handful of days, railway stations had acquired a different emotional language during the war. Too many mothers had smiled at sons boarding trains, too many wives had straightened husbands' coats and told them to write, too many departures had begun with promises about seeing one another again.
Nathan had watched those same promises shouted across the harbour only the evening before.
He suddenly disliked hearing their echo here.
"Take care of yourself while I'm gone," Nathan said, stepping closer until the crowd flowed around rather than between them, and his voice softened as he glanced toward the carrier beside her before returning his attention to her face. "And look after Horsley for me, although I suspect I should phrase that the other way around if his opinion of himself is anything to judge by."
"Oh, your precious rat will survive," Mrs Hargreaves replied, seizing gratefully upon the safer subject while she adjusted her bonnet with more force than necessary. "I suspect that creature eats better than half the household, and unlike you he has the good sense to sleep when tired."
"He has dietary requirements," Nathan protested, though his smile returned.
"He has opinions," she corrected him, looking down at the carrier as if Horsley himself might dispute the accusation.
Nathan considered that and nodded. "He does have those."
"And he bites."
"Only when offended."
"He is perpetually offended."
Nathan glanced toward the carrier, imagining the small brown animal inside with all the private knowledge Mrs Hargreaves could not possibly possess about what had been done to him, how much he understood and how much more quickly that understanding had begun to grow. "That," Nathan conceded, "is also true."
"Chicago passengers aboard!" a conductor called from farther down the platform, one hand cupped around his mouth as the words travelled beneath the roof and immediately accelerated everyone still lingering outside the carriages.
Nathan's smile faded by degrees, and for several seconds he and Mrs Hargreaves simply looked at one another while the station continued around them. A luggage cart rattled past behind Nathan, a child nearby complained loudly that he had dropped a sweet, steam hissed beneath the train and someone farther along the platform laughed at a joke neither of them could hear, yet the ordinary noise only made their small silence more distinct.
Mrs Hargreaves had watched Nathan grow older in the same gradual increments everyone else did. Grey had begun touching him where grey ought to, fine lines had appeared around eyes that spent too many nights reading by poor light, and the hands she had just fussed over looked like the hands of a man upon whom years had passed normally. She had no reason to imagine that any of it was deliberate, that the face before her was an act of biological patience Nathan maintained because a man who did not age would eventually become a question impossible to answer. To her he was simply Nathan, older than when she had first begun looking after him and still capable of making her feel that he required precisely as much supervision as he had then.
Nathan, however, saw the difference time had made in her without any such illusion.
There was more grey in her hair than when they had first met, a little more care in the way she descended stairs after a long day and lines at the corners of her eyes that belonged to real years rather than choices made beneath the skin. He could imitate every one of those changes in himself and undo them again if necessity demanded it.
She could not.
The knowledge made departures feel different to him.
"You'll be here when I return?" Nathan asked quietly, the question irrational enough that his own mouth almost curved at it, because they had already discussed where she would stay, how she would send messages and what she intended to see while he and Joseph were away.
"Where else would I be?" Mrs Hargreaves replied, reaching up for the final time to smooth the front of his coat and letting her hand remain there for just a heartbeat longer than the task required. "Someone has to prevent your hotel room from being converted into a laboratory while you're gone, and somebody apparently has to supervise the criminal mastermind you left behind in a wooden carrier."
Nathan's eyes softened. "Then I'll see you when I come back."
"Yes, Professor," she answered, meeting his gaze until the smile she had been holding became smaller and much more genuine. "You will."
Joseph had already lifted both cases, which Nathan noticed only when he turned to reach for his own and discovered it was no longer where he had left it.
"I am capable of carrying luggage," Nathan informed him, extending a hand.
Joseph moved the case farther away and began toward the carriage.
Nathan remained where he was for a second, staring after him.
Mrs Hargreaves's smile became considerably more cheerful. "I like him."
"I'm beginning to regret introducing you properly," Nathan muttered as he turned back toward her, but she had already taken his arm and was guiding him toward the narrowing stream of passengers as though there remained some danger he might miss the train through stubbornness alone.
They moved with the crowd toward the carriage, passing porters who were loading the last luggage and a family conducting a goodbye so elaborate that Nathan suspected it had begun before breakfast. Joseph surrendered the heavier cases to a porter after ensuring he knew exactly where they were going, while Nathan stepped onto the carriage stair and then stopped with one hand against the rail.
Mrs Hargreaves stood immediately below him.
"Go on," she told him when he hesitated, making a small impatient gesture toward the doorway while the fondness beneath it ruined any pretence that she was genuinely annoyed. "You'll have the conductor shouting at you in a moment."
Nathan looked at her another second, committing the sight to memory for no reason he could have explained, then inclined his head and climbed aboard.
The carriage interior felt almost unnaturally quiet after the platform. Thick upholstery absorbed the harsher sounds beneath their feet, polished brass caught the light from the windows and the cushioned seats looked deep enough to swallow a traveller who surrendered to them after several hours. Overhead racks already held coats, leather cases and hatboxes, and passengers were arranging themselves with the territorial precision peculiar to long journeys: newspapers opened to establish privacy, bags placed where knees might otherwise go, coats folded, spectacles cleaned and books selected with the solemnity of deciding how the next several hundred miles ought to be spent. A grey-haired gentleman across the aisle had already hidden most of his face behind a newspaper despite the train not yet moving, while farther down two women arranged flowers they had apparently been given at the station and a young businessman checked his pocket watch for the third time in less than a minute.
Nathan slid his smaller case beneath the seat, settled into the cushioning and adjusted his coat beside him before immediately turning toward the window.
Mrs Hargreaves remained on the platform.
People passed between them now, sometimes hiding her completely before the crowd opened and returned her to view. She stood beside Horsley's carrier with both hands clasped before her, one gloved hand holding the other, her bonnet sitting perfectly despite the dozen adjustments she had made to it since breakfast.
Nathan inclined his head.
Mrs Hargreaves lifted one hand and waved.
He raised his own.
Across from him Joseph looked through the glass and gave her a small inclination of the head, and Mrs Hargreaves answered him with a separate wave that made Nathan glance between them with renewed suspicion.
The locomotive whistle sounded again, close enough now to vibrate faintly through the carriage windows, and somewhere forward a coupling struck tight with a heavy metallic knock. Another answered farther back, then another, the movement travelling along the train until the carriage shifted beneath Nathan and the water in a glass belonging to the grey-haired gentleman trembled against its rim. Steam swept across the platform outside, whitening the lower half of the windows before thinning, and beneath them the wheels began turning with a slow resistance that Nathan felt through the seat.
The platform moved.
Only by inches at first.
Mrs Hargreaves walked beside them.
Nathan kept his hand raised and watched her matching the train's pace for several steps, her expression composed despite the sadness he could still see around her eyes. The locomotive pulled harder, the couplings settled into tension and Grand Central began sliding past with increasing certainty until Mrs Hargreaves had to slow.
