The threads come up clearer in the stillness.
Thaw. Crull. Harek. The twins. And then the place where Fen should be.
Nothing. I try again. Fen is only a few feet away, separated from us by a steel mesh wall, but the place where his thread should be is cold and silent.
My eyes find him automatically.
He is still sprawled on the blanket in the reinforced compartment at the back of the truck. Crull sits against the wall beside him, one arm draped over a bent knee, the rumble in his chest low enough that I feel it more than hear it.
Then Fen moves. Not much. Just enough. His head lifts.
One hand closes against the blanket.
The hollow inside me clenches. Slowly, awkwardly, he pushes himself upright. For one second I think he is going to look around. Think he is going to see us.
Instead he stands. And starts pacing.
The compartment is too small. Three steps one way. Turn. Three steps back.
Turn.
The truck rocks beneath him. He keeps moving. Head down. Shoulders tight.
Every pass brings him back in front of Crull. Every pass takes him away again. Crull never reaches for him. Never tries to stop him.
He just stays there. A fixed point. A place to return to.
"He's not okay."
The words leave me before I mean to say them.
Thaw's hand settles on the back of my neck.
"No."
Not cruel. Just true. I watch Fen turn again. The lantern swings overhead with the movement of the truck. Shadows slide across the reinforced walls.
Three steps. Turn. Three steps. Turn.
I lean back against Thaw and watch Fen wear the same path across the floor over and over.
Five threads hum quietly under my skin. The sixth is barely there, but it is there.
Chapter five
Daron
The road is shit and I do not care.
The road is shit, the suspension is shit, the gravel is loose under the back tires every time I drop a gear, and I do not fucking care because Thaw is breathing in the cargo box behind me and the world is a different world than it was at sundown.
I drop another gear. The engine drags. Fine. Let it drag. We are not in a hurry now. We are off the access road, we are forty minutes deep into the secondary network, the searchlight is miles behind us and the searchlight does not know which direction we went and the searchlight is not going to find us tonight. I have run this exfil in my head a hundred times for two years and the run never went this clean. The run always had something in it. A guard. A dog. A radio. A second team.Something. The run never went truck to truck to road to dark to gone.
I am driving away from a Syndicate facility with my brother in the back. I am driving away from a Syndicate facility with mybrother.
Fuck.
I hit the wheel with the heel of my hand. Once. Just to do something with the energy. The cab is too small to hold what is in me and I cannot pull over and run the energy off, so I hit the wheel, and it does about ten percent of what I need it to do.
