“We’re back here again?” she croaks.
The simple observation slides into him like a dull knife. Without malice, without calculation, she cuts through his denial like paper.
“It’s no Manhattan,” Abbot says as they climb out of the SUV, misinterpreting the defeat on Abram’s face. “Or Nashville for that matter. But it’s secure, and it has certain strategic assets, so I’m told. When I’m told anything.”
Sprout looks up at Abram with an expression he’s never seen on her. Tight lips and jutted chin, her eye like a sharp probe penetrating his skull. And the other eye, covered by the patch but not blinded by it, disregarding barriers in ways he’s never understood—what does that terrible orb see when it fixes on him? Does it judge him harshly for hiding it from the world?
“Abram!”
He whirls toward the sound of his name before he remembers it’s not his name anymore. Half a block away, his former friends—no, travel partners—are being unloaded from their van, wrists cuffed behind their backs. Four more sets of eyes join his daughter’s in hard appraisal.
“Are you really doing this?” Nora shouts as a guard prods her forward with his rifle barrel. “After everything you’ve seen, you’re just running right back?”
“Shut up,” the guard tells her, but she doesn’t register his presence.
“You’re really gonna feed Sprout to these people?”
Abram finds no suitable response. Instead of trying to distance himself from the prisoners, he just stands there, blank-faced, waiting.
The Dead boy with the gilded irises emerges from the van, and Sprout’s attention shifts away from Abram; he feels it go like a hot iron lifting from his skin. The two children watch each other from across the distance, their thoughts unreadable in the ever-evolving language of the young.
“Maybe you can’t help us,” Nora says as the guards march her and the others toward a doorway in the stadium’s concrete wall, “maybe you don’t even want to, but for fuck’s sake, man, get your daughter out of here.”
The guard jabs the butt of his rifle into the back of her head. She topples forward and grinds her face into the dried mud. A strange noise comes out of the boy, a little howl that’s not part of the usual human repertoire, and then it’s drowned out by shouts as Marcus head-butts the guard behind him and kicks Nora’s abuser in the back with such force the man flies right over her and ruins his face on the steel steps.
The ensuing scuffle is short-lived but brutal, and Abram finds himself wondering if there is anything besides his daughter that would make him fight like that. There was, once. He was not a meek youth. It took many harsh years to cut him from the Kelvin tree and graft him onto Axiom. Many Physical Disincentive sessions before he learned to obey his father-boss. Countless cold nights in those dark, dripping tunnels, sketching visions of airplanes and jetpacks and wings.
And Kenrei. He fought for her. He fought so hard he never quite stopped.
But that was all a long time ago. Today, there’s only one cause he believes in: this girl at his side. This girl who’s staring at him, into him, through him, filling his belly with fear.
He jumps when Abbot’s meaty palm claps onto his shoulder. “Listen, ‘Jim,’” the older man sighs, “we need to talk.”
Abram stiffens. Did he imagine the scare quotes?
“I’m going to settle into my new office,” Abbot continues. “The triple stack on Gun Avenue and Rooster Street. Why don’t you drop your kid off at Foster Care and meet me there in twenty.”
Abram struggles to remain professional. “Yes sir.”
Abbot nods and strolls away, relaxed and avuncular, but his final glance glints with a warning, like the flash of a weapon beneath a coat.
Abram rarely dreams. He wakes in a lukewarm blankness, the night a perfect nothing, and resumes exactly where he left off. The dreams he does have are always the same: misplacing something, failing someone, forgetting who he is. He wonders if he’s dreaming now as he leads his daughter through these narrow streets to a crooked tower full of children without parents. Is Sprout one of them? Is Abram already gone?
“I don’t want to go here,” she whimpers on the doorstep.
“Just for a little while. I have to go to a meeting, but then I’ll come get you.”
“And then we’ll leave?” Her eye goes round with hope. “We’ll escape and go find our friends?”
Abram’s mouth is a flat line. He should shower her with lies, tell her whatever will make her feel secure, but it won’t come out. He can feel the eye behind the patch burning into him like a laser, sealing the lies in his throat.
“When it’s the right time,” he croaks. “When it’s safe.”
The door opens and the foster mother takes his daughter and he walks off into the city, refusing to wonder if he’ll see her again.
“I’ll make this quick,” Abbot says. “I did some digging. I know who you are.”
Abram’s eyes roam the bare walls of Abbot’s office, a cheap movie set, a faded drawing, a memory of a memory.
“I know you were on the list a while back for some serious infractions. I know you helped some assets escape and may have been involved in a branch break.”
Abram wonders where he’ll be when he wakes up from this dream. Will he still be father in that distant reality? Will he find himself napping on the couch while Dad reads books and Perry builds blocks? How much of his life will vanish?
“I also know that you came back,” Abbot says. “I know you realized your mistake quickly and did your best to undo it. But more importantly, I know you’re a talented pilot and an effective acquisition assistant with a long and impressive record, and Axiom can’t afford to throw away resources in times like these.”
Three figures hover behind Abbot, gray shirts, colorful ties, gazing down at Abram with cheerful grins.
“We would like to offer you your former position,” the woman in the yellow tie says.
“All we need from you are assurances,” the man in the blue tie says, “that you resonate with our mission statement.”
“We need to know that you feel good,” the woman says with a radiant smile. “That you feel fantastic. That you’re ready to give a hundred and ten percent twenty-five hours a day so we can live in a world of certainty.”
“And we need to know that you care about your daughter,” the man says. “That you want her to be safe and stable and untroubled by dreams and urges.”
“Imagine such peace of mind,” the woman says, “to never worry again.”
“To never see her take risks or rebel or run off with some degenerate.”
“To never see her grow up,” the woman says softly. “To never see her leave you.”
Abram closes his eyes. Dry. Burning. The building sways in the breeze; the floor heaves like water.
“…so what I’m saying,” Abbot says, “is that I can offer you a probationary position, but I’ll be watching you closely until I’m satisfied that you’re not a liability. You did good work at the Fire Church compound, but that goat-fuck is far from over. Scouts haven’t been able to locate their…”
The floor is the deck of a storm-tossed ship and he’s staring down into dark water, catching glimpses of something huge rising from the depths.
“…attack any day now, so we need…”
It’s opening in the green-black below, a vast mouth, a throat.
“Well, Roberts? Are you onboard?”
He looks at Abbot. He swallows hard, holding back the nausea. He nods. He says something affirmative. Abbot smiles. Then Abram excuses himself, runs down the stairs, and vomits into the street while the buildings dance around him and helicopters hum overhead.