“Worse, please.” Chrys drops onto the couch beside me and curls her legs under her.
He didn’t expect her to be here and he’s not particularly happy that she is, but there’s no reason for her tonothear what he has to say.
“I don’t like talking to Tylen. He knew the Maker. He knew what he was doing. He didn’t care, so… he’s not agoodguy.”
He was too focused on his own experiments to care about us, but that’s not an excuse.
“But, he’s a resource, one I can’t justify giving up just because I don’t like him. I asked him about the man who made kirocilicantephen and… it’s not good.”
“Hownot good is it?” Chrys wraps her arm around mine and squeezes me close.
“He was banned from working with humans, and he was basically removed from every board and body he was ever a member of.”
By Tylen and a few other people who were nearly as bad, if not worse.
“So he went underground?” Chrys asks, and I clarify what the idiom means to Drift.
“Yes. He’s officially registered as a teacher, but I think we can guess where the black-market version of the kirocilicantephen came from.”
Shifting beside me, Chrys asks, “What’s the bad news?”
“I haven’t gotten to the end of the worse news yet.”
“Uh oh.” She whispers it quietly enough I know Drift didn’t hear her.
I know what the worse news is, so I ask the question that will get him to spit it out.
“Where is he, and why wasn’t he the first person they went to when they figured out what it is?”
“His last known address is in Calisan.” Drift scowls at Arc and Shock who’ve just joined us. “The timing of all of this is unsettling.”
“And the bad news?” Chrys asks again.
“Noa’s people will be lifting out the rest of the wreckage. The fuel cells have burned out and he wants the pieces in a secured facility.”
“So, lots of air traffic and bodies messing with the sensors.”
He nods. “They’ll start in a few days.”
“Noted.”
When he hangs up, I look at the others. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
Arc grimaces at the screen. “I have to go back to Calisan.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
SHOCK
I had thoughtour first trip to town all together would end at dinner or one of the art exhibitions or even Margot’s, not with the four of us going separate ways.
Kilo is waiting with Riann when we drop Arc off, and he looks back at us warily. He doesn’t want to go and the fact that we don’t want him to go either doesn’t help.
Chrys and Risk get out at the open-air mall, where they’ll meander until Chrys meets up with Mary and Risk goes to the library.
And I go to bother a dying man.