She continued waving.
Nathan did too.
A porter crossed between them and briefly erased her, followed by a pillar and then the dark interruption of another carriage on the neighbouring track. Nathan leaned slightly toward the window as though the movement might somehow improve the angle, and when Mrs Hargreaves appeared again she was farther away but still standing where he had left her.
The train gathered speed.
She became smaller.
Nathan lowered his hand only when he could no longer be certain she would see it.
Joseph remained silent across from him.
Nathan kept looking backward as long as the window permitted it, watching pillars, lamps, ironwork and sections of platform pass until the curve of the track finally carried Mrs Hargreaves away altogether. Even then he remained turned toward the glass for several seconds while the enormous station roof slid overhead and the wheels beneath them found the steady repeating rhythm that would accompany them west.
Mrs Hargreaves remained on the platform after Nathan's carriage disappeared.
The train continued withdrawing from the station, each carriage passing in turn until the last was swallowed beneath distant ironwork and the sound of the wheels became part of Grand Central rather than something she could follow. Steam drifted lazily through the section of platform the Limited had occupied, revealing rails shining beneath the lamps and scraps of paper disturbed by the wake of departure.
Around her, the station resumed itself with almost insulting efficiency.
A porter retrieved an abandoned luggage cart. A family that had been waving from farther down the platform gathered its things and began toward the concourse. Another train was announced, the words echoing overhead while people who had nothing to do with Nathan or Chicago moved toward another platform. Somewhere nearby a man laughed, and a little girl asked her mother whether they could have something to eat.
Mrs Hargreaves did not immediately move.
She stood beside Horsley's carrier and looked toward the empty track, one hand remaining half raised before she noticed it and lowered it slowly.
Only then did the composed expression she had maintained for Nathan slip.
Not enough for anyone passing to notice.
Enough for her.
"Stay safe, both of you," she murmured, the words disappearing beneath the station noise almost as soon as they left her, and she allowed herself one more moment before straightening her shoulders, adjusting the ribbon beneath her bonnet despite its being perfectly secure and looking down toward the carrier. "And you are not escaping while they are gone."
Something shifted faintly inside.
Mrs Hargreaves narrowed her eyes.
"I mean it."
Horsley offered no visible response.
"That silence does not reassure me."
A porter passing nearby glanced at her, then toward the carrier.
Mrs Hargreaves picked it up before he could ask.
She had, after all, an entire city outside, a hotel room waiting for her and a rat Nathan insisted was perfectly manageable.
The last of those things worried her considerably more than the first two.
By the time New York had fallen far enough behind that the city existed only as smoke on the horizon and a memory of stone beneath the rails, the lighter part of Nathan Drake had largely gone with it.
For the first hour he remained turned toward the window, watching the last dense edges of the city loosen into freight yards, industrial buildings and smaller settlements before those too began surrendering ground to open country. Timber yards appeared beside the tracks with lumber stacked in geometric walls, sidings crowded with freight wagons gave way to fields and telegraph poles, and the poles themselves began flickering past the glass with such regularity that Nathan unconsciously started measuring the intervals before catching himself and deciding that Mrs Hargreaves would somehow know if he spent the journey calculating railway speed from telegraph spacing.
He said little.
The smile she had drawn from him on the platform survived for several miles, returning once when he remembered her description of Horsley as perpetually offended and again when Joseph, still in armour for the early part of the journey, remarked that she had given him very clear instructions. Nathan had informed him that those instructions possessed no legal standing whatsoever, to which Joseph had replied that he doubted Mrs Hargreaves would care. Nathan could not find a convincing answer to that and eventually turned back toward the countryside.
As the miles accumulated, however, the departure settled into its proper place and his attention began moving ahead.
Chicago.
The reports waiting in his case.
Kansas beyond it.
The French hospital records.
By the time the evening meal drew them toward the dining car, Professor Nathan Drake had returned, although the transformation was not dramatic enough for anyone who did not know him to recognise it. He did not become colder or suddenly severe; he simply gathered himself inward, the private man who had stood waving to Mrs Hargreaves folding carefully beneath the physician, researcher and director of an institution whose work had taught him repeatedly that carelessness could kill people long before anyone understood what mistake had been made.
The dining car provided a considerably more civilised setting for that change than most of the places in which Nathan ordinarily worked.
White linen covered the tables from edge to edge, pressed so carefully that the folds remained visible beneath china carrying the railway insignia, while polished silver lay in precise arrangements beside plates and glassware trembled almost imperceptibly whenever the wheels encountered an uneven section of track. Small shaded lamps cast warm circles across polished wood and brass, their light flattering nearly everyone beneath it, and larger fixtures overhead gave the carriage a brightness that seemed almost domestic despite the darkness beginning beyond the windows. The air carried roasted meat, coffee, butter, tobacco from passengers who had finished earlier courses and the faint clean starch of table linen, all of it underlaid by the warm metallic scent of a railway carriage that no quantity of polished wood could entirely conceal.
Waiters in white jackets moved through the narrow spaces between tables with a balance Nathan found nearly as interesting as the meal. One crossed the carriage with a silver coffee pot held steady while the floor shifted beneath him, compensating for every movement before it became visible, while another carried several soup bowls on a tray and touched two fingers to the back of an empty chair as the train entered a curve, using the contact for less than a second before continuing without spilling anything. Nathan watched him long enough that Joseph noticed.
"Don't," Joseph warned quietly as he unfolded his napkin, the civilian suit he had changed into before dinner making him somehow more conspicuous to Nathan than the armour ever did.
"I haven't done anything," Nathan replied, although his eyes followed the waiter another moment.
"You're wondering how long it took him to learn that."
Nathan looked across the table. "I was wondering whether the compensation becomes conscious or entirely reflexive after sufficient repetition."
Joseph stared at him.
Nathan reached for his water. "Which is a different question."
"It is not."
The suit was perfectly respectable. Nathan had made certain of that.
It was also engaged in a losing argument with Joseph's shoulders.
The dark three-piece arrangement had been cut well enough, the white shirt was crisp, the tie conservative and the polished shoes would have satisfied even Mrs Hargreaves, but there was simply rather a lot of Joseph for ordinary civilian tailoring to disguise. His shoulders filled the coat nearly from seam to seam, the waistcoat lay close across his chest and whenever he leaned forward Nathan found himself watching the buttons with the same scientific concern he might have given a pressure vessel operating above its recommended tolerance.
Joseph caught him doing it.
"What?"
"Nothing," Nathan answered, lowering his eyes toward his plate.
"You're looking at the waistcoat."
"I was not."
"You were."
Nathan picked up his knife. "I was evaluating the tailoring."
"You were waiting for a button to come off."
Nathan's mouth twitched. "Only because I believe in preparing for foreseeable mechanical failure."
Joseph looked down at himself and then back at Nathan. "Eat."
