Chapter 31: S2E2: Why They Chose You
(15 DAYS UNTIL RAGNAK'S DECISION)
The Jardim do Torel was Lisbon's open secret—a steep, terraced garden where the city spilled below in a mosaic of red roofs and sun-bleached stone, the river a distant silver scar. Bruno sat on a wrought-iron bench, forearms resting on his knees, watching sparrows fight over a crust of bread. The breeze carried the scent of jasmine and diesel, the sweetness undercut by the city's pulse.
Ragnak appeared without sound, standing just beyond the periphery of Bruno’s vision, letting the silence stretch until the journalist acknowledged him with a tilt of his head.
"You didn’t ask," Ragnak said.
Bruno exhaled through his nose, lips pressed together. "Would it have changed anything?"
"No."
"Then why tell me now?"
Ragnak stepped forward, the gravel barely shifting under his boots. He held out a folded slip of paper—Beatriz’s. Bruno took it, unfolded it with deliberate slowness. The words *Marry: Bruno* stared back, stark as a verdict.
"Beatriz chose you for permanence," Ragnak observed. "Camila marked you to kiss. Ruben to kill."
Bruno refolded the paper. His fingers didn’t tremble. "Yeah. That tracks."
Ragnak tilted his head, the sunlight catching the sharp angle of his jaw. "No outrage? No curiosity?"
Bruno rubbed his thumb along the edge of the paper. "Beatriz runs an ICU. She needs someone who won’t crack under the weight of impossible choices. That’s not romantic. It’s survival." He flicked the paper into the nearest trash bin with a casual snap of his wrist. "Camila kisses everyone. That’s her job—finding the softness in people, even when they don’t want it found. But she doesn’t stay. Can’t."
"And Ruben?"
Bruno’s mouth twitched. "Ruben hates journalists. We’re the caution tape around his cliff dives."
A tram clattered uphill somewhere behind them, its bell ringing twice. The sparrows scattered.
Ragnak studied Bruno the way a pathologist might study a slide—dispassionate, meticulous. Most men balked under that gaze. Bruno just stared back, unflinching.
"You erased your own story once," Ragnak said. "To protect a source."
Bruno’s fingers curled slightly against his thigh. "You’ve done your homework."
"Was it worth it?"
The journalist looked out over the city, the question settling into him like a blade between ribs. The truth was a currency he’d spent years trading, but never for himself. "Depends on the day."
Ragnak nodded, once. No judgment. No approval. Just acknowledgment.
Below them, Lisbon hummed—alive, indifferent, sprawling beyond the edges of their silence.
Bruno pushed himself up from the bench, stretching his shoulders. "If this is the part where you dissect my trauma to see if I’ll break under pressure, save it. I already know how my story ends."
Ragnak didn’t move. "And how does it?"
Bruno turned to leave, hands in his pockets. "With the truth buried. Just like always."
The wind picked up, carrying the scent of salt and exhaust.
Ragnak watched him go, then glanced at the trash bin where the paper lay crumpled.
No drama. No denial. Just clarity—the quiet, unspectacular kind that cut deeper than any confession.
Elarion’s silent evaluation continued.
=====
The riverfront at Cais do Sodré smelled of salt and frying fish, the evening light stretching shadows long across the cobblestones. Ruben leaned against the railing, his fingers tapping an uneven rhythm against the rusting metal as he watched the ferry cut through the Tagus. The water swallowed the sun in shattered pieces of gold.
Ragnak appeared beside him without greeting, his presence like a sudden drop in temperature. He placed Ruben's folded game sheet on the railing between them. The paper fluttered slightly in the breeze.
"Bruno and Julieta chose kiss," Ragnak said. "João and Beatriz chose kill. No one chose marry."
Ruben barked out a laugh, sharp as a firework. "Shocker." He flicked the paper into the river without looking at it. "No one builds a life on a fucking tightrope."
The ferry's horn sounded in the distance, low and mournful.
Ragnak watched the paper dissolve into the current. "You expected this."
"Shit, I'd have picked me for kill too." Ruben grinned, but his knuckles whitened around the railing. "Chaos is fun to visit. No one wants to live there."
The wind carried the tinny echo of music from a nearby bar, bass bleeding into the salt air. A group of tourists laughed, their voices bright and careless.
