Part 2: Silence

A man near the bar laughed. “Looks like you win.”

“I usually do,” Khalid said.

Hannah was crossing behind him with a tray when he repeated the question one final time.

And she stopped.

Only for a second.

But inside that second, something opened.

A memory.

A library basement in Queens. Dust in the air. A cracked leather book no one had checked out since 1963. Notes about disappearing dialects. A scholar named Saeed Al-Faruq. A strange phrase translated not as “pain,” but as “the weight of the soul.”

Hannah’s hands tightened around the tray.

No.

She kept walking.

“Hannah,” whispered Amber, another waitress, “are you okay?”

“Fine.”

“You look like you saw a ghost.”

Maybe I did, Hannah thought.

Behind her, Khalid said, “I have asked this question for ten years. Not one correct answer.”

Someone clapped politely.

Someone else laughed.

Hannah placed the tray down at the service station and told herself to stay quiet. She was a waitress. The professor had failed. The translator had failed. If she opened her mouth, everyone would laugh.

Then one of Khalid’s security men leaned toward him and murmured something.

Khalid turned.

His eyes found Hannah.

The whole room seemed to follow his gaze.

“You,” he said.

Hannah froze.

Kyle looked like he might faint.

Khalid lifted one hand toward her. “You reacted when I repeated the question.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You heard it.”

“I hear a lot of things in this room, sir.”

A few people laughed.

Khalid did not.

“Did you understand it?”

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