Chapter 12 #2
I want to argue. I want to tell her that the world won't wait for her brain to catch up, but then tears well up in Lily's eyes, and I deflate. I'm trying to protect her from a global conspiracy, and I'm losing a war against first-grade arithmetic.
"Fine," I mutter, rubbing the back of my neck. "Break time. Go get your dinosaur."
Lily is out of that chair in a heartbeat, lunging for her purple stegosaurus on the sofa. The rest of the guys are already settling into their "off-duty" roles, which mostly looks like a group of lethal mercenaries behaving like unruly teenagers.
"Hey, munchkin." Brass leans over the back of the sofa, his massive arms making the furniture look like a dollhouse. "Since you're done being a scholar, help us out. Torque thinks Jurassic Park is a good movie for a six-year-old. I keep telling him it's a bit much."
Lily looks at Torque with absolute, six-year-old condescension. "That's not real, Uncle Torque. Those monsters are scary, and they eat people. They're not dinosaurs, they're—they're monsters. We don't do scary dinosaurs. We do The Land Before Time."
"It's a classic," Torque defends, holding up his hands. "High stakes. High tension. It's basically a tactical extraction mission with raptors. It's got educational value."
"Littlefoot is better." Lily hugs her purple stegosaurus to her chest. "He has a mission. He has to find the Great Valley. And the Sharp-Tooth is scary, but Littlefoot has friends."
"What about a princess movie?" Halo suggests, finally looking up from a pile of Uno cards he's been absentmindedly sorting on the coffee table. "Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? You could wear a crown, and we could all bow."
Lily scrunches her nose so hard her whole face disappears for a second. "No. I told you. Princesses are boring. I like dinosaurs. They're real things you can play with. And they're strong."
"Dinosaur movie it is," Brass sighs, sinking into the cushions and surrendering the remote. "But if I cry when the leaf falls, nobody mentions it in the debrief. I'm serious. Whisper, you better not record it."
Whisper doesn't even look up from the corner, but he gives a single, subtle thumbs-up.
I move to the sofa, and the moment I sit, Lily is on me. She scrambles into my lap, her small, warm weight the most grounding thing in the universe. She smells like baby shampoo and the outside world.
My mother walks over, pressing a hand to my cheek. Her eyes are soft but searching. She knows I've been to the dark places. She doesn't say anything, but she presses a bowl of chicken soup into my hands.
"You're eating, Colt. I know you think you don't need to, but you do.
You're hollowed out." She then turns her attention to the rest of the room.
"And you lot. I went to do Lily's laundry and found a pair of tactical socks in the basket.
You know the rules. Your laundry is your problem. I am not your maid."
Brass winces, looking like a scolded schoolboy. "It was me. I was in the middle of a gear check, and I just forgo—"
"I don't care if you were in the middle of a firefight.
Take your socks out of my clean laundry," she snaps, though there's a flicker of a smile she's trying to hide.
She turns to Halo, who is trying to sneak a sandwich off the tray.
"And you. I noticed the sink. Those dishes didn't walk there themselves.
If you can hack a mainframe, you can operate a sponge. Go."
"I'm a specialist," Halo groans. "This is a misuse of high-level assets. My hands are calibrated for fine electronics, not Palmolive."
"It's a misuse of my patience," she retorts. "Move."
Whisper is already on the floor, clearing a space for the "theatre.
" He doesn't say a word. He rarely does, but he moves a stray boot out of the way, clears the scattered math scratch-paper from the floor, and gestures for Lily to bring her blanket.
There's a quiet, fierce loyalty in the way they all settle around her.
They've adopted her as their own, a collective of uncles who would level a city to keep her safe.
I hold my daughter close, her small, warm weight finally pushing back the cold hum of the safe room. I look at my parents, at the team: the family that grew out of the dirt and blood of a dozen different wars. They are the only wall between Lily and the plague that is Stratton.
I look toward the hallway, toward the locked door. I think of Stratton sitting alone, her mind a weapon she doesn't know how to disarm. I think of the heat of her skin, the look in her eyes, and the terrifying, unavoidable fact that I want her more than I hate her.
But I can't think about Stratton right now. I need to focus on what's important.
I kiss the top of Lily's head and try to believe she's right. That there is a Great Valley at the end of this. That I can keep the predator in the shower separate from the father on the sofa.
The lights in the bunker dim, the overhead tactical strips giving way to the soft, golden glow of a few scattered floor lamps. It's a false evening, a manufactured dusk, but the team settles into it with the kind of ease that tells me they're as hungry for the normal as I am.
Lily doesn't stay in my lap for long. She's a restless creature of shifting affections, and tonight, the team is her captive audience. She slides off the sofa, dragging her weighted blanket behind her like a royal cape, and wedges herself onto the floor between Whisper and Torque.
Whisper doesn't move. He rarely does, but his hand reaches out instinctively to tuck the edge of the blanket around her feet.
