Zura used to speak a different language, one of bubbling fryers and shouted orders. His world was the greasy heat of a diner kitchen, where the only code was the health code and the only bug was a botched order. For ten years, he was a line cook, a good one, but he felt a ceiling pressing down on him, smelling perpetually of fried onions. His paycheck barely covered rent, and his dream of "something more" was a vague, formless ache.