Chapter 17
Five months ago:
Binary: What does belonging look like to you?
Mercury: I saw a family at the park once. Four generations, all talking over each other.
Binary: That sounds chaotic.
Mercury: It looked like belonging.
Binary: Belonging is just repeated proximity plus tolerance.
Mercury: Or it’s people choosing each other. Over and over.
Binary: …I suppose that’s also accurate.
The Eagle’s Nest looked exactly like a place that had been loved for forty years.
Morgan studied it through the windshield of Lincoln’s SUV, her hands pressed flat against her thighs to keep them from shaking.
Light spilled from windows, turning the gravel lot gold.
A neon eagle glowed above the door, and through the glass, she could see shapes moving.
People laughing, drinking, existing in a world she hadn’t been part of for what felt like years.
Two weeks. It had only been two weeks since the warehouse. But time had stretched and compressed in ways that made her old life feel like something she’d read about in a book.
“We don’t have to go in.” Lincoln’s voice was quiet beside her. “If you’re not ready.”
“I’m okay.” The words came out steadier than she felt.
He didn’t argue. Didn’t push. Just cut the engine and came around to her side, opening her door with a particular kind of deliberate care.
His hand found the small of her back as they crossed the parking lot. The pressure was light—barely there—but it tethered her to the present moment in a way she desperately needed. She leaned into it without meaning to, and his fingers spread wider against her spine.
The door swung open, and noise washed over her.
Jukebox playing something with a country twang. The crack of pool balls from somewhere to the left. Voices layered over voices, laughter cutting through the din. The comfortable chaos of a Saturday night in a small town where everyone knew everyone and strangers were a curiosity.
Morgan braced herself. She’d spent her whole life being a curiosity.
A table in the back corner erupted with movement. She recognized Bear as he stood to his feet, an easy grin splitting his face, one hand raised in a wave that seemed to encompass the entire bar.
“There he is!” Bear crossed the distance between them in deliberate strides and clapped Lincoln on the shoulder hard enough to rock him forward. “I was starting to think you’d turned into a complete hermit.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“You’re always busy. That’s not an excuse anymore.” Bear’s attention shifted to Morgan, and his expression softened. “Hi, Morgan. You look better than the last time I saw you.”
“I think I was mostly unconscious the last time you saw me.”
“Exactly. Big improvement.”
She almost laughed. Almost.
They followed Bear back to the corner, where the others had arranged themselves around a scarred wooden table. Morgan cataloged them automatically—Bear sitting down next to a woman with dark brown hair who was already pushing a basket of fries toward the center of the table.
Derek, whom she also vaguely remembered from the rescue, had his arm draped around a slender blonde who was stealing his beer while maintaining a completely innocent expression.
Then Theo, who sat beside a woman who was sketching something on a napkin while half listening to the conversation around her.
“Morgan, this is my fiancée, Joy.” Bear gestured to the dark-haired woman, who immediately shoved the fry basket closer to Morgan’s side of the table.
“You need to eat something. You’re too thin. Not judging—just observing. Also, the sweet potato fries here are terrible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. Only get the regular.”
“Dang, Bug. She hasn’t even sat down yet.” Bear wrapped his arm around her.
Joy shrugged. “I’m being helpful. Pregnancy has made my taste buds even more discerning.”
Morgan smiled. “Congratulations.”
Joy just beamed.
Derek was next, raising his beer in her direction. “Good to see you vertical. This is Becky. My wife.”
Evidently, these two had been married twice. Morgan would still like to understand that.
The blonde smiled. “I’ve heard a lot about you. Well—” She tilted her head. “I’ve heard Lincoln’s version, which was mostly facts and time stamps. Derek filled in the emotional subtext.”
“I’m a translator,” Derek said. “It’s a skill.”
“I promise I’m more interesting than facts and time stamps,” Morgan said.
Becky’s mouth curved. “Good. Because Lincoln’s version made you sound like a case file. I’m glad there’s an actual person attached.”
The woman beside Theo looked up from the napkin where she’d been absently sketching what looked like a fox. “I’m Eva. Theo’s wife. You’ve met Theo.” She pointed to the man beside her.
“Good to see you up and out.” Theo dipped his chin and Morgan reciprocated.
“Don’t let them overwhelm you.” Eva suddenly continued. “They mean well, but they have no volume control.”
“I heard that,” Joy said.
“You were meant to.”