Torque, a man who once held a breach point in Fallujah for six hours with a shattered collarbone, looks down at her with something akin to terror before he adjusts his position to give her more room.
"Uncle Halo?" Lily looks over her shoulder, her eyes fixed on the screen where the animated dinosaurs are navigating a treacherous mountain pass. "Why did you ask me about being a princess?"
Halo leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Just curious, munchkin. Most girls your age want the castle and the sparkly dress. You don't like sparkles?"
Lily scrunches her nose, her eyes reflecting the flickering blue light of the TV. "I like sparkles. But princesses are boring. They wait in towers for people to find them. If a Sharp-Tooth came to a tower, a princess wouldn't know what to do."
"And what would you do?" Brass leans forward, a low rumble of amusement in his chest.
"I'd have a plan." Lily proudly lifts her chin, clutching her purple stegosaurus, Theodore. "I'm going to be a big girl one day. Big girls need to know how to take care of themselves. I'm going to know how to do that. I'm going to be like Daddy. I'm going to be the one who does the finding."
The silence that follows isn't tactical; it's heavy.
I feel the weight of every man's gaze in the room.
They see what I see: a child who has spent half her life in a hospital bed, learning that the only way to survive is to be the strongest person in the room.
She doesn't want a fairy tale because she's been living in a horror story, and she's already determined she's the hero.
"That's a good mission statement, Lily-bug," Torque murmurs, his voice unusually thick. "Better than most of the ones we get from Command."
"Is that what you do?" Lily tilts her head back to look up at him. "Do you find people?"
"Sometimes." Torque glances at me for a split second before turning back to her. "Mostly we make sure the 'Sharp-Tooths' of the world don't get to the Great Valley. We're the wall, Lily. We keep the scary things on the other side."
Lily nods, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and turns her attention back to the screen. For the next hour, the only sounds are the film's sweeping orchestral score and the occasional whispered commentary from the guys.
They analyze the herbivores' "tactical retreat" and debate the "perimeter security" of the Great Valley, turning a kid's movie into a debrief just to keep their minds from wandering back to the hallway.
When the credits finally roll, the transition back to reality is sharp. The screen goes black, and the hum of the bunker's life-support systems seems to grow louder in the absence of the music.
"Alright, show's over." My mother stands and smooths her apron.
She looks at the group of lethal men sprawled across the common room with the eye of a drill sergeant.
"Halo, those dishes will not wash themselves.
Brass, I want those socks out of my laundry before I go to bed.
Torque, check the perimeter sensors one last time, and Whisper, help me put these extra blankets away. "
"Yes, ma'am," they chime in unison, a chorus of deep voices that sounds like a well-drilled platoon.
They move efficiently; the domestic chores performed with the same seriousness as a weapon strip-down.
There's a grumbling, of course. Halo makes a point of sighing loudly as he heads for the sink, but they do it.
I scoop Lily up from the floor. She's a warm, heavy weight in my arms, her head already lolling against my shoulder, her eyes half-closed.
"Bedtime, Lily-bug," I whisper.
"Carry me?" She presses her warm face into the crook of my neck, her words barely a whisper.
"Always."
I walk down the short hallway to her room.
It's the only room in the bunker that doesn't feel like a fortress.
My mother has had plenty of practice turning hospital rooms into home.
She's dones the same thing here. The walls are covered in glow-in-the-dark stars.
The shelves are crowded with books and a small army of stuffed animals.
I lay her down on the bed, pulling back the duvet printed with, predictably, more dinosaurs. I sit on the edge of the mattress as she settles in, her curls spilling across the pillow.
"Book?" Her eyelids flutter, heavy and slow.
I reach for the top book on the nightstand: The Velveteen Rabbit. It was her mother's favorite, one of the few things she left behind. I hate the book, but Lily loves it, so I read it.
I keep my voice low and steady, the words of the story an odd contrast to the tactical reports and threats of violence that usually fill my head. "Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you …"
I watch her as I read. I watch the way her breathing slows, the way the tension leaves her small frame.
This is the only time I feel like the man I'm supposed to be.
In this room, with this book, I'm not the predator.
I'm not the man who wants to destroy Stratton.
I'm just a father trying to make sure his daughter feels safe enough to dream.
When I reach the end, she's already out, her thumb hovering near her mouth, the purple stegosaurus tucked under her arm. I lean down and press a long, lingering kiss to her forehead.
"I love you, Lily-bug," I whisper into the quiet. "I'll keep the Sharp-Tooths away. I promise."
I tuck the blanket tighter around her and stand. I move to the door, pausing with my hand on the light switch. I look back at her one last time, a small island of innocence in a world that is currently hunting her.
I turn off the light and step out into the hall, the darkness of the bunker waiting for me. The father stays in the bedroom. The sentinel is the one who walks back toward the safe room.