Nathan's amusement deepened. "Mrs Hargreaves has been gone for several hours and you've already become intolerable."
"She was very clear."
Around them the dining car carried on with the small theatre of railway civility. Two businessmen at a nearby table discussed steel prices loudly enough that several neighbouring passengers were receiving an unsolicited education in American industry, one insisting that wartime demand had permanently altered the country's manufacturing capacity while the other objected to almost every conclusion without lowering his voice. Across the aisle, an older couple shared a bottle of wine while speaking quietly about relatives in Ohio, the woman occasionally leaning closer whenever the wheels grew louder. A young woman travelling with her mother turned toward the window each time the countryside opened beyond the trees, apparently unwilling to let darkness arrive without seeing every possible mile first, while farther along three men who had begun drinking before dinner were laughing over a story involving a hotel porter, a misplaced suitcase and what sounded like an entirely innocent woman whose innocence diminished every time the story was retold.
Nathan's meal arrived beneath a silver cover.
When the waiter lifted it, steam carried the scent of chicken, herbs and rich sauce upward between them.
The Chicken à la Century had been arranged with a degree of ceremony no meal beneath the Institute had ever received. The meat rested beneath a glossy sauce with vegetables placed around it deliberately rather than simply occupying whatever space remained on the plate, and Nathan spent several seconds examining the presentation before deciding Mercer would have regarded the entire arrangement as evidence that somebody had been given too much time.
Joseph had already begun eating.
Nathan looked at him. "No appreciation for presentation?"
"It's food."
"That is an extraordinarily joyless answer."
"It will look the same in five minutes."
Nathan glanced down at his own plate, considered the point and reluctantly began cutting into the chicken.
The first mouthful made him pause.
Joseph noticed.
"Well?"
Nathan chewed, swallowed and looked down again. "Mrs Hargreaves may have bribed the railway."
Joseph continued eating. "You like it."
"I didn't say that."
"You stopped talking."
"That proves nothing."
"It proves something."
A waiter passed and refilled Nathan's water glass, and Nathan inclined his head with a quiet "Thank you," before waiting until the man had moved beyond easy hearing. Only then did the professional part of the journey reassert itself fully, his fork remaining poised over the plate as his attention settled on Joseph.
"When we arrive in Chicago, I intend to begin with the districts in which the newest cases have been reported," Nathan said, keeping his voice low enough that the businessmen discussing steel could drown it without difficulty. He cut another piece of chicken while speaking, more from obedience to Mrs Hargreaves's absent authority than hunger now. "I don't particularly care what the local physicians have called the illness yet. Influenza, pneumonia, some unnamed fever, exhaustion—those words tell me what someone believed after seeing it, not necessarily what the patient had."
Joseph finished chewing before answering. "Newest cases first?" he asked, resting his knife beside the plate as he gave Nathan his full attention.
"Newest first," Nathan confirmed, lifting his glass and taking a drink before continuing. "I want people early enough in the illness that whatever happened to them hasn't yet been buried beneath days of fever, secondary infection, medication, poor treatment or simple deterioration. By the time someone has been ill for a week, half the body is reacting to what the first half did."
The train leaned gently through a curve, wine shifting inside glasses along the carriage while several pieces of silverware moved against porcelain with small musical taps. Beyond the windows, the last useful daylight had turned the countryside blue-grey, farmhouses appearing between stands of trees and vanishing again before Nathan could see more than a roof, a barn and perhaps a line of fencing. Telegraph wires rose and dipped beside the railway, black against the fading sky.
"The cases in France gave us a pattern," Nathan continued as he turned briefly toward the window, watching a farmhouse disappear before looking back at Joseph. "Not enough to call it a complete disease course and certainly not enough to decide that every respiratory illness between France and Kansas belongs to the same thing, but enough that repetition should be visible if repetition exists. Temperature, speed of onset, respiratory involvement, colouration, neurological changes, rate of decline, secondary pneumonia, recovery if there is one—anything unusual that appears more than once matters."
"And if Chicago doesn't match?" Joseph asked, resuming his meal while his eyes remained on Nathan.
"Then we learn something equally useful," Nathan replied, separating another piece of chicken and eating it before he allowed himself to continue. "It means whatever we saw in those French records hasn't simply crossed the Atlantic in the neat line our imaginations would prefer, and that would be good news even if it leaves us with more questions."
The waiter returned briefly. "Everything satisfactory, gentlemen?" he asked with professional warmth, though his eyes lingered upon Joseph for perhaps half a second longer than etiquette required before returning to Nathan.
"Very," Nathan answered, glancing toward the plate with genuine approval. "The chicken deserves its reputation."
"Glad to hear it, sir," the waiter replied as he removed an unused side plate and shifted Nathan's bread plate slightly away from the edge before moving toward the next table.
Nathan watched him go and then lowered his voice. "I am increasingly convinced Mrs Hargreaves contacted the railway before we left and instructed them to feed me."
Joseph looked pointedly at Nathan's half-finished plate. "You are eating," he observed, and the faint satisfaction in his voice was enough to make Nathan stop with his fork halfway to his mouth.
"Yes," Nathan said slowly.
Joseph returned to his meal.
Nathan stared at him. "That sounded remarkably like approval."
"Eat."
"You see, that is precisely the tone she uses."
"Good."
Nathan considered objecting and decided the chicken was currently the easier opponent.
For several minutes they ate while the dining car continued around them, and Nathan allowed the ordinary sounds of the place to occupy the gaps in conversation: knives touching china, coffee being poured, the businessmen escalating their disagreement about steel, one of the drinking men laughing hard enough to cough and the unchanging rhythm of wheels beneath all of it. The locomotive whistle reached them faintly from far ahead, stretched thin by the carriages between, and Nathan found himself thinking how easily a passenger could forget the immense machinery pulling them while sitting among linen and silver.
When he finally set his fork down again, Joseph looked up before Nathan spoke.
"You have a choice when we arrive," Nathan said, resting one forearm against the edge of the table as he leaned slightly forward. "You can accompany me through the hospitals and reported cases, or you can work outward from them. Rail yards, boarding houses, warehouses, workers' districts, places where a man can disappear into a rented room for two days with a fever before anyone with a medical degree hears his name. If the official reports are behind the illness, you may find the edge before I do."
Joseph's attention sharpened. "Your preference?" he asked, his hand resting beside his knife.
"None," Nathan answered, lifting his coffee cup after a waiter placed it near his right hand. The porcelain was hot against his fingers and the smell of fresh coffee rose between them. "You're more useful to me making that decision yourself. I have physicians, hospitals, records and whatever professional courtesy my name can purchase. You're better at learning what exists outside the room people have prepared for us."
Joseph looked briefly toward the window, where darkness had strengthened enough that the glass now held their reflections over the remaining countryside. Nathan saw himself superimposed against fields and telegraph poles, the face looking appropriately older than it had years before, while Joseph's reflection seemed even larger in the civilian suit.
