Elias flinched against the wind as the hiss inside him laughed.
When will you realize you don't feel the cold anymore?
He tightened his scarf anyway. His skin was too warm under the wool, his breath too steady for the sting he pretended was there. He counted the inhale for four, the exhale for four, the way you do when your hands want to shake and you can't let them.
"Eyes up." Zubair's voice carried along the rope like current.
Elias lifted his chin, unconsciously cataloguing what was in front of him.
Horizon: white, ridge, glare. Two half-buried cranes to the west. A bent sign iced flat to the east. The black smear of their tower window behind them. He mapped those points the way he always did, reduced the world to bearings and edges and lines that obeyed.
His pulse didn't obey. Too fast. Too shallow. It was all wrong for how it should be.
Not wrong, the hiss inside of him purred. Tuned. Better.
He ignored it.
He had a list to run.
