“What’s next?” Emma says, with a glance at the plywooded window.
“I grab what I can of that missing Locatelli–” Dance says, and Drin braces the little notebook with one hand, while Dance’s tail fumbles with the pen. “–and I …
The wind scales down completely, and there’s things flapping and racketing slowly away, and then the houses creaks and groans in the quiet. Time to talk while we can, Dance thinks. Be quick. Lots of ground to cover now.
“K …
“Love?” Drin drops to his knees, straddling Dance’s tail. “What else can I get you? More water?” His hands sweep over Dance’s chest, check his vitals, cup his neck, go back to his chest when he coughs again. It helps.…
“Numbers?” Dance asks in an almost-voice, and there’s a lull in the wind, he can hear his own rasp, surprising and deep.
“Jesus, Auren gave them to me, yeah, numbers…” Barret closes his eyes. “It’s hard. They’re in there, but–” …
“All the stuff Auren gave me,” Barret says, “the first part, it was all numbers, man.”
“Ahh, then I have for you the right guy. We have Drin,” Dance says, without bothering to exhale. His abdominal cavity feels as if …
Barret’s got a cracked old plastic keyboard across his lap, rocking, and stroking the keys, silently playing, totally unable to hear the ancient electronic speaker, so he doesn’t even have it turned on. He’s playing it like he can hear …
The light is blessedly dim, he’s not sure why. Dance can smell his partners sitting nearby, hastily washed, with the old traces of swamp and more faintly of bug, and a lot more loudly, the taint of fear.
They can’t …
Emma sits herself down in the sarcobox, carefully pulls the netting into place around herself. She leaves one arm free, in order to to pull the prep unit into place and fits the upper part of that arm into the …
Emma slouches back in the hard metal patio chair and hoists up her foot.
Dance, without comment, pulls off her shoe and starts rubbing her arches gently, pulling on her toes and making crackly noises come out of her bones. …
She’s back in the warehouse. She knows, feeling cold, what to expect.
Another bad dream.
Dance’s dreams of bugs, of people being dropped like so many slack sacks of potatoes into boxes with green sides, larger than coffin-sized boxes, my …