Ragnak turned the data over in his mind. The precision of it—Bruno's reluctant alliance, Julieta's fleeting warmth, the others' rejection—was cleaner than any psychological profile. "You don't disagree with their assessments."
Ruben shrugged. "João needs control like he needs oxygen. Beatriz? She’s got a whole hospital riding on her keeping shit together. Of course they'd cut me loose." He spat over the railing, watching it vanish into the dark water. "Fire's pretty to watch. Doesn’t mean you wanna stick your hand in it."
A street vendor called out, offering grilled sardines wrapped in newspaper. The smell of charred skin and lemon cut through the brine.
Ragnak considered the man beside him—the practiced nonchalance, the way his pulse jumped in his throat despite the easy smirk. Fire, yes. But also the quiet understanding of why people kept their distance.
The last light bled from the sky.
Ruben pushed off the railing, rolling his shoulders like he could shake off the weight of the conversation. "We done here?"
Ragnak didn’t answer. The data was clear.
Ruben took the silence for what it was and walked away, hands in his pockets, his shadow stretching long and disjointed across the stones.
Somewhere behind them, a glass shattered. Laughter followed, bright and jagged.
The river swallowed that too.
=====
The limestone of Belém Tower absorbed the late afternoon heat, radiating it back in slow, invisible waves. João stood at the water's edge, hands in his pockets, watching the tide pull away from the fortress walls. The Tagus left dark, glistening streaks on the stone—like veins, he thought, like the city itself breathing in and out.
Ragnak appeared beside him, silent as the shadow of a cloud passing overhead. He didn't speak, just placed João's folded game sheet on the railing between them.
João glanced at it, then away. "Let me guess. Zero for marry."
"Beatriz chose kiss," Ragnak said. "Bruno, Camila, and Julieta chose kill."
A gull shrieked overhead, circling the tower's Manueline turrets. João exhaled through his nose, lips pressing into a thin line. Not surprise. Not anger. Just confirmation.
"Yeah," he said finally. "That tracks."
The wind off the river carried the scent of salt and diesel, the faint metallic tang of the tower's oxidized cannons.
Ragnak tilted his head. "No defense?"
João ran a thumb along the railing's rough edge. "You want me to pretend I don’t know how I’m perceived?" His voice was calm, almost amused. "Beatriz kissed me because she respects systems. Structure. But marriage?" He shook his head. "No one signs on for a lifetime of emotional blueprints."
A tour group passed behind them, chattering in German, cameras clicking like insects. The sound faded as they rounded the tower's corner.
"And the others?" Ragnak asked.
João shrugged. "Bruno kills me because I represent everything he’s had to destroy—calculated choices, buried truths. Camila kills me because I don’t *feel*, I assess. And Julieta?" He looked out at the river, where the sunlight shattered on the waves. "She kills me because I don’t bleed."
Somewhere downstream, a cargo ship's horn groaned. The sound lingered, a low note vibrating in the bones of the city.
Ragnak studied João—the precise angle of his shoulders, the way his breathing never hitched. Most men would’ve flinched at their own dissection. João just stood there, a living algorithm, unshaken by the output.
"You don’t disagree," Ragnak observed.
"Would it change anything?" João turned, leaning back against the railing. The tower’s shadow cut across his chest like a blade. "Truth doesn’t care about fairness. Only parameters."
A child laughed on the pier, high and bright. The wind snatched the sound away.
Ragnak folded the paper back into his pocket. Data assimilated.
João pushed off the railing, straightening his sleeves. "Are we done?"
For a moment, Ragnak said nothing. The river lapped at the stones below, relentless. Then, just as João turned to leave:
"Would you have chosen differently?"
João paused. The question hung between them, simple and devastating.
He didn’t look back. "No."
The tower’s shadow stretched long across the plaza as he walked away, his footsteps precise, measured—each one falling exactly where he intended.
Lisbon watched.
The river kept moving.
=====
LX Factory’s graffiti-streaked walls swallowed the afternoon light, the air thick with the smell of roasting coffee and turpentine from the artist studios upstairs. Camila sat on the edge of a rusted shipping container repurposed as a bench, her fingers tracing the raised edges of a sticker someone had left behind—*Lisboa não é só fado*. Lisbon isn’t just sorrow.
