Chapter 6: Holders

The capacity room was in the Bureau basement, behind two steel doors.

It had a chair, a table, and a long grey instrument on the wall with a needle behind glass.

Ji-seok was not allowed in.

He stood in the corridor with his arms crossed while a technician stuck cold pads on Si-woo's wrists, and the fluorescent tubes buzzed above him.

"Nine minutes," said the technician, and shut the door.

Eom sat across the table from Si-woo with a clipboard.

"Don't be nervous, Nam Si-woo," he said. "It's routine. We check all F-ranks after five weeks."

"I haven't heard of that."

"No one has. It's an internal matter." He smiled. "Close your eyes."

Si-woo closed them.

For a while there was only the hum of the machine.

Then something warm pressed against the inside of his skin, from the back.

He knew that feeling.

It was every flare he had ever taken, all of it, sitting in the knotted place between his shoulder blades.

"Open," Eom said softly.

Si-woo opened his eyes.

The needle behind the glass had swung a third of the way across its dial.

It trembled there beside a thin red mark at the far end.

"Thirty-one percent full," said Eom, writing it down.

"Full of what?"

"Of what you've taken. You're very good at what you do."

He tapped his pen on the clipboard and looked at Si-woo with such gentle kindness that the hair rose on Si-woo's arms.

He did not explain what happens at a hundred.

When Si-woo stepped out into the corridor, Ji-seok caught him by the elbow before he could stumble.

"What did he say?"

"That I'm good at my job."

Ji-seok's eyes searched his face.

"You've gone white."

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