The first return was the most dangerous. Aria walked into a nursing ward with the shoe wrapped in tissue, a forged transfer notice in her pocket. The old woman at the bed stared at the leather and then at Aria with the slow dawning of possibility. "Etta?" she whispered. "Etta Larkspur?"
The leather was warm. Not the warmth of a heater, but the soft, persistent heat of something that had been near the living. As soon as her glove met the buckle, the walls sighed. Data cascaded across her vision — not numbers or maps but moments. A child's laugh in a kitchen lit by a yellow bulb. A small hand reaching for someone's sleeve. A train-rocking lullaby. Then a corridor folding in on itself; the smell of ozone; a hand over a mouth; a door closing. IPZZ-281