Then I typed.
Where is the bus tomorrow?
The typing bubble from Rowan appeared instantly.
We have a flight from Sea-Tac that lands at Heathrow in nine hours. A car can be at your loft in forty minutes.
Forty minutes.
I looked around the loft. The triple locks. The white noise machines. The fortress I’d built to keep the world out, to keep myself a ghost.
It was safe here. It was lonely, and it was sterile, and it was perfectly, boringly safe.
But safety hadn’t written a song that sounded like indigo velvet. Safety hadn’t redesigned an HVAC system to give me clean air.
Send the car.
Copy that. Ticket stands ready.
I stood up. My knees were shaking, just a little. Not the frantic tremor of a heat spike, but the vibration of a frequency changing.
I packed differently this time.
Into the go-bag went the suppressants, the cables, the interface. But I also packed my favorite hoodie, the one with the bleach stain on the cuff. I packed the good headphones, theopen-back ones I usually didn't risk on the road. I packed my own tea, even though I knew Cal likely had a stock that rivaled a dispensary.
I paused at the door. I looked back at my setup, at the screens that were my window to the world.
"Be right back," I whispered to the empty room.
I locked the deadbolt. I didn't set the alarm.
The flight wasa blur of noise-canceling headphones and turbulence that I visualized as jagged red spikes, the kind that are usually shown on a graph. I spent the time reviewing the bus schematics on my tablet, annotating them with red pen.
Note: Monitor placement needs isolation pads.
Note: If the "Neutral Zone" curtains aren't blackout, I will riot.
Note: 6 air changes per hour is acceptable. 8 would be better.
I was armoring myself with technicalities. If I focused on the airflow, I didn't have to focus on the Alphas. If I focused on the mix, I didn't have to focus on the man.
When I landed at Heathrow, rain was lasering against the terminal glass. It looked exactly like Seattle rain, just with a different accent.
A driver was waiting. He held a sign that didn't sayZia ValeorFoxTail.
It said: THE ENGINEER.
I allowed myself a small, dry smile. Rowan. She missed nothing.
We drove north. The English countryside rolled by in greys and greens, muted and wet. I counted the mile markers. Four breaths in. Six breaths out.
"Nearly there, miss," the driver said.
We pulled up to a venue that looked like a factory that had given up on industry and embraced noise ordinance violations instead. Brick, grime, tour buses idling in the alley like sleeping beasts.
The main bus, the one from the schematic, sat in the center. It was a sleek, black monolith.
The driver opened my door. The air smelled of diesel and damp concrete.