Ragnak materialized between two murals, his silhouette cutting through the sunlit dust motes. He didn’t sit. Just held out her results between two fingers, the paper crisp against the industrial decay around them.
Camila took it without looking. “Let me guess. No one picked ‘kill.’”
“Correct.” His voice was the scrape of a scalpel against a steel tray. “Julieta chose ‘marry.’ Ruben chose ‘kiss.’”
She unfolded the page, the creases sharp as origami. The words sat there, harmless as sleeping birds. A laugh escaped her, soft and frayed at the edges. “Of course Julieta picked ‘marry.’ She’s been stitching together a home out of scraps since she got here.” The paper fluttered in her grip. “And Ruben?”
Ragnak watched a spray-painted hummingbird on the wall behind her, its wings blurred mid-beat. “Explanations are unnecessary. The data speaks.”
“Yeah, well, data doesn’t drink cheap wine at 2 a.m. crying about their ex.” She folded the paper into a tiny square, pressing it into the gap between the container’s metal seams. “Julieta wants permanence. Something that won’t vanish when she blinks. Ruben wants warmth, but not the kind you build a life on—just enough to take the edge off.” She tilted her face up, squinting against the sun. “And ‘kill’? No one picks the person who holds their hair back when they’re sick.”
A forklift beeped in the distance, the sound swallowed by the hum of a tattoo gun from the open studio windows above.
Ragnak’s gaze didn’t waver. “You’re analyzing them.”
“I’m *listening.*” She rubbed a smudge of graphite off her thumb—leftover from sketching routes for tomorrow’s survival drill. “You asked for one word. They gave you a whole goddamn biography.”
The wind shifted, carrying the scent of ink and fermented oranges from the abandoned market stalls.
Camila stood abruptly, the container shuddering under her weight. “You know why none of them chose ‘kill’? Because when you spend your life teaching people how to survive cliffs and blizzards, they stop seeing you as something that *needs* killing.” Her voice cracked, just once. “They see you as the fucking *rope.*”
Silence.
Somewhere, a shutter banged against a brick wall, over and over, like a heartbeat.
Ragnak absorbed this. Not just the words—the way her shoulders curved inward, the raw spot on her lower lip where she’d been biting it. The data rearranged itself. Not shelter, not rope. A *knot.* The kind that holds fast, even when the weight threatens to unravel it.
He reached into his coat. Withdrew a second sheet—his own notes, observations in that clinical script. Held it out.
Camila didn’t take it. “What’s that? My autopsy report?”
“Your contradiction.” The paper trembled faintly in the breeze. “You teach survival, yet you don’t strategize your own advancement. You bind others, yet you remain…” He searched for the word. “Untethered.”
She laughed, hollow. “Wow. Poetic.”
A child’s shout echoed from the courtyard, followed by the skitter of skateboard wheels.
Camila glanced toward the sound, then back at him. “You wanna know my word for you?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “*Blind.*”
Ragnak went very still.
“You think this—” She flicked the edge of his notes, “—tells you who we are? Numbers don’t bleed. Numbers don’t wake up choking on the dream where they’re alone in the woods with no fucking compass.” Her breath hitched, just once. “Lisbon’s showing you who we are, alright. But you’re not reading it.”
The second paper slipped from his fingers, caught midair by a gust, tumbling toward the cracked concrete.
Camila watched it fall. Didn’t move to catch it.
Ragnak’s jaw tightened. A microscopic fracture in the ice.
Somewhere beyond the factory walls, the river kept moving.
And for the first time, he wondered what it was carrying away.
=====
The Jardim da Estrela smelled of wet earth and magnolias, the afternoon rain leaving the paths slick underfoot. Children shrieked by the duck pond, their laughter bouncing off the fig trees. Beatriz sat on a bench beneath a jacaranda, her hands folded neatly in her lap, watching a nurse push an elderly man in a wheelchair along the gravel. The wheels left temporary furrows that would vanish by morning.
Ragnak approached without urgency, his shadow crossing her line of sight first—long, unbroken, swallowing the scattered petals at her feet. He didn’t sit. Just held out the folded slip of paper between two fingers.
