The rest of the VTOL ride was quiet save for the sound of the Rotors.
Silas didn't move for a long time the silence was stretching between us. His expression was the same as ever calm unnervingly so.
I broke the silence.
"How long have you been here" I asked
He said nothing.
"Silas"
"Long enough" he said "to know that question doesn't help"
I turned back to the window there were mountains. Stars were visible now like diamonds in the sky.
The transport bay was as loud as it was when I left. VTOLS were coming in and out ground crews moving fast.
Miller was waiting at the Railings.
He looked at me noting my burn marks.
"Walk with me"
Silas peeled off without a word. I walked beside Miller hands clasped behind his back.
"The needle worked" I said.
"I know I've had the telemetry" He pressed the elevator button "Your heat output was outside the parameters during the Class-3 engagement" The doors opened we stepped in. "You lost control"
"Am I in trouble for that?" I asked.
"No it's expected it was a Class-3 afterall"
"Three operatives" I said "before me"
The doors closed.
Miller was looking straight ahead. Staring at his reflection in the steel.
"Yes"
"You sent them know they weren't ready"
"I sent them because the data required to decide who was ready could not be gathered any other way" His voice was calm, unhurried "You're alive because of the sacrifice of those who came before you"
The elevator hummed.
"You're telling they died so I could succeed"
"I am telling you that they died so that the next rift that opens doesn't kill thousands" He glanced at me "I understand the distinction feels important now It will feel less important with time"
The doors opened into his office he walked to his desk pressing a button on his laptop.
A hologram opened places were marked across a continent.
Some blinking. Some steady. Some dark.
"There are currently nine confirmed rifts in various stages of expansion" Miller said keeping his gaze on the map.
"Three stable, three in early expansion phase. Two—" He touched the display it showed a coastal city he half recognised "are currently approaching the threshold we recorded in Carcer City fourty eight hours left before an incursion" He straightened "The Dirac needle is the only solution we have. We have four in existence. You have proven it works" He turned to look at me "That matters more than anything"
"Why are you telling me this" I asked
"You'll be part of the team to close one of the rifts" He picked up a glass of coffee taking a sip.
"Get some rest. Full debrief at oh—six—hundred. Training resumes after." He turned back to hologram "Dismissed"
I stood there for a moment looking at the back of his head.
I left.
I walked to the elevator stepping inside pressing the button for level B-4
The elevator moved downwards below. The cafeteria level.
The doors opened to the familiar white corridor. The smell was the same.
The cafeteria was empty at this hour. Tables wiped clean chairs stacked.
I stood before the door to my past cell. I knocked on it twice quietly.
I opened the dead lock entering it.
Amy was sitting in the corner her hair was loose she looked at me the dried blood on my temple at the new clothes. Her face cycled through emotions.
Relief Suspicion.
"You're back"
"I'm back"
I sat on the floor next to her.
"Tell me," she said quietly.
So I told her. I told her about the deployment. The ruined city, the hellhounds, the class-3. The centipede. I told her what the city looked like from the air — the collapsed skylines, the silence, the ash. I kept my voice low, barely above the hum of the ventilation.
When I stopped Amy was quiet for a long time.
"And the needle?" she asked.
"It works. It actually works."
She absorbed that. Ruby and Ajax exchanged a glance I couldn't fully read.
"He showed me the Carcer City footage," I said. "Before the deployment. The full archive. Uncut."
She was silent for a moment before
"It doesn't change what he is," Amy said carefully. "Or what he's doing to us."
"No," I agreed. "It doesn't."
She watched me. That precise, unnerving stare. "But."
"But if those rifts keep opening—"
"David." Her voice was gentle and immovable at the same time. "He has been telling you exactly what he needs you to believe. That's what he does. He showed you that footage because he needed you compliant for the deployment." She leaned forward slightly. "Think about it. Why show you the archive then? Why not when you first arrived?"
I opened my mouth.
Closed it.
The timing I hadn't thought about that.
"He engineers loyalty," Amy said. "There's a difference between the world needing someone to close rifts and it needing him to be the one running that operation." She paused. "One of those things might be true. The other is a choice he made."
Her voice softened "You're still with us right"
"Yes" I said.
Amy held my gaze for a long time.
"Then get some rest" she said "You look like you died"
"Nearly" I said.
I stood. Every part of my body reminded me it had been through something today. I moved toward the door.
"David."
I stopped. Amy's voice.
"Whatever doubts he put in your head," she said quietly. "Hold onto them. Don't let him take those too."
I looked back at her.
"He hasn't taken anything yet"
I left before she could see that I wasn't exactly sure that was true.
My room felt enormous when I got back.
I sat at the edge of the bed.
I thought to myself everything that has happened.
Miller wasn't wrong about the rifts. I'd seen it myself. I'd felt the wrongness of the air near that tear in reality, seen what came through it, smelled what Carcer City smelled like twenty-six years after the fact.
He wasn't wrong.
But Amy wasn't wrong too.
And somewhere in the space between those two true things, I was going to have to figure out exactly what I was willing to do. And for whom. And when.
I lay down on the bed.
Oh-six-hundred, Miller had said.
I closed my eyes.
Sleep, when it finally came, was dark and dreamless and cold this time it wasn't with the help of pills.