“And you’re making sure you can keep the place warm enough for them?”
I don’t answer him.
“Where is Risk?”
“Downstairs, working out.”
Hazard nods.
“Are you actually here in the middle of the night to ask the same question Breaker and Fault have?”
“Maybe? What question did they ask?” He smiles at me like he thinks he’s going to get away with something.
“Arc went to check out Calisan with one of the CSS guys.”
“I thought Kilo was doing that?”
“No one told us we needed to cover his part of the Zone.”
“Interesting…” He looks around again. “It’s been a few days since I’ve seen Arc on his normal route. Longer than he’s been in Calisan, I’d guess.”
“Did you happen to notice the wreckage and rubble out there?”
Hazard and I can go back and forth like this forever. The only reason we stopped the last time he wanted answers I wasn’t willing to give him was a cavrinskh incursion.
After we dealt with that, both of us had to go into the med units and we just never came back to it.
“How’s Hannah?” I ask, to divert him.
“Thriving, as always.” He smiles, but it’s sad.
“You should be with her tonight.” I don’t tell him the parts of their future I’ve seen. I can’t. Thinking about it makes my eyes prickle and my guts twist.
“I will be.” He looks around the room again. “I just swung by to see what was going on.”
Standing, he goes to our refrigerator and pulls the door open. “But it looks like I’m leaving with more questions than I came with.”
“I’m sure you’ll get your answers soon enough.”
When he closes the door, he has a can of coffee in his hand. None of the brotherhood drink it save for him, and he doesn’t visit, so there’s no reason we’d have it.
He looks from it to me with a knowing slant to his lips. “I had better.”
As soon as he’s gone, I pull up the schedule on the screen. Arc has an appointment at Margot’s in two days. We can avoid Hazard for two days. Once Hannah knows, Hazard will know too.
Once Hazard knows… it’s a ticking time bomb we can’t avoid.
Closing the schedule and putting the screen back into standby mode, I make my way downstairs.
Chrys is trying to get Risk to bend in ways he will never be able to, but it’s fun to watch him try.
She looks up at me with a wary smile. “Who was it?”
“Hazard. One of the other brothers. He was curious about Arc and then he was curious about the heat and your ‘cat tree.’ He doesn’t knowyou’rehere, but he knows someone is.”
“How?”
Risk grimaces.
