"Good afternoon, Mattie," Number One said as she emerged from the staircase. "How are you feeling today?"
"Good." She lifted her newly bandaged hand. "The doctor was here earlier and checked my hand. He says that everything is healing beautifully."
"We are glad," Number One said. "We also want to inform you that we agree to your condition."
Mattie's eyes widened. "To rescue your mothers?"
"To rescue as many women and children as we can."
Mattie sank onto one of the lab stools as if her knees had given out.
Dimitri stopped what he was doing and looked at Number One. Then at the other seven, who were watching Mattie with identical expressions that were unlike anything he had seen on their faces before.
They looked excited.
"You're serious," he said.
"We visited the Dormant enclosure today," Number One said.
Mattie gasped, her good hand going to her chest. "How? I thought no immortal males were allowed in there."
"We thralled the guards to accept that we had authorization from Losham."
"What happens if they report your visit?" Dimitri asked.
"They won't. It was part of the thrall to make them forget that we were there."
As Petrov's heavy footsteps sounded on the staircase, all of Dave's eyes shifted in that direction.
He cleared the staircase, holding a stack of printouts under his arm. "I heard something about thralling. What did I miss?"
"Dave visited the Dormant enclosure earlier today," Mattie said. "They thralled the guards to let them in and forget the circumstances."
Petrov continued to his station as if he hadn't heard her, put his papers on his desk, sat on his stool, and swiveled it around to face them. "What did you find out?"
"There are about twelve hundred women there, about half still young enough for breeding, and the rest are older and performing other duties."
Dimitri frowned. "Did you count them?"
"Of course not," Number One said. "We gathered the information from the women's minds."
That made more sense. "Go on."
"There are also children. We didn't see all of them either, but from what we've collected from the women's minds, it's over eight hundred."
Dimitri resumed the injections, moving to Number Four, and letting the mechanical routine of swab, position, inject, and withdraw anchor him while he listened to Number One's description of the Dormant enclosure.
He described the dormitory buildings, the communal kitchen and dining area, and the recreation yard. He told them about how fearful the women had been and how they had scattered before the Eight, gathering children and steering them toward cover with the urgency of a population that had learned to regard male visitors as a threat.
He described Sullha.
Number One's voice changed when he talked about her, not dramatically, but enough that Dimitri noticed. His voice softened, and the words came out more slowly.
"I recognized her from the way she sat, the angle of her head, the way she tucked her hair behind her ear," Number One said. "She had a boy with her. His name is Tomek. He's five years old, and he's hers."
Mattie pressed her good hand against her mouth.
"We reached into her mind," Number One continued. "Just the surface. Enough to understand. She loves the boy. She loves him more than her own life, and her greatest fear is that the soldiers will come and take him before he is thirteen."
