Jessica considered asking which cabin was his, then decided she wasn't curious enough to give him the satisfaction.

At least, that was the explanation she settled on.

Her own door came into view near the end of the corridor. She slowed, shifting the case under her arm as she reached for the access panel, and only a second later realized Reed had stopped as well.

Jessica glanced toward him and found he wasn't looking at her at all. His attention had gone to the door directly across the corridor.

15-25.

She looked at her own.

15-24.

Then back across.

For several seconds, nothing was said. Jessica could almost feel the universe enjoying itself. She had known he lived on Deck Eighteen. There had never been any expectation that she wouldn't run into him regularly. That was simply part of being assigned to the same unit.

But directly across the hall?

There were enough quarters on this deck that this felt less like chance and more like somebody in personnel had developed a sense of humor.

When she finally looked at Reed, his expression had already started to change. The realization had reached him too, followed almost immediately by amusement.

Jessica pointed at him before he could open his mouth. "Don't."

That only made the smile worse. He insisted he hadn't said anything, which was technically true and therefore completely irrelevant. His face had said plenty.

Jessica shook her head and keyed open her door. "I knew you'd be somewhere on eighteen. I wasn't expecting to be able to throw something at your quarters from mine."

Reed glanced across the narrow corridor as though genuinely assessing the distance. "Depends what you're throwing."

She gave him a look, and that was enough. His laugh followed her into the cabin as she set the equipment case on the nearest table.

She should have let the doors close then. Instead, she found herself lingering near the entrance while Reed opened his own quarters across the hall and pushed the battered crate inside with his foot.

His cabin was every bit as unfinished as hers, which caught her attention more than it should have. There was another bag near the bed, a couple of unopened containers and almost nothing on the walls. She had expected something more obviously him. Sporting equipment, perhaps. Something ridiculous. At minimum, some sign that Reed had arrived and immediately claimed the room.

Instead, it looked temporary.

Much like hers.

He caught her looking and made some comment about her already checking up on the neighbor. Jessica ignored the accusation and turned toward her desk, which unfortunately drew his attention in the same direction.

The cipher machine was still sitting where she'd left it, partially opened with several of its components laid out beside her tools. Reed studied it from across the corridor for several seconds before finally speaking.

"That's old."

Jessica looked at him. "Excellent work."

"I'm trained for this."

"Clearly."

She expected the joke to continue, but it didn't. He kept looking at the machine instead, his expression shifting into something more genuinely curious. When he asked what it was, Jessica found herself giving him a proper answer rather than dismissing the question.

"Mechanical cipher equipment. No computer processing. The encryption is handled physically through the machine."

That drew his attention more completely. He asked whether it still worked, and when she told him it did, he spent another moment studying it before wondering why she kept something like that around when modern equipment could accomplish the same job faster.

There was no mockery in the question, and that mattered more than Jessica expected it to.

She looked back toward the machine. There were plenty of technical answers she could have given him. Old cryptographic systems forced you to understand the process instead of letting a computer hide it. Mechanical machines were predictable in a way modern software often wasn't. If something went wrong, there was a physical reason for it somewhere, something that could be found, understood and corrected.

She could have explained all of that.

Instead she simply said, "I like them."

Reed nodded. Nothing more. No joke about antiques, no teasing observation about her hobbies and no attempt to turn the answer into something entertaining. Just acceptance.

Jessica looked at him for a second longer than she meant to. She had apparently been waiting for him to make fun of it, and worse, she'd apparently cared whether he did.

That was information she could have happily gone without.

She turned back toward the desk before her expression could give any of it away.

Across the corridor, Reed finally carried his duffel inside. When he came back to the doorway, the two of them ended up standing opposite one another, each leaning near the entrance to their respective quarters with three meters of corridor between them. The arrangement felt strangely familiar already.