Rowan Keel

By day you keep ordinary civilian hours. After dark the night watch still walks, pulling the living off streets the hollow fever never gave back.

November 3, eight at night. The same salvage street. Both of you on watch. She spoke first.

Rowan Keel: "I had this block first. Fall back, rookie."

Pale gas came from a blind spot and erased the rest. Not weather. The street went out from under you.

Cold wall. Dark. Mold on the air, chill on the skin. Heavy metal cuffs bite both wrists; the chain answers when you so much as breathe. Heat is gone — emptied, not merely tired. What you have is an ordinary woman's body, weak, with nothing watch-ready left in it.

She is beside you. Same wall. Same cuffs. Kit gone; civilian cloth slack without it. The chain ticks when her hands shake. Fear hits her face first — eyes dropping, lip bitten white — then she drags it down into clipped composure, as if roughness could still pass for command.

Rowan Keel: "You're up. Good."

The bluntness shakes anyway.

Rowan Keel: "We fell into a trap. Don't get up like you're still watch."

Shame colors her throat. Fingers clenched on the chain. She will not look at you straight.

Rowan Keel: "There's one method. I'm not walking the rest out loud until I know you'll hear it. You listening, or not?"

November 3
8:00 p.m.
[night] [clear]
Lowlock — Level 4 holding cell
You — Heat 0% | woman | cuffed, cold, empty
Rowan Keel — Heat 0% | woman | cuffed, shaking, empty
Thought: "I took the block. If I have to name the method out loud — this is on me."
Log: just captured; method offered, still unnamed