13. Chapter 13
Chapter thirteen
Fen
Cold porch.
Coffee. Crull made it. Bitter. I drink it.
The mark sat warm all night. Steady now. Jen with Daron, east, the thread holding across the miles.
Crull is beside me. He poured the cup before I came out. He has not looked at me.
The sun is coming up. Pink at the trees.
He clears his throat.
"Daron switches out today. Dean goes."
"Yes."
He drinks. He does not push.
After a while.
"Thaw's awake. Vance is going to give us the rest today."
I turn to him.
"She gave Dean a word at three last night. The one we've been waiting on."
"Linden."
For months it has been a machine with no face. A door that opened and closed. Hands in gloves. A voice behind the glass with no name.
You cannot hunt a machine. You cannot get your teeth into a door.
Now it has a name.
The heat is up my spine before the cup leaves my hand — not fear, the other thing, the thing that wants to be hunting.
It climbs. Throat. Wrists. The ache in the jaw where the teeth want to drop.
I'm on my feet before I decide to be, and the cup goes over off the arm of the chair and empties across the boards.
Crull is on his feet too. Four feet away. Hands at his sides. Amber on mine.
"Hold Fen."
I breathe.
The shift hovers. Does not extend. He is six feet off and not crossing, and there is nothing in this yard to point it at, and he knows that's the problem — not that I'm scared, that I want to go. I stay because he's there.
I sit back down.
It retracts. My hand is shaking. He does not name it.
He goes inside. Comes back with the pot, rights the cup, fills it. Sets it by my hand. Sits back down.
"Pack in the kitchen at nine. Madison too. She asked."
I drink the coffee.
I go.
The kitchen at nine.
Thaw at the table. Harek at the wall. Crull in the doorway. Vance in the chair, hands cuffed in front of her.
Madison at the counter. Hand on her stomach. The sweater doesn't hide it anymore. Color good. Hair up.
Dean at the network terminal, a map open, a pen in his hand.
I come in.
Vance lifts her eyes.
The shift surfaces.
Her eyes drop to the table.
I stay where I am.
Crull has not crossed the room.
Thaw looks at me.
"You good."
I nod and I stay at the wall. I let the rest of it happen without me in it.
Vance is talking. I hear her voice the way I hear water in a pipe — there, steady, not for me.
Thaw asks. She answers. Dean's pen moves on the map.
Words come past me. Site Allison. A road off a highway.
Outbuildings, a number of them. Forty-one of something.
A residence, a lab, a basement. Harek asks her a question and she answers that too. None of it is mine. I let it go by.
Then something I can do. A tank.
My head comes up off the wall.
"—reservoir on the second story of the original building," Vance is saying. "External. West-facing. Master tank for compound twelve. Open it into the ventilation intake and the whole force goes down. Minutes. They come back up slowly."
Tank. Second story. West. Open it.
That is what I need.
"Floor plan," Thaw says.
"I can draw it."
Dean slides the printout across. Vance takes the pen in her cuffed hands and draws.
Harek leans in over her shoulder, watching her hand, asking her to mark the cameras, the patrol lines, where the intake sits.
Crull stays in the doorway with his eyes on her the whole time. She does not look up at any of them.
She hands it back. Dean takes it.
Thaw studies the drawing a long moment.
"You've given us Allison. The road, the buildings, the tank." He doesn't look up from the page. "You haven't given us where Linden is."
Vance's jaw tightens.
"Because I don't know."
"You've met Linden."
"At Allison." She shakes her head. "More than once. But I don't know if Linden's still there."
Thaw studies her.
"If you had to bet?"
"I'd start with Allison."
"Crull. Take her back."
Crull crosses. Hand on Vance's shoulder. She stands, doesn't look at me, and they go. The basement door closes.
"Allison," Thaw says.
Harek says it back. Thinking.
Madison moves.
She comes to the table. Looks at the map of Allison.
"I want it all gone. The research, the files, the history. Gone.”
"And Linden. I want him dead. I don't need him alive to do this again. I need him to know I helped. Tell him."
"We will."
She nods. Goes back to the counter. Hand on her stomach. She's done her crying.
I am at the wall. The mark on my sternum is warm.
Thaw looks at me.
"Tank's yours. Second story, west face, into the intake."
I've had it since she said it.
"Yes."
Something goes tight in my chest that isn't the shift. The other thing.
Thaw puts his hands flat on either side of the page.
"We start today."
I don't stay.
The plan is for the men in the building. The tank is for the man on the roof.
I'm outside.
Mid-morning sun. Empty yard. I sit on the porch step and breathe.
The screen door opens.
Madison. She doesn't come down at first. Hand on the railing, long sweater stretched over the stomach, barefoot. Then she comes down, slow — the pregnancy's changed how she does stairs — and sits, six feet off.
She looks at the trees.
"Are you going to come back?"
I look at her. Dark eyes. Not crying. Asking.
I nod.
"Good."
Quiet. Long.
"Fen."
"Yes."
"I don't want you around her. I'm afraid because you're not in control of it yet."
I look down. She doesn't soften it. I know she's right.
After a while she puts a hand on the railing and gets herself up.
I sit on the step into the afternoon. Crull comes out near dusk, hands me a cup.
I'm ready.