The claws come back.
Not all the way. They retract to the slate-gray length they were yesterday morning. The slate on my arms recedes but does not fully fade. The canines retract but I can feel them still longer than they were two days ago.
The horns do not.
I reach up. They are still there. Smaller than they were a minute ago — the heat that built them has eased, the pressure in my skull has gone — but they have not retracted. Two small obsidian horns curving back from the top of my head. The patch wanted to come up, and the patch is willing to ease most of itself back, but not the horns. The horns are staying.
I do not say anything about it.
The layered-voice in my throat — that one I will not be able to put away. I can feel it sitting in there now. It will come backwhen I call for it. The voice has arrived, and it is mine now whether I am ready for it or not.
I look at the agents on the floor.
They have not moved. They are still on their knees with their hands on the back of their heads, and the look on the faces I can see is fear, and not the fear of being captured, the fear of being near the thing they have been hunting.
"Crull," I say. The layered voice is still in it. I let it be there. "Truck. Now. Take them both."
"Yes."
Crull crosses the room. He picks up both rifles and hands them to Daron. He puts each agent over a shoulder because Crull is the orc and that is the kind of weight Crull carries without thinking — and he turns and goes back the way he came.
I look at the drawer.
GRIGGSON, J. — FILE 47 — DONOR ACTIVE — Q1 RETRIEVAL.
I cross the cold-storage room. I put my still-clawed hand on the drawer pull. I open it.
Inside are six vials. Small. Glass. Labeled with dates. My cellular material in six vials in a cold drawer in a Syndicate building.
I take the vials.
I put them in my coat.
I close the drawer.
I turn back to the pack.
Fen is still kneeling.
I cross the room and I stop in front of him. The not-yet-thread is full. I bend at the knees and I crouch in front of him until our faces are at the same level, and I lift his chin with two of my still-clawed fingers — slate-gray against the pale of his throat — and I make him look at me.
"Up," I say. Quiet. The layered voice is gentle now. "Fen. Up."
He does not move at first.
He is not refusing. He is resting in the kneeling. It is the first place he has been allowed to be still in months. His body has been on a climb from the cargo box to the campground to the trees to the office to this cold-storage room, and the kneeling has given him a kind of rest. He does not want to get up.
"Okay," I say. "Then stay."
I shift my hand from his chin to the side of his face. I lay my palm flat on his cheek. He leans into it the way Thaw's palm makes me lean into him. My slate-skin against his pale-skin. The not-yet-thread thrumming.
Behind me, Thaw says, very quiet, "Jen."
"Yes."
"We have four minutes. You can hold him later. We have to move."
I look at Fen. He nods. He stands.
