Tessa arrived at Eli’s door with a notebook and a question he could not answer.
“What color was the room?” she asked.
He had opened the door expecting a delivery worker and was still trying to wake up. Instead she stood in the narrow hallway, coat buttoned against the morning chill. The notebook was the one she had used at the clinic. She held it against her side, not yet open.
“The room with the bodies?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Stone pillars, metal rings, cables. A locking bar across the opening.”
“Are you sure about the locking bar?”
He pictured Rusk pulling the metal panel across the passage and fitting the bar into brackets. He had watched a guard check it afterward.
“Yes. I saw the commander put it in place.”
Tessa nodded once. “Can I come in?”
His room had a narrow bed, a table under the window, and a chair with a jacket draped over it. Eli moved the jacket to the bed. Tessa remained by the door until he opened the window a little. The room smelled of damp clothing and the food he had reheated the night before.
“I thought about what you told me,” she said. “I’m not here to decide whether you’re telling the truth today. I want to understand what you mean when you say you remember.”
He sat on the edge of the bed. She took the chair and opened her notebook.
“I can describe things,” he said. “The same way I can describe the expedition a few days ago.”
“We saw it together. I can ask Vera or Cole what they saw. With the other life, I only have you.”
“I know.”
“What were you doing before the raid?”
“Loading supplies. Checking a list against what the team had brought. The manifest listed forty-two bags for twenty-eight people, and I asked the quartermaster about the extra supplies.”
“Who argued?”
“I asked the quartermaster about the extra bags. Tessa had her own concerns about supplies and what would be recorded.”
“What did I say?”
“You wanted a copy of the manifest, so there would be a record outside the guild’s office.”
“Did I get it?”
“I made a copy and carried it. I tried to hand it to Venn during the raid, but Bram stopped me.”
Tessa wrote something down. “What did I do on the raid?”
“You treated an injured fighter near the medical wall. You stayed with him while the others went ahead.”
“Why?”
“He couldn’t walk.”
“That doesn’t tell me why I stayed.”
Eli looked at the floor. “Because you didn’t leave injured people.”
“Did I tell you that?”
“No. I saw you stay.”
“Did anyone else stay?”
“A carrier did. I think another medic came later.”
“Then you saw me stay on one occasion. You didn’t hear my reason.”
“I saw it more than once.”
“Tell me what you saw. Don’t turn it into a rule about me.”
He wanted to insist that he knew her. In the life he remembered, he had watched her work under pressure for years. She had argued with commanders, spent supplies on people whose contracts did not guarantee treatment, and sat beside a man whose name no one else knew until he could be carried out. Those moments had formed an image of her so solid that questioning it felt like questioning the past itself.
Yet she was sitting in his room with a notebook, asking for the boundaries of what he actually knew. The woman in his memories had not made the clinic’s inventory or negotiated with Corvin in this timeline. He could remember one person and still mistake what that memory allowed him to predict about another set of circumstances.
“I saw you stay with patients when others wanted to move,” he said. “I heard you argue for more supplies. I thought that meant you’d always make the same choice.”
“And if the other team members were in danger because I stayed?”
“I don’t know what you’d do.”
“Neither do I, until I’m there.”
She wrote again. He could see two headings on the page: Remembered and Assumed. Beneath the first she entered the raid and the injured fighter. Beneath the second she wrote Tessa will always stay.
“It’s not a scientific test,” she said. “It’s a way to stop us treating your interpretation as another fact.”
“Us?”
“If I decide to work with you, I’ll have to separate them too.” She moved the notebook onto the table. “Tell me about Aegis.”
“It became a large guild. The raid commander, Rusk, controlled the route and gave orders. In the life I remember, he concealed a locked room with bodies and withheld information about a second creature until it attacked.”
“Did you see him cause the deaths in the room?”
“No. I saw the bodies and restraints. I saw him conceal the room. I did not see who put them there.”
“What about the records?”
“I copied the raid manifest and noted the room and the bodies. I tried to get the copy to someone outside his control.”
“Was he the one who trapped you?”
“His enforcer struggled with me over the manifest. I was injured, and falling rock trapped me. I told Tessa Rusk had the retreat blocked, based on what I had seen of his orders and guards. I did not see him cause the collapse.”
Tessa wrote that down in the first column, then added a question mark. “I don’t know what those records said. But I understand why you distrust him.”
“I don’t want you to join Aegis.”
She placed her pen across the page. “That’s an instruction.”
“I know.”
“Is Aegis recruiting me?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Have I applied?”
“No.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with that instruction today?”
He had no answer. He had carried the warning as if delivering it would solve the danger. She was asking what action it supported now.
He took the pen when she offered it and drew a line through Tessa should avoid Aegis. Beneath it he wrote: I remember commander Rusk concealing a room with bodies and withholding information about a second creature. I believed his orders and guards were blocking the retreat; I did not see him cause the collapse.
Tessa read it. “That’s something I can consider if the guild approaches me. It doesn’t make my decision for me.”
“I understand.”
“Do you know whether the commander has done any of those things yet?”
“No.”
“Then we shouldn’t tell anyone he has.”
Eli put the pen down. “Even if waiting means he gets the chance?”