"Then I scout," Joseph decided, turning back toward Nathan as he picked up his fork. "You know what you're looking for inside the hospitals. I'll see what exists before the hospitals."
Nathan nodded. "That was my inclination as well, although I was trying very hard not to contaminate your independent decision."
"You failed."
"I hadn't said anything."
"You asked me to choose between following you around hospitals and not following you around hospitals."
Nathan took a drink of coffee and considered the accusation. "That may have introduced bias."
"It did."
"Still, try not to frighten every clerk in Chicago," Nathan added, raising the cup slightly in Joseph's direction. "At least not immediately. We may need some of them cooperative."
Joseph looked across the table at him with the same expression he wore whenever Nathan said something particularly unnecessary.
Nathan smiled into the coffee.
The humour faded naturally after that, not because either man forced it away but because the work ahead returned to occupy the space between them. Nathan looked around the carriage and found the contrast difficult to ignore. Everything here had been designed to reassure passengers that distance could be conquered comfortably: white linen, polished silver, attentive waiters, good food, lamps warm enough to make the dark countryside beyond the windows feel remote rather than threatening. Men discussed business, couples drank wine, somebody was ordering dessert.
Across the Atlantic, men were still dying in mud.
Beneath Nathan's Institute, organisms were cultivated behind doors thick enough that most passengers in this carriage would have found the precautions absurd if anyone described them.
Somewhere ahead, people were becoming ill.
Nathan lowered his eyes to the plate and finished another mouthful before speaking. "We don't remain in Chicago any longer than necessary," he said, the last trace of dinner-table amusement leaving his voice as he wiped his mouth and placed the napkin back across his knee. "Once I've seen enough to establish whether the pattern is genuine—or establish that it isn't—we move west."
"Kansas," Joseph said, giving one slow nod while he reached for his water.
"Kansas," Nathan confirmed, leaning back slightly as the train carried them through another stretch of gathering darkness. "The reports there interest me more."
"More than Chicago?" Joseph asked, watching him carefully.
"Potentially more," Nathan replied, turning the coffee cup slowly between his fingers while he considered how much of his concern belonged to evidence and how much to the gaps between evidence. "Chicago is difficult, but Chicago gives us infrastructure. Hospitals, physicians, newspapers, factories, rail offices, municipal records, enough bureaucracy that when people become ill they tend to leave some trace of it behind even if the diagnosis is wrong."
"And Kansas?" Joseph asked, the question quieter now.
Nathan stopped turning the cup. "Scattered illness, smaller communities, fewer physicians in some places and more distance between the person who becomes sick and anyone capable of reporting it beyond the town," he answered, looking directly at Joseph. "The reports are less organised, which makes them harder to trust, but it also means an outbreak can become considerably worse before anyone elsewhere knows what is happening."
Joseph understood immediately. "So Chicago can look larger because Chicago is better at counting."
"Exactly," Nathan said, and the speed of the answer carried a hint of satisfaction. "Numbers describe what was recorded. They do not automatically describe what existed."
The locomotive whistle sounded again, longer this time, while the lights of a distant settlement appeared ahead in loose clusters beside the track. Nathan returned to his meal, cutting the final portion of chicken with deliberate care before glancing once more toward Joseph.
"We verify Chicago," he said, lifting the last piece with his fork while the warm carriage light trembled faintly over the table. "Then we go to Kansas."
Joseph nodded and resumed eating, and for a while neither of them needed to say anything else.
Dessert came later, along with more coffee Nathan did not need and nevertheless accepted. Cigarettes appeared at several neighbouring tables, the businessmen finally exhausted their disagreement without either conceding anything and the older couple across the aisle left arm in arm for their compartment. Outside, the remaining countryside disappeared completely, leaving only occasional lights sliding past the glass while their reflections travelled with them.
Nathan ate.
Joseph ate considerably more.
Beneath the linen and polished china, the Twentieth Century Limited drove west with an unwavering mechanical confidence, every revolution of its wheels carrying them closer to Chicago.
Over the next several hours the train settled into the peculiar rhythm of long-distance travel, in which movement became so constant that the body stopped acknowledging it until a curve or change in speed reminded everyone that the floor beneath them was crossing a continent.
Dinner ended and the dining car gradually emptied. Waiters cleared plates and folded used linen away, coffee cups were collected from tables where conversations had outlasted meals and the smell of roasted meat slowly gave way to tobacco, coffee and furniture polish. Passengers dispersed into sleeping cars, lounges and compartments, and the lights throughout the train seemed warmer as the darkness beyond the windows deepened.
Nathan and Joseph returned to their car.
By then Joseph had loosened his tie slightly, although Nathan suspected this had less to do with comfort than the continued structural demands being made upon the waistcoat. The carriage was quieter than it had been before dinner. Several passengers had drawn curtains, one elderly man slept with his chin resting against his chest and a newspaper folded loosely in his lap, and a woman across from him worked patiently at embroidery beneath a wall lamp, lifting the cloth closer whenever the train moved through a darker section and the lamp seemed to dim by comparison.
Nathan sat beside the window, pulled the leather document case toward himself and opened it.
Whatever remained of dinner's ease disappeared almost immediately.
The case had been packed with the efficiency of a man who expected to need everything and distrusted the idea of relying upon memory simply because his own happened to be unusually good. Folders filled it from end to end, secured with string or brass fasteners and marked in Nathan's handwriting with locations, dates, institutions and names. Some contained copied hospital records from France. Others held telegrams, physician correspondence, shipping information, troop movements, Institute summaries and fragments gathered from reports reaching Britain over the previous weeks.
Nathan removed the Chicago material first and spread the uppermost file across his knees.
Within minutes, the carriage ceased to exist for him in any meaningful sense.
He did not simply read each page and continue. A number on one sheet sent him three pages backward; a physician's description caused him to open one of the French files and place both reports beside one another; a difference in terminology made him write the original phrase in the margin rather than replacing it with the standardised wording the Institute had used for comparison. His pencil moved in short deliberate strokes, underlining dates, placing question marks beside uncertain interpretations and drawing small lines between details he wanted examined again once he had access to the original records.
Rapid fever.
Respiratory distress.
Cyanosis.
Sudden deterioration.
Pneumonia.
Young adults.
The words did not prove anything.
That irritated him less than the possibility that someone else might decide they did.
Nathan opened another report.
Joseph watched from the opposite seat for several minutes before recognising the familiar point at which speaking to Nathan became less conversation than attempting to attract the attention of a man standing in another room.
"I'm going to walk," Joseph told him as he stood and adjusted the jacket across his shoulders, one hand briefly pulling the fabric into a more comfortable position.
"Mm," Nathan replied, eyes fixed on a physician's note while his pencil drew a short line beneath a sentence.
Joseph remained standing.
Nathan turned the page.
Joseph continued looking at him.
