Warner never has breakfast with the rest of us. He pretty much never stops working, not even to eat. Breakfast is another meeting for him, and he takes it with Delalieu, just the two of them, and even then I’m not sure he actually eats anything. Warner never appears to take pleasure in food. For him, food is fuel—necessary and, most of the time, annoying—in that his body requires it to function. Once, while he was deeply immersed in some important paperwork at dinner, I put a cookie on a plate in front of him just to see what would happen. He glanced up at me, glanced back at his work, whispered a quiet thank you, and ate the cookie with a knife and fork. He didn’t even seem to enjoy it. This, needless to say, makes him the polar opposite of Kenji, who loves to eat everything, all the time, and who later told me that watching Warner eat a cookie made him want to cry.
Speaking of Kenji, him flaking on me this morning is more than a little weird, and I’m beginning to worry. I’m just about to glance at the clock for the third time when, suddenly, Adam is standing next to my table, looking uncomfortable.
“Hi,” I say, just a little too loudly. “What’s, uh, what’s up?”
Adam and I have interacted a couple of times in the last two weeks, but it’s always been by accident. Suffice it to say that it’s unusual for Adam to be standing in front of me on purpose, and I’m so surprised that for a moment I almost miss the obvious:
He looks bad.
Rough. Ragged. More than a little exhausted. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I would’ve sworn Adam had been crying. Not over our failed relationship, I hope.
Still, old instinct gnaws at me, tugs at ancient heartstrings.
We speak at the same time:
“You okay . . . ?” I ask.
“Castle wants to talk to you,” he says.
“Castle sent you to come get me?” I say, feelings forgotten.
Adam shrugs. “I was walking past his room at the right time, I guess.”
“Um. Okay.” I try to smile. Castle is always trying to make nice between me and Adam; he doesn’t like the tension. “Did he say he wants to see me right now?”
“Yep.” Adam shoves his hands in his pockets. “Right away.”
“All right,” I say, and the whole thing feels awkward. Adam just stands there as I gather my things, and I want to tell him to go away, to stop staring at me, that this is weird, that we broke up forever ago and it was weird, you made it so weird, but then I realize he isn’t staring at me. He’s looking at the floor like he’s stuck, lost in his head somewhere.
“Hey—are you okay?” I say again, this time gently.
Adam looks up, startled. “What?” he says. “What, oh—yeah, I’m fine. Hey do you know, uh”—he clears his throat, looks around—“do you, uh—”
“Do I what?”
Adam rocks on his heels, eyes darting around the room. “Warner is never here for breakfast, huh?”
My eyebrows shoot up my forehead. “You’re looking for Warner?”
“What? No. I’m just, uh, wondering. He’s never here. You know? It’s weird.”
I stare at him.
He says nothing.
“It’s not that weird,” I say slowly, studying Adam’s face. “Warner doesn’t have time for breakfast with us. He’s always working.”
“Oh,” Adam says, and the word seems to deflate him. “That’s too bad.”
“Is it?” I frown.
But Adam doesn’t seem to hear me. He calls for James, who’s putting away his breakfast tray, and the two of them meet in the middle of the room and then disappear.
I have no idea what they do all day. I’ve never asked.
The mystery of Kenji’s absence at breakfast is solved the moment I walk up to Castle’s door: the two of them are here, heads together.
I knock on the open door as a courtesy. “Hey,” I say. “You wanted to see me?”
“Yes, yes, Ms Ferrars,” Castle says eagerly. He gets to his feet and waves me inside. “Please, have a seat. And if you would”—he gestures behind me—“close the door.”
I’m nervous in an instant.
I take a tentative step into Castle’s makeshift office and glance at Kenji, whose blank face does nothing to allay my fears. “What’s going on?” I say. And then, only to Kenji: “Why weren’t you at breakfast?”
Castle motions for me to take a seat.
I do.
“Ms Ferrars,” he says urgently. “You have news of Oceania?”
“Excuse me?”
“The RSVP. You received your first RSVP, did you not?”
“Yeah, I did,” I say slowly. “But no one is supposed to know about that yet—I was going to tell Kenji about it over breakfast this morning—”
“Nonsense.” Castle cuts me off. “Everyone knows. Mr Warner knows, certainly. And Lieutenant Delalieu knows.”
“What?” I glance at Kenji, who shrugs. “How is that possible?”
“Don’t be so easily shocked, Ms Ferrars. Obviously all of your correspondence is monitored.”
My eyes widen. “What?”
Castle makes a frustrated motion with his hand. “Time is of the essence, so if you would, I’d really—”
“Time is of what essence?” I say, irritated. “How am I supposed to help you when I don’t even know what you’re talking about?”
Castle pinches the bridge of his nose. “Kenji,” he says suddenly. “Will you leave us, please?”
“Yep.” Kenji jumps to his feet with a mock salute. He heads toward the door.
“Wait,” I say, grabbing his arm. “What’s going on?”
“I have no idea, kid.” Kenji laughs, shakes his arm free. “This conversation doesn’t concern me. Castle called me in here earlier to talk about cows.”
“Cows?”
“Yeah, you know.” He arches an eyebrow. “Livestock. He’s been having me do reconnaissance on several hundreds of acres of farmland that The Reestablishment has been keeping off the radar. Lots and lots of cows.”
“Exciting.”
“It is, actually.” His eyes light up. “The methane makes it all pretty easy to track. Makes you wonder why they wouldn’t do something to preve—”
“Methane?” I say, confused. “Isn’t that a kind of gas?”
“I take it you don’t know much about cow shit.”
I ignore that. Instead, I say, “So that’s why you weren’t at breakfast this morning? Because you were looking at cow poop?”
“Basically.”
“Well,” I say. “At least that explains the smell.”
It takes Kenji a second to catch on, but when he does, he narrows his eyes. Taps me on the forehead with one finger. “You’re going straight to hell, you know that?”
I smile, big. “See you later? I still want to go on our morning walk.”
He makes a noncommittal grunt.
“C’mon,” I say, “it’ll be fun this time, I promise.”
“Oh yeah, big fun.” Kenji rolls his eyes as he turns away, and shoots Castle another two-finger salute. “See you later, sir.”