“We can be cautious about a person without stating an unverified accusation as a fact. If you find evidence here, in this life, that’s different.”
The distinction felt unbearable when he remembered the sealed room. He had died believing the evidence was enough, and now the evidence existed only in his head. But he also remembered the new tunnel in the gate and the outbreak that came early. He had already seen one confident prediction fail. Accusing someone on the strength of a future that could change might hurt people without preventing the event he feared.
Tessa turned to a clean page and wrote the name Aegis at the top. “If I hear it tomorrow, I want to know what I can check without asking them whether they plan to commit a crime years from now.”
“The registry should have a licensing record if they’ve registered. You could verify who controls the guild and who receives complaints.”
“Can you verify that yourself?”
“I can look for the public record.”
“Then bring me what it says, including anything that doesn’t match your memory.”
He wrote the task beneath the name. The request gave him something to do besides wait for a future danger. It also meant he might find a different leader, a different address, or no guild at all. He had to let those results matter. If the record contradicted him, he would have to show Tessa the contradiction instead of quietly searching for another way to make it fit. That was part of the work too.
“What about the raid itself?” Tessa asked. “Could you warn the team?”
“I don’t know whether the same team will form, or whether the gate will open at the same time. I can write down what I remember and look for signs.”
“Include what you don’t know.”
He pulled a sheet of paper from beneath a stack of delivery receipts. Together they listed what he remembered about gate activity: the small gate’s old route, the later raid, and a fluctuation near the river that had briefly changed the appearance of a public gate. Beside each, Tessa asked for the source of the memory. Had he been there? Heard a report? Read a notice after the event?
The answers varied. He had seen the river fluctuation himself from the opposite bank while waiting for a transport. He remembered a thin blue ring forming around the gate, then collapsing inward without an outbreak. A public notice had said the area remained restricted until the registry inspected it.
“When?” Tessa asked.
“Three days from now, around four in the afternoon.”
“Are you sure?”
“I remember leaving a delivery at three-thirty. I reached the river sometime afterward. Four is an estimate.”
“What about the date?”
“I’m more certain of that. It was printed on the delivery receipt, and I kept it because the employer disputed the time.”
“Where would someone be able to see it safely?”
“The public walkway across the river. The gate is behind barriers on the other side.”
Tessa wrote the location. “We can record the prediction before then. I’ll ask a volunteer to witness it. If the observation point is closed or responders advise people to leave, we leave.”
“You want to watch it?”
“I want a test that doesn’t require a patient or a volunteer to enter the restricted area.”
“I could go alone.”
“Then I would have your account afterward. That doesn’t solve my problem.”
He accepted the point. “The ring was blue and narrow. It formed around the edge, not in the middle. It lasted less than a minute, then folded inward.”
“Did anyone get hurt?”
“I didn’t see anyone hurt. The report I read later didn’t mention injuries.”
“Did you read the full report?”
“No. A notice at the registry.”
She added that limitation. “If it happens as you describe, it means you had information I couldn’t account for. It doesn’t prove every part of the life you remember.”
“I know.”
“And if it doesn’t happen?”
“The future may have changed. Or my memory could be wrong.”
“That’s a difficult test,” she said. “A match supports your claim, but a miss doesn’t necessarily disprove it.”
“Yes.”
“At least we can see whether the timing is reliable.”
Eli looked at the page. Tessa had written the predicted date, estimated time, location, appearance, and his source. She had also written what would cause them to leave the observation point. The record was more useful than his original statement: it gave someone else enough information to judge what happened without depending on his explanation afterward.
“There are other things I remember,” he said. “Some are more dangerous.”
“Write those down too. Mark which ones you witnessed and which came from reports.”
“Some involve guilds.”
“Then include what you know and what you suspect. Don’t put patient names in a list you might lose.”
He thought of the folder she kept at the clinic and the unsigned authorization from Pell. “Where should we keep it?”
“Make two copies. I’ll keep mine somewhere secure. You keep yours. If one of us needs to correct an entry, we tell the other.”
He began with the raid, using the raid commander’s name and the location as he remembered them. He could not recall the exact date. He wrote the year and marked it approximate. Tessa did not fill the gap for him.
After a while she stood. “I need to go. Marisol is covering the morning, but I told her I’d take the afternoon.”
“I can walk with you.”
“You can, if you need to go that way. I’m not asking for an escort.”
He put on his jacket. “I need to buy food.”
“Then walk with me as far as the shop.”
Outside, the morning traffic moved around a new barrier near the registry. A notice had been taped to it, listing the hours during which the road would remain closed. Eli read the date before following Tessa down the pavement.
At the shop she stopped. “I’ll ask Leah to witness the prediction. She keeps good records and won’t need to go near the gate.”
“Will you tell her about the rest?”
“No. I’ll tell her we’re checking a prediction and ask whether she’s comfortable noting when you made it. The rest is not mine to share.”
He appreciated the care, though he was not sure how to say so without making her responsible for his relief.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You can thank me by being precise when you’re uncertain.”
She continued toward the clinic. Eli entered the shop and bought bread, eggs, and a small notebook of his own. At the counter he wrote the river gate prediction on its first page, including the estimated time. Then he left the page blank below it for whatever actually happened.