"That means yes, I heard you," Nathan said at last, reaching beneath the Chicago folder for one of the French reports without lifting his eyes. "You may wander the train without written permission, although if you intend to detach a carriage I would appreciate advance notice."
Joseph stared at him.
Nathan's mouth moved faintly at one corner.
Then the reports reclaimed him.
Joseph left him to it.
The connecting door closed softly behind him, and within a few steps the train felt different.
During daylight the carriages had seemed open, public and connected by the common spectacle outside the windows. At night, with the countryside reduced to blackness and the glass reflecting the interior back upon itself, every passageway seemed narrower and more private. Lamps mounted along polished walls created warm islands of light separated by short stretches of shadow, brass handles caught brief flashes as the train moved and the windows became dark mirrors in which Joseph repeatedly saw himself approaching.
Without the armour, he found the reflection mildly irritating.
The suit looked respectable.
Nathan had assured him of that several times, which made Joseph trust the assessment less rather than more.
He looked like a soldier somebody had attempted to disguise as a banker.
A porter approaching from the opposite direction stepped aside to let him pass, offering a polite "Evening, sir," as Joseph inclined his head and continued. Near one vestibule, two men stood smoking beside a partially opened window, their conversation pausing when Joseph approached while both pairs of eyes travelled over the width of his shoulders and then upward toward his face. Joseph gave them no attention, crossed the connecting plates as the train shifted beneath him and caught the next door before it swung back.
He had grown accustomed to people looking.
The suit simply changed the reason.
Another carriage waited beyond, quieter than the last, and Joseph had just stepped through when a woman approached from the opposite side at almost the same moment.
They nearly met shoulder to shoulder.
"Oh, I'm sorry," she said, stopping quickly enough that one hand went instinctively to the small hat pinned over her brown hair while the other caught the wooden partition beside her for balance.
"My fault," Joseph replied as he stepped back and held the door wider for her, giving her enough room to pass without having to squeeze between him and the frame.
"Thank you," she said, and after moving through the doorway she took only two steps before slowing and looking back.
Joseph expected her to continue.
She did not.
She was perhaps in her early twenties, small enough that standing near Joseph exaggerated the difference between them. Brown hair had been arranged neatly beneath the hat, although several strands had escaped around her temples during the journey, and the warm carriage light gave her pale complexion more colour than daylight might have. Her eyes were brown as well, attentive without being suspicious, and there was an ease about her expression Joseph noticed almost immediately. She seemed like someone accustomed to speaking to strangers and assuming, until given reason otherwise, that the experience might be pleasant.
"You're travelling west too, I suppose," she said, and the moment the words left her she glanced toward the corridor and smiled at herself. "That may be the most unnecessary question I've asked all week."
Joseph looked briefly in the direction the train was travelling. "The railway does make the answer difficult to dispute," he replied, and the faint dryness in his voice surprised her enough that she laughed.
"There," she said, turning more fully toward him while the train rocked beneath them. "I knew you could talk."
Joseph raised one eyebrow.
The woman's smile widened as she extended one gloved hand. "Helen."
Joseph looked at the offered hand for only a moment before taking it carefully, his own nearly swallowing hers. "Joseph," he answered, releasing her hand before the size difference became ridiculous.
"Joseph," Helen repeated as though placing the name somewhere she intended to remember it, then gave him another easy smile. "It's nice to meet you."
"And you," Joseph replied, and when another passenger approached from behind Helen he moved automatically to one side, allowing the man through before returning his attention to her.
For several seconds neither of them moved.
Helen seemed to decide that this meant the conversation had permission to continue.
"May I ask you something?" she said, resting one hand lightly against the wooden partition as the carriage swayed.
Joseph gave a small nod. "You may."
"Your accent," Helen began, tilting her head slightly as though listening to the few words he had given her. "You're not American."
"No," Joseph answered, and the brevity of it made her smile again.
"I thought not. English?"
"English," Joseph confirmed, slipping one hand into his trouser pocket as another vibration travelled through the floor.
Her interest sharpened. "Really? Were you a soldier?" she asked, her eyes moving over him again with considerably more understanding than the men near the vestibule had managed.
Joseph's expression altered very little, but his shoulders settled slightly. "Yes," he answered, adjusting one cuff beneath the jacket sleeve. "Still am, depending upon how generously one chooses to define the word."
Helen's curiosity remained open rather than invasive. "You don't look as though you're travelling with a regiment."
"I'm not."
"Then what brings an English soldier all the way over here?"
Joseph's eyes shifted briefly toward the black window beside them, where his reflection travelled through invisible countryside. "I've been placed in a rather unusual security position."
"Security," Helen repeated, folding her hands before her. "For someone important?"
Joseph considered Nathan surrounded by reports several carriages away.
"Yes."
Helen waited.
Joseph offered nothing else.
Her mouth curved. "You're very careful with your answers."
"I've been told that."
"By your employer?"
"Among others."
Helen laughed softly, and Joseph found himself watching the expression a moment longer than necessary because there seemed to be no calculation behind it. She was not attempting to discover state secrets or manipulate information from him. She had encountered an unfamiliar man aboard a long train journey and decided talking to him was more interesting than returning immediately to wherever she had been going.
They began walking almost without deciding to, Joseph matching his pace to hers as the corridor opened ahead.
"Where are you going?" Helen asked, glancing sideways at him.
"Chicago."
"So am I," she replied, looking pleased by the coincidence despite the fact that half the train probably shared the destination. "Business?"
"For my employer."
"How long are you staying?"
Joseph opened the next carriage door and held it while she stepped through. "As long as he requires."
"That sounds ominously indefinite," Helen said, turning to face him for two backward steps before thinking better of walking that way on a moving train. "And here I thought Englishmen were supposed to be terribly precise."
"We're precise when we know the answer," Joseph replied as he followed her through.
Helen looked back at him. "That sounded almost like a joke."
"It wasn't intended as one."
"That makes it better."
Joseph looked away before she could see the beginning of a smile.
They reached a wider part of the carriage where several seats stood empty beneath the lamps. A waiter passed in the opposite direction carrying coffee, the rich smell trailing behind him for several seconds, and Helen's eyes followed the tray toward the dining cars.
"Have you eaten?" she asked, looking back toward Joseph.
"Yes."
The disappointment on her face was small but immediate.
Joseph noticed.
Helen recovered quickly, smoothing one hand over the side of her skirt. "I was thinking of getting something myself, and I thought perhaps you might join me. Unless that would be terribly improper."
Joseph studied her.
She had attempted to make the invitation casual.
She had not succeeded particularly well.
Under ordinary circumstances he would have declined. Meals with strangers held little appeal, and he had left Nathan only because he needed movement after spending hours sitting opposite a man mentally dissecting medical reports between mouthfuls of chicken. His intention had been to walk the length of the train, return before Nathan noticed time passing and perhaps make certain the Professor had not begun rearranging the entire American medical system from his seat.
Helen waited.
