4338.207 · July 26, 2018 AD
The Omelette Invitation
The worst kind of manipulation isn't when they don't trust you—it's when they do, and you know exactly how you're going to use it. Karen picks up on the second ring. Her voice carries the warmth of years of shared bus rides, morning greetings, bags of home-grown vegetables pressed into reluctant hands. She doesn't ask why Luke's calling. She just invites him for breakfast. Duck egg omelette. Nine o'clock. Chris will cook. The trap doesn't need bait when trust does all the work.
The settlement needs someone who can make things grow. Luke's hands know Portals and manipulation; they've never coaxed a seedling from soil. But Karen's hands have—decades of conservation work, a Collinsvale property that produces its own food, the kind of practical knowledge that could turn Clivilius dust into something that sustains life.
He knows what he's planning. He knows what it makes him. The whiskey doesn't help, but he pours it anyway.
The call is easy. Karen doesn't suspect anything—why would she? They're bus friends, morning-commute companions, the kind of relationship built on years of small exchanges about weather and work and nothing that mattered until it suddenly does. She offers breakfast before he can even ask. Chris will make omelettes. Fresh duck eggs. Nine o'clock.
Tomorrow, Luke will sit at their table and begin the process of dismantling their lives.
