A shadow detached itself from the wall.

Alistair stepped into a narrow column of light falling from an overhead service hatch I hadn't noticed--a maintenance access point, barely a foot square, casting a wedge of warm glow that cut the darkness like a blade.

No waistcoat. A dark silk shirt hung open at the collar, sleeves pushed past his forearms. In the half-light, with his sharp features stripped of the polished veneer, he looked less like a billionaire architect and more like something that had been pacing these corridors long before I arrived. Something that lived in the dark, its eyes adapted, its patience infinite.

"You turned off the air." My voice came out rough, scraped raw by chemical sleep and depleted atmosphere. I didn't ask for water. Didn't reach for the coverlet. "Afraid I'd find another frequency to tap out, Alistair?"

He walked closer. Shoes making no sound--rubber soles on concrete. He stopped at the edge of the mattress, close enough that I could smell him: cedar, recycled air, and beneath that something warmer--the faint salt of a man who'd been standing in a hot control corridor for hours, watching screens, thinking.

"Not afraid, sweetheart." His voice dropped low and intimate. "Prudent. You have a dangerous habit of talking to ghosts. I thought it best to remind you that the only voice worth hearing down here is mine."

He reached out. His fingers grazed my cheek--a touch so light it was almost theoretical. His thumb traced the line of my jaw, following bone from chin to the hinge below my ear. His skin was cold. The gesture precise, unhurried.

I didn't pull away. Flinching would be a concession--a data point confirming his proximity triggered fear. I held perfectly still and looked directly into his eyes from twelve inches.

His pupils were dilated. The amber of his irises swallowed almost entirely by black, leaving only a thin ring of color glowing like embers through a keyhole.

"Let's test something, Elena." His breath carried bitter espresso and something sharper--the counteragent he'd taken before entering the gassed suite. "Let's see how sharp that brilliant mind really is when every distraction has been stripped away. No projections. No piano. No noise. No vibrations to map."

He leaned down. His breath touched the outer curve of my ear.

"Tomorrow, the doors open. You walk this bunker alone. Let's see how long your defiance lasts when you realize there's nothing out there--no exit, no signal, no rescue--except me."

He straightened.

Withdrew his hand. Stepped back into shadow.

The light caught his profile for a moment--sharp bridge of nose, hard set of mouth--and then he was gone. Swallowed by the dark and the soft hiss of a door I couldn't see.

I sat in the silence he left behind. My cheek burned faintly where his thumb had traced the bone, a phantom warmth lingering against the cold like a brand.

I pulled the coverlet up and lay down.

My eyes stayed open.

Tomorrow the doors open. Good. A slow breath in. A slow breath out. Show me the labyrinth, Alistair. Every maze has a center, and every center has a flaw.