I asked Dante if there was anything I could do to help.

“You are a guest,” he said, looking up from his laptop.

“I am a prisoner,” I corrected. “Let me help. Let me do something with my hands, or I will lose my mind.”

He looked at me for a long moment, studying my face.

Then he pointed to a stack of paperwork on his heavy mahogany desk.

“Those are shipping logs and inventory sheets from the docks,” he said.

“They need to be cross-referenced with the digital ledger.”

“It is boring work.”

“I don’t care,” I said.

I sat at the desk, grateful for the distraction.

The desk was organized, but the physical logs were thick and smelled of old paper.

I opened my laptop and began to match the numbers.

During my psychology studies, I had learned to spot patterns in data.

I liked order.

I liked when things made sense.

For hours, the only sound in the office was the clicking of my keyboard and the ticking of the grandfather clock in the corner.

Dante was out, attending meetings with his captains.