She seemed pleasant.
Refusing simply because he had not planned to meet her felt unnecessarily rude.
"I can," Joseph said, inclining his head slightly. "But I should tell my employer where I am first."
Helen brightened enough to make him unexpectedly glad he had agreed. "Of course."
"I won't be long."
"I'll come with you," she replied immediately, then caught his look and lifted her eyebrows. "Unless meeting him is forbidden too."
"No," Joseph said, turning back the way he had come. "It isn't forbidden."
"Good," Helen replied, falling into step beside him. "I was beginning to worry your profession consisted entirely of things you weren't allowed to discuss."
"A large part of it does."
"At least you admit it."
The walk back took several minutes, and Helen filled most of them easily. She asked whether he had been to New York before, what he thought of America and whether England felt very different after travelling here. Joseph answered in the shortest form that remained polite, but instead of being discouraged by the restraint she seemed increasingly entertained by it, occasionally repeating his answer back to him as though testing how much information he believed one syllable could reasonably contain.
When they finally reached Nathan's carriage, Joseph opened the door and found the Professor almost exactly where he had left him.
The only substantial difference was the paper.
Documents now occupied the seat beside Nathan, one corner of the small table beneath the window and part of the opposite cushion. His jacket had been unbuttoned, his tie loosened just enough to suggest he had forgotten he was wearing it and a pencil rested between the fingers of his left hand while his right held a physician's report close to the lamp.
Joseph entered.
Helen followed.
Nathan did not immediately look up.
Joseph waited because he knew better than to interrupt the final line of whatever paragraph Nathan had decided currently mattered more than the surrounding world.
Nathan reached the bottom, moved his eyes back to a sentence halfway up the page, made a mark beside it and only then lifted his head.
His gaze settled first upon Joseph.
Then Helen.
Nathan studied her for several seconds, not rudely and not with suspicion, but with the unnerving completeness of a man accustomed to noticing more than social convention required. He registered the hat, clothes, age, posture and expression before his attention returned to Joseph, who stood beside her with an air suggesting the situation had happened to him accidentally.
Nathan understood.
A faint amusement entered his eyes.
"You've made a friend," he said, lowering the report onto his knee while the pencil remained caught between his fingers.
"Helen," Joseph replied, and the flatness of the answer only strengthened Nathan's amusement.
"Helen Whitmore," she introduced herself, stepping slightly forward and offering Nathan a polite smile. "I'm sorry to interrupt."
"Nathan Drake," Nathan replied, inclining his head from his seat before closing one of the folders enough to prevent loose pages sliding onto the floor. "And you're not interrupting anything important enough to justify an apology."
Joseph looked pointedly at the medical documents covering half the seating area.
Nathan followed his gaze. "Relatively speaking," he amended, and Helen laughed softly.
"We were going to have something to eat," Joseph explained, sounding as though he remained mildly surprised by the development himself.
Nathan looked at him.
Joseph looked back.
For perhaps two seconds an entire conversation passed between them without either speaking. Joseph had not sought the invitation, had nevertheless accepted it and was now standing beside a pleasant young woman while asking, in effect, whether Nathan could survive alone for another hour.
Nathan's mouth curved.
"Go," he told him, lifting one hand in dismissal before Joseph could manufacture an excuse to remain.
Joseph hesitated.
Nathan noticed, reached into the document case and withdrew a small white card covered on one side in his own handwriting. "And since you're going back toward the dining car, give this to the chef," he added, holding it out until Joseph took it between two fingers.
Helen glanced toward the card. "What is it?"
"My dinner later," Nathan answered as he reopened the folder across his knees and immediately found his place. "Or whatever the kitchen chooses to call the meal served to a man who refuses to abandon his paperwork."
Joseph looked down at the card. "You already ate," he reminded him, his tone carrying enough of Mrs Hargreaves that Nathan slowly raised his eyes.
"Four hours ago."
Joseph continued looking at him.
Nathan sighed. "Yes, Joseph. I intend to eat again. Mrs Hargreaves's instructions remain safe in your hands, the British Empire will survive and I promise not to starve to death between here and Chicago."
Joseph slipped the card into his inside pocket.
Nathan pointed toward the door with his pencil. "Go before she changes her mind."
Helen laughed.
Joseph stared at him.
Nathan lowered his eyes to the report with an expression of perfect innocence.
Joseph opened the door.
Helen followed him into the corridor, and just before it closed she glanced back to find Nathan already bent over the papers again, pencil moving as though the two of them had ceased to exist the moment permission was granted.
They crossed into the next carriage before Helen spoke.
"He seems interesting," she said, looking over at Joseph while they walked.
"He is," Joseph replied, keeping his attention ahead.
"That sounded diplomatic."
"It was."
Helen smiled.
The dining car had changed considerably since Nathan and Joseph's earlier meal. Only a handful of tables remained occupied, the main dinner crowd having retreated to compartments and lounges, while several empty tables had been reset so perfectly that the white cloth seemed untouched. Lamps cast warm pools over china and silver, and with nothing visible beyond the windows except their own reflections, the carriage felt detached from the country rushing past it, a small illuminated room moving through an otherwise invisible world.
A waiter approached as Helen and Joseph took seats opposite one another.
"Good evening," he said, placing two menus before them before looking between the pair. "May I bring either of you something to drink?"
"Coffee for me, please," Helen answered as she opened the menu and scanned the first few lines.
"Water," Joseph said, then remembered Nathan's card and drew it from his jacket. "And this is for the chef."
The waiter accepted it, glanced over the writing and changed posture by the smallest amount as though whatever Nathan had written converted the request from eccentricity into instruction. "Of course, sir," he replied before disappearing toward the kitchen.
Helen watched him go and then looked across the table. "What did that say?"
Joseph unfolded his menu. "I don't know."
"You didn't read it?"
"No."
Helen studied him for a moment. "You really are security."
Joseph looked over the top edge of the menu. "I told you I was."
"That doesn't mean I believed you."
A smile escaped him before he could prevent it.
Small.
Barely there.
Helen saw it immediately and leaned back with an expression of quiet triumph, wisely choosing not to comment and risk making it disappear.
By the time the last plates were being cleared from their table, Nathan's meal had already vanished through the forward door in the hands of the chef himself.
The white card had apparently carried enough authority—or enough peculiarity—to ensure that the request was taken seriously. Some twenty minutes earlier Joseph had watched a covered plate arranged beside a small pot of coffee, bread and vegetables before the chef carried it away toward Nathan's carriage, and for a moment he had wondered whether Nathan would actually notice food had arrived unless someone physically removed the report from his hands and replaced it with a fork.
He suspected the chef would discover the answer.
The later service had become quieter still around Joseph and Helen. A businessman near the far wall had fallen asleep upright after what appeared to have been his third glass of brandy, one hand still loosely around the stem while his chin sank toward his chest. Two women nearer the kitchen spoke over slices of cake, their voices repeatedly lowering whenever one leaned across the table to share something apparently unsuitable for the rest of the carriage, and a young couple at the opposite end had spent nearly half an hour talking so softly that their words disappeared beneath the train.