“Scoot around,” Bear said, and the table rearranged itself to make room for two additional people. Morgan found herself sitting in a chair next to Eva, with Lincoln settling beside her. His shoulder pressed against hers, solid and steady.
They just made room.
She’d expected the moment of awkward adjustment—the careful maneuvering around someone new, the surface-level pleasantries that never went deeper. She’d expected to feel like an intrusion. A disruption in a pattern that had existed long before she arrived.
Instead, the conversation simply expanded to include her.
Joy pushed the fries directly in front of Morgan and asked about her tea preferences in the same breath.
Becky and Derek were apparently in a long-running argument about bookshelf organization, and Becky immediately recruited Morgan as backup.
Eva caught Morgan’s eye and mouthed just go with it as she rolled her eyes.
It was so easy. Too easy. Like they’d decided she belonged before she’d walked through the door.
“All right.” Bear pushed back from the table, pool cue appearing in his hand as if he’d conjured it. “Theo, you ready to lose your money again?”
“One of these days, statistics have to catch up with you.”
“That’s not how statistics work,” Lincoln said quietly to Morgan. “He’s been hustling pool here since we were teenagers.”
She watched them head for the closest pool table—Bear’s easy confidence, Theo’s good-natured resignation, Derek trailing behind to provide commentary that was probably insulting. Lincoln squeezed her shoulder once before following, a silent question in the gesture. She nodded, and he went.
“He talks about you.” Joy immediately leaned forward.
Morgan turned. “What?”
“Lincoln. He’s talked about you.” Joy grinned. “Which, if you know Lincoln, is basically a declaration of love. That man has discussed exactly zero women with his family in the entire time I’ve known him.”
“We just—I mean, we only recently—”
“You may have just met in person recently, but he’s been thinking about you for a lot longer than that,” Joy continued, still smiling ear to ear. “You are the only woman he’s ever mentioned to us. I won’t lie, I wondered if you truly existed.”
“Me too!” Becky exclaimed. “But I didn’t want to explicitly ask.”
“Honestly, I thought maybe you were a sex robot he’d created. He’s probably capable.” Eva reached over and patted her hand. “I’m glad you’re a real person.”
Heat crept up Morgan’s neck. At the pool table, Bear was running the table while Theo protested loudly about angles and physics. Derek stood to the side, arms crossed, offering suggestions that were clearly designed to make things worse.
And Lincoln…
Lincoln was leaning against the wall, one shoulder propped against the wood paneling, his whole body arranged differently than she’d ever seen it.
Looser. The constant microtension he carried—the one that came from perpetually translating himself for the rest of the world—had simply unwound.
He said something to Bear that made his cousin bark out a laugh, and the corner of Lincoln’s mouth actually lifted.
Not almost smiling. Actually smiling. Small, brief, but real.
This was who he was when he didn’t have to perform.
“Twenty bucks says Theo loses by at least three balls,” Eva said.
“That’s not a bet,” Becky replied. “That’s a foregone conclusion.”
“You’re supposed to humor me.”
The laughter came easily. Morgan let herself smile, let herself feel the texture of inclusion, let herself pretend for just a moment that she was someone who belonged in places like this.
Then the coordinates hit.
Not surfaced. Not rose. They slammed into her consciousness like a door kicked open—47.6062, -122.3321—the numbers so sharp and sudden that she flinched.
“Excuse me. I need to use the restroom,” she heard herself say.
“Everything all right?” Eva asked.
“Fine. Just…long day.” Morgan managed a smile and pushed back her chair before anyone could ask more questions.
The bathroom was small and clean and blessedly empty. Morgan gripped the edge of the sink until her knuckles went white.
KILO-SEVEN-TANGO.
She couldn’t breathe. The code pulsed behind her eyes, followed by another—ECHO-FOUR-NOVEMBER—and another—brAVO-NINE-ALPHA—each one shouldering aside the moment she’d been living in.
David Thornton. Rebecca Vance. Miguel Santos.
The names arrived without faces, without context, without anything except their own insistent presence.
She’d been happy. She’d been laughing at Eva’s sketch and feeling Joy press fries on her and watching Lincoln smile, and now Randall’s data was flooding through her skull like it had been waiting for exactly this moment.
Like it refused to let her have anything. Pushed out her good memories and now making sure she couldn’t make new ones.
Morgan pressed her forehead against the cool glass of the mirror. Her reflection stared back—pale face, dark circles, eyes that looked hunted even when she was trying to enjoy herself.