She took it, unfolded it with the same deliberate care she used to review patient charts. The words *Marry: Bruno, Camila* and *Kiss: João* sat in neat rows. No third category.
Beatriz exhaled through her nose, a soft, knowing sound. "No one picked 'kill.'"
Ragnak studied the way the dappled light caught the silver streaks in her hair. "An anomaly."
"Or a pattern." She refolded the paper along its original creases, her nails blunt and unpolished. "Bruno chose 'marry' because he’s spent years erasing truths to protect people. He needs someone who won’t ask him to lie." A duck waddled too close; she nudged it gently away with her shoe. "Camila chose it because she’s spent her life guiding people through storms. She recognizes another anchor when she sees one."
The breeze shifted, carrying the scent of fresh *pastéis de nata* from the café across the garden.
Ragnak tilted his head. "And João?"
Beatriz almost smiled. "João kissed me because he respects structure. But marriage?" She shook her head. "He doesn’t trust anything that can’t be flowcharted."
A toddler stumbled into view, clutching a half-melted ice cream cone. His mother swooped in before he could fall, murmuring reassurances in rapid Portuguese.
Beatriz watched them, her fingers resting lightly on the bench. "No one chooses 'kill' for the person who carries their responsibility. It’s why hospital administrators outlast health ministers. Why mothers survive wars." She turned the paper over once, then handed it back. "You don’t burn the bridge everyone’s standing on."
Somewhere beyond the trees, a street musician began tuning a guitar, the notes slipping in and out of key.
Ragnak took the paper, feeling the faint warmth where her fingers had been. For a moment, he saw not the data points but the architecture beneath—the unspoken calculus of survival, the way people clung to steadiness when the world tilted.
Beatriz stood, brushing a stray petal from her slacks. "You thought this would unsettle me."
He said nothing.
She adjusted her watch strap, the face scuffed from years of use. "I allocate ICU beds every Thursday at 3 p.m. This?" She gestured to the paper in his hand. "This is just triage with better lighting."
The musician found his chord. A *fado* melody curled through the garden, bittersweet and familiar.
Ragnak watched her walk away—posture straight, stride even, the way people moved when they were used to being watched. The paper in his hand fluttered slightly, useless now.
Lisbon’s truth wasn’t in the choices. It was in the spaces between them.
The river had taken the rest.
=====
The tram screeched to a halt at Miradouro de Santa Catarina, doors shuddering open to exhale Julieta onto the sunbaked platform.
Evening tourists clustered along the viewpoint’s railing, phones outstretched toward the river’s molten glare, but she walked past them without slowing. She knew the spot Ragnak would be waiting—left of the bronze Adamastor statue, where the stone slanted just enough to discourage casual loiterers.
He stood exactly where she’d predicted, back to the sunset, his grey tunic blending into the weathered granite.
"Thought you’d send another note," she said, stopping an arm’s length away. The breeze carried the tang of someone’s espresso and the briny undertow of the Tejo.
Ragnak turned. The dying light carved his cheekbones sharper. "Notes lack diagnostic value."
Julieta leaned against the railing, elbows resting on warm metal. Below, a fishing boat puttered toward Cacilhas, its wake dissolving almost immediately. "Diagnostic. Right." She rubbed a fleck of tarnished bronze off her thumb. "So? What’s my prognosis, Doctor?"
He withdrew a single sheet—her results from the grotesque little game. *Marry: Ruben, João. Kiss: none. Kill: none.* The paper trembled in the wind like something alive.
Julieta stared at it. Then laughed, abrupt and startled. "Christ. No wonder João’s been avoiding me."
Ragnak observed the way her fingers twitched toward her collarbone—an old tell, something she’d done during early interrogations when the questions veered too close to her exile. "Explain."
"Really? You need it spelled out?" She flicked the page with her middle finger. "Ruben picks ‘marry’ because he’s a tornado who thinks a wife will magically give him roots. João picks it because I’m the only one who doesn’t flinch when he talks about urban planning like it’s scripture." The wind snatched a strand of her hair, whipping it across her mouth. She didn’t bother moving it. "And no one picks ‘kill’ because dead exiles don’t make good conversation."
A seagull landed on Adamastor’s shoulder, pecking at verdigris.