Helen had removed her gloves and placed them neatly beside her plate.
Joseph had learned considerably more about her than he had expected to know when he first held the carriage door open.
"I teach," Helen explained, wrapping both hands around her coffee cup and smiling when Joseph lifted his eyes from his own plate. "Children mostly, although older ones, thank heaven. I don't think I possess the constitution required for thirty six-year-olds screaming at once."
"You're frightened by six-year-olds?" Joseph asked, resting one forearm on the table as the carriage moved gently beneath them.
"Terrified," Helen replied with solemn conviction before taking a sip of coffee. "I prefer students old enough to understand when I'm disappointed in them."
"That sounds more dangerous."
"It is," she agreed, her expression remaining serious for another second before the smile broke through.
Joseph looked down at his glass to hide his own.
Helen had spent the weekend in New York visiting her mother, something she tried to do whenever the school calendar and railway permitted it. Her mother had lived there for several years, close enough to other family that Helen no longer worried about her being alone but far enough away that each visit apparently ended with a fresh accusation that Chicago had stolen her daughter.
"She says the city has corrupted me," Helen said, turning her cup slowly within the saucer while the coffee moved near its rim. "According to her, before I moved west I was quiet, obedient and never contradicted anyone."
Joseph looked at her.
Helen maintained the claim for perhaps two seconds before her mouth curved.
"I don't believe her either."
"No," Joseph replied, and the certainty of the single word made her laugh.
"You've known me for less than an evening."
"Long enough."
Her eyebrows rose, but she seemed pleased rather than offended.
"What about your mother?" Helen asked, the question arriving naturally from the conversation and carrying no deliberate weight.
Joseph became still.
Only slightly.
His fingers remained around the water glass while his eyes moved toward the black window, where his reflection looked back at him over nothing.
"I haven't seen her in a long time," he answered after a moment, his voice remaining even as the train passed some distant group of lights that briefly moved across his reflection.
Helen's expression softened. "I'm sorry," she said, and rather than reaching across the table or forcing sympathy upon him, she simply let the words rest there.
"No need," Joseph replied, turning the glass once between his fingers.
He could have said more.
He could have tried to explain how little came when he searched for the people who should have occupied that part of his life: faces without enough detail, places remembered more as dimensions than homes, impressions that became less reliable every year. He could have told her that he barely knew them and had spent enough time away that the absence itself had become ordinary.
There was no reason to lay any of that on a pleasant dinner with a woman he had met on a train.
"You've lived in Chicago long?" he asked instead, lifting his eyes back to hers.
Helen recognised the change and allowed it without challenge. "Nearly four years," she answered, settling more comfortably into her chair. "Long enough to complain about it as though I were born there."
"That appears to be a requirement everywhere."
"It is," she agreed. "How are you finding America?"
Joseph considered the question seriously enough that Helen waited.
"Large."
She continued waiting.
Joseph looked at her.
"Very large."
Helen laughed. "That is your considered assessment of the United States?"
"So far."
"I'll make certain to tell everyone. We've been waiting for the British verdict."
Joseph's mouth shifted.
She leaned forward slightly. "What actually surprised you?"
"The distance," he admitted, turning his head toward the window even though there was little left to see. "Europe felt large enough when I was younger, especially somewhere unfamiliar, but the space here feels different. Towns appear and then there's nothing for miles. Fields keep going past the point where I expect a hedge, another road, a village."
Helen followed his gaze toward their reflections. "You make it sound empty."
"Not empty," Joseph corrected, searching briefly for words. "Less contained. The wilderness feels younger here."
"Literally?"
"No," he said, and Helen smiled at the seriousness with which he answered. "Europe feels used. Not ruined—used. Everywhere you go, somebody built something before you. A road, wall, farm, village. Even woodland can feel as though someone has been cutting it, planting it and deciding where it ends for hundreds of years."
"And here?"
Joseph thought of the country he had seen beyond the railway. "Here there are places where it feels as though people have only just arrived."
Helen considered that for several seconds. "I've never thought of it that way."
"You live here."
"That means I'm allowed to stop noticing it."
Joseph gave a quiet breath of amusement, and from there the conversation moved into easier country.
Helen told him about teaching, not as a vocation described in noble terms but as a collection of ordinary frustrations and small victories. There were boys who refused to read an assigned chapter and then reacted with personal betrayal when examination questions came from it, girls who were considerably better than the boys at concealing misconduct and therefore acquired reputations for innocence they did not entirely deserve, parents who insisted their children could not possibly lie while those same children produced evidence to the contrary with astonishing creativity, and students who would spend twenty minutes arguing about why they had not completed an assignment when doing the assignment itself might have taken ten.
Joseph listened more than he spoke.
To his surprise, he did not mind.
Helen possessed an unusual ability to let silence exist without treating it as a problem. When one of Joseph's answers ended earlier than she expected, she did not immediately attack the gap with another question. Sometimes she simply drank her coffee, looked toward the window or let the movement of the train occupy the space until another thought occurred to her. Other times she returned to something he had said ten minutes earlier, not because she was interrogating him but because she had apparently remembered it.
The plates disappeared.
Coffee replaced them.
Outside, the last surviving colour of evening lay low against the horizon, a narrow burnt-orange band beneath a sky already becoming dark. Where the landscape remained visible, barns, fences and stands of trees stretched long shadows over fields before slipping behind the train. Telegraph poles passed at regular intervals, interrupting the view so predictably that Joseph eventually stopped noticing them.
The low light entered the carriage at an angle and caught several loose strands of Helen's brown hair, turning them copper where they crossed her cheek.
She looked down at her cup.
Then back at him.
"May I ask one more personal question?" she said, smoothing her thumb over the handle.
Joseph's expression suggested she had already used that privilege several times.
Helen caught it immediately. "One more intentionally personal question," she amended, smiling.
"All right," Joseph said, leaning back slightly.
"Is there anyone waiting for you at home?"
The question was different.
Helen had tried to make it sound casual.
She had failed.
Joseph looked at her for several seconds while the wheels continued their measured rhythm beneath the floor.
His expression softened.
Not much.
Enough.
"No," he answered, and the smile that followed was faint enough that the sadness beneath it remained visible. "There isn't."
Helen watched him, her own expression becoming quieter.
"Well," she murmured, lowering her eyes briefly toward the coffee before meeting his again. "Isn't that a shame."
Joseph did not answer.
He did not need to.
Helen reached toward the napkin beside her plate and smoothed one corner between her fingers before speaking again. "I teach at Lake View," she said, giving him the name of the school and allowing him a moment to remember it before continuing. "And there's a place not very far away called the Bell and Crown. It isn't fashionable, which is probably one of the reasons I like it. The supper is decent, the beer isn't terrible and the owner has the remarkable good sense to throw irritating people out before they become violent."
