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Maren’s pen stops.

“Riley’s hand. Say he’d walked into your room the first night it went numb. What happens?”

Under the desk, my thumb starts across my fingertips. I make it stop.

“If he is not safe to play, you are told he is not safe to play. Keeping his secret does not mean helping him get hurt.”

“What if I already know who the player is?”

“Then knowing his name does not give you the rest of the conversation.”

Maren’s pen starts moving again.

Silas closes the folder. I cannot read him.

“What does the pilot cost?”

I open my mouth and stop. Then I pull the final page from my copy.

“Ninety days. At the end you get numbers. How many came, for what, and how long they waited before they did. No names.”

“Where?”

“Not inside the team treatment room. If the private door is inside the room everyone knows belongs to the team, it is not a private door.”

Silas opens the folder again. For the first time since I sat down, my shoulders come down.

“Can you legally work?”

“No.”

“Then why are we having this meeting?”

“Because I can design it now. I will not see one player until I am authorized. Any agreement can be contingent on that.”

Silas glances at Maren.

“Somebody’s going to start this, whether it’s Nilsson or someone else,” Maren says.

“And if legal says the structure is a mess?”

“Then we change the structure.”

“If players don’t use it?”

“Then the pilot fails.”

“If they use it to hide things from us?”

“Then your escalation protocol is badly written.”

Silas laughs once.

“Jesus.”

“She gets worse when she’s nervous,” Maren says.

“I am not nervous.”