Ragnak watched her profile—the tension in her jaw, the way she’d positioned herself slightly upwind so her hair would shield her expression. "You’re incorrect."
"Enlighten me."
He stepped closer, invading her carefully maintained perimeter. The gull took off in a flurry of wings. "No one chose ‘kill’ because you’ve mastered the art of careful absence. You listen without inserting. Observe without crowding." His voice lowered, clinical. "They don’t eliminate you for the same reason hikers don’t shoot the north star."
Julieta went very still. The river churned below, swallowing the last gilded fragments of sunlight.
Somewhere behind them, a teenager whined about their dead phone battery.
She exhaled through her nose. "You’re saying I’m useful."
"I’m saying you’re safe."
The word hung between them, sharp as a fishhook.
Julieta’s throat worked. She turned back to the railing, gripping it until her knuckles matched the statue’s oxidized hue. "You’re wrong. Ruben’s the one who—"
"Ruben is fireworks in a drought," Ragnak interrupted. "Predictably dangerous. You?" He tilted his head. "You’re the silence after the explosion. The space people mistake for peace."
The fishing boat disappeared around Docapesca’s docks. The first evening lights flickered on along the Ponte 25 de Abril, tiny and indifferent.
Julieta unpeeled her hands from the railing. Left behind faint fingerprints in the condensation of her sweat. "Fuck you."
She walked away, shoulders rigid, footsteps silent on the cobblestones. The tourists parted for her without noticing.
Ragnak didn’t follow.
The diagnosis was complete.
Lisbon absorbed the verdict without comment, the way it always did—stone cradling sorrow, river carrying secrets, night erasing edges until everything blurred into something almost bearable.
By dawn, even the fingerprints would be gone.
=====
Alfama’s alleyways smelled of grilled sardines and wet laundry, the morning fog clinging to blue-tiled walls as Bruno picked his way downhill toward the Sé. His phone buzzed—another burner number, another dead-end lead from his erasure days. He silenced it with a practiced thumb.
Ruben materialized from a shadowed archway, a half-eaten pastel de nata in one hand. "You look like shit."
Bruno didn’t break stride. "And you smell like a distillery."
"Fair." Ruben fell into step beside him, licking custard off his fingers. "Heard you got the marriage proposal from Beatriz. Congrats."
"Fuck off."
Ruben’s grin widened. "Aw, come on. You two’d be adorable. Matching trauma, shared custody of the hospital morgue—"
Bruno stopped so abruptly Ruben overshot three steps. "Why’d you pick Julieta?"
The alley narrowed here, walls close enough to touch both sides. A cat yowled from a windowsill above them.
Ruben’s smile didn’t falter, but his fingers curled around the empty pastry wrapper. "Why’d you pick me for kiss?"
Silence.
Somewhere uphill, a grandmother shouted at a child in rapid-fire Portuguese.
Bruno exhaled through his nose. "Forget I asked."
He started walking again. Ruben waited a beat before following, crushing the wrapper in his fist.
"You’d hate the real answer," Ruben said, too loud for the cramped space.
Bruno glanced back. "Try me."
Ruben tossed the crumpled paper at a trash bin. Missed. "She’s the only one who doesn’t look at me like I’m a fucking actuarial table." His voice went jagged. "You all do the math—Ruben’s fun, Ruben’s reckless, Ruben’s gonna faceplant by thirty-five. Julieta just… watches. Like whatever happens, it’s not a surprise. Just weather."
A church bell tolled nine times. The sound pooled in the alley’s dips and hollows.
Bruno studied him—the tremor in his right hand, the way his usual swagger had gone brittle at the edges. "Thought you didn’t care how people saw you."
Ruben shrugged, too sharp to be casual. "Thought you didn’t do feelings."
The bell’s echo faded.
Bruno turned away first. "We’re late for the drill."
Ruben kicked a pebble. It skittered ahead of them, disappearing into the maze of Alfama. "Would’ve picked you for kill anyway, journalist."
Bruno’s mouth twitched. "Noted."
They walked the rest of the way in silence, shoulders not quite brushing, the city tightening around them like a noose made of salt and rust and centuries of other people’s ghosts.
Lisbon had always known how this would end.
It was the living who kept pretending otherwise.