Joseph's eyes remained on her.
Helen folded her hands carefully, making a heroic and unsuccessful effort to appear casual. "If your employer happens to give you an hour while you're in Chicago, you might find it worth seeing."
Joseph understood perfectly well that she was not recommending the establishment.
"I'll try to convince my employer to give it a look," he said, reaching for his glass partly to conceal the smile threatening the corner of his mouth.
"Your employer sounds terribly demanding."
"He is."
Several carriages away, Nathan Drake sneezed once over a report, frowned at the interruption and continued reading.
Helen smiled. "Then you'll simply have to be persuasive."
"I'll do my best."
An announcement for an approaching station sounded faintly through the train, and Helen glanced toward the nearest clock before reluctantly pushing her chair back.
"I should probably return before somebody decides I've disappeared somewhere between New York and Chicago," she said as she gathered her gloves and slipped them back over her hands.
"I'll walk you," Joseph replied, rising at the same time and waiting while she adjusted her hat.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
The answer made her smile again.
They left the dining car together, passing through a train that had grown progressively quieter as the day faded. Curtains were being drawn across compartment windows, porters moved bedding toward private rooms and the corridors carried the lingering smells of coffee, tobacco and dinner beneath the warmer scent of polished wood. In some compartments passengers were already reading in bed; in others cards had appeared on small tables, while somewhere behind a closed door a child was being firmly informed that the train's movement did not constitute an excuse for remaining awake indefinitely.
Joseph walked Helen as far as her carriage.
They stopped outside the compartment door, neither quite in the way of passing passengers and neither immediately reaching for the handle.
"I enjoyed dinner, Joseph," Helen said, turning toward him with both gloved hands lightly clasped before her.
Joseph looked down at her.
"So did I," he answered, and the words came more easily than he had expected.
Helen seemed pleased by that. "Perhaps I'll see you in Chicago."
"Perhaps."
"Good night," she said, holding his gaze another moment before opening the compartment door.
"Good night, Helen," Joseph replied, stepping back to give her room.
She entered.
The door closed.
Joseph remained there for perhaps one second longer than necessary before turning away.
The walk back gave him far too much time to think.
By the time he reached Nathan, the last colour had disappeared from the horizon and the windows were complete mirrors.
Nathan's carriage smelled faintly of dinner, which meant the chef had succeeded.
An empty plate rested on the small table beside him with bread crumbs scattered near one edge and a vegetable he had apparently decided not to finish, while the coffee cup beside it had gone cold enough that a thin dark line marked where the level had once been. Several documents had clearly been read during the meal because one rested dangerously close to the empty plate and another carried a fresh pencil annotation halfway down the margin.
Nathan himself remained surrounded by paper.
Joseph opened the door and entered.
Nathan looked up immediately.
That alone told Joseph he had noticed how long he had been gone.
Nathan's eyes moved over his face.
Joseph removed his jacket, folded it across the opposite seat and sat down before beginning to loosen his tie.
Nathan continued looking.
Joseph ignored him.
Nathan lowered the report.
"How did it go?" he asked, and although the question itself was innocent, the amusement already beginning around his eyes made Joseph distrust it completely.
Joseph looked toward the black window, where his reflection provided no assistance.
"It was…" He paused, adjusted his position and discovered to his annoyance that the word required more consideration than the question deserved. "Pleasant."
Nathan stared at him.
Joseph stared back.
Nathan's mouth curved.
Then he chuckled, quietly enough that it somehow became worse than open laughter.
"What?" Joseph asked, narrowing his eyes as he pulled the knot of his tie slightly looser.
"Nothing," Nathan replied, lifting the report again while the amusement remained plainly visible. "I'm pleased you had a pleasant evening."
Joseph leaned back and folded his arms.
Nathan managed to read approximately one line before lowering the paper once more.
"Don't do anything I wouldn't do," he said, his expression perfectly serious for perhaps half a second.
Joseph rolled his eyes. "There isn't much you wouldn't do."
Nathan's eyebrows rose as he considered the accusation. "That is an extraordinarily uncharitable assessment of my character."
"It is accurate."
Nathan looked almost offended.
Joseph gave him the flat stare he had perfected over months of listening to Nathan argue that technically unreasonable decisions remained reasonable if one understood the underlying scientific question.
The expression lasted another second before Nathan surrendered.
"Fair enough," he admitted, smiling as he returned the report to his knee.
Joseph shook his head and finished loosening his tie.
Silence settled between them, comfortable enough that neither man rushed to fill it. The train moved steadily beneath their seats, its wheels beating the rails in an endless pattern while occasional changes in pitch marked bridges, switches or sections of different track.
After a while Joseph exhaled.
"I know," he said, looking toward Nathan without needing to explain what he meant.
Nathan did not raise his eyes from the report this time, and when he answered there was no mockery left in his voice. "I know you do," he said, making one final note in the margin before turning the page.
Joseph watched him for a moment.
Nathan had already returned to the work.
Outside, the countryside raced unseen beside them, the windows reflecting the softly illuminated carriage and the two men within it against a blackness that seemed to extend forever. Somewhere ahead the locomotive gave another long whistle, low and mournful by the time it travelled backward through the train, and the sound dissolved slowly beneath the steady percussion of wheels against rail.
Joseph removed his shoes and settled deeper into the seat.
Nathan organised his files into two deliberate groups, Chicago on one side and the material intended to follow them west on the other. He reread one of his own notes, crossed out a word that implied more certainty than the evidence deserved and replaced it with another, then checked the dates on the French records against the newest American material before closing the most important folder and resting one hand on its cover.
Neither man spoke for some time.
The day had been long.
New York was behind them now, carrying Mrs Hargreaves somewhere through streets she had never seen before while Horsley waited in a hotel room and, Nathan suspected, devoted an unreasonable portion of his intelligence to examining the construction of his carrier.
Chicago lay ahead.
Beyond Chicago waited Kansas.
Nathan eventually leaned his head against the cushioned seat and closed his eyes, although one hand remained resting over the outbreak file as though sleep itself might attempt to move it.
Across from him, Joseph watched his own reflection in the window.
Somewhere in Chicago, a young schoolteacher named Helen Whitmore had given him the name of a school and a bar and had smiled when she learned there was nobody waiting for him at home.
Somewhere else in that same city, men and women were falling ill, their fevers and coughs being written into records Nathan would soon read, their symptoms perhaps ordinary and perhaps not.
Joseph did not know which of those things would matter more to him by the time they left Chicago.
For once, he did not try to decide in advance.
Beneath them the Twentieth Century Limited continued west through the American night, polished carriages rocking gently behind the locomotive while rails vanished beneath its wheels mile after mile, carrying Nathan toward the sick and Joseph toward a city that, only that morning, had been nothing more than another destination on somebody else's orders.