After the Circuit

“You can point it at my face now,” Kit said, and it took me a full second to understand he meant the camera. In four months I had never once heard him offer that sentence instead of having it wrung out of him.

We were at Arch Nine, midweek, no fight scheduled, the brick still holding the last of an unseasonable September warmth the way it always did. He was leaning against a scaffold pole with his arms loose at his sides, watching me rather than the door for once, which was its own small, enormous thing I noticed before I noticed anything else.

“Are you sure? You’ve spent three years making that face a state secret.”

“I’m aware. I helped write the treaty.” Something that was fully a smile now, unrationed, moved across his face and stayed there. “Reeves is in a cell. Curtis is in a cell. The…