Felix dream-watched as his eyes compared the drawing on the pad against mother’s new position. How the Voice looked closely, twisting this way and that, bending down to stare at the round top of her head. Then how it carefully inspected her neck, fixing on the faint pulse visible at the side. Blood vessels: Vulnerable, the larger ones vital.

Mother’s back seemed particularly fascinating as Felix’s eyes compared the glowing image on the pad. Spinal cord: Motor function. Vital. Armored.

He watched the rising and falling as Mother breathed, could imagine how the heart was beating under the breastbone, where the lungs lay under the ribs.

The same with her stomach. And then the legs, comparing the image on the screen with Mother’s long legs, particularly the joints of the knees. How the muscles attached to the bone, the tendons, nerves, and blood vessels, all so close to the surface.

Breez shifted, reached for Felix’s hand. The one that didn’t hold the pad. At her grip, he felt that slick feeling as if his palms were damp and sweaty.

We know now.

Breez let loose of his hand, walked carefully over to the bed Mother had made up for her. She lay down, closed her eyes, and was immediately asleep.

Felix, his body still on automatic, walked over to his bed, shut down the pad, and laid himself on the mattress.

“Go to sleep now, Felix. Forget everything that happened.”

And he did.

51

No way could Kalico get the Number Three out of her mind. Her wild imagination kept playing with her, kept intruding into her thoughts. Out of nowhere fragments of images would flit into her head: visions of Alia and Stana sitting hunched, waist-deep in cold water. Shivering. The blackness beyond pitch, so thick and impenetrable that it felt like a viscous substance. The only sound outside of their chattering teeth and gasping for fading breath was the echoing drip of water from above.

Didn’t matter that Kalico knew they had to be dead, that not even tough old Stana Viola could have lasted this long immersed in cold water.

Her imagination wouldn’t allow her to admit reality. It kept insisting on seeing them alive. Communicating their fear, the evaporating hope, and the sick realization that they were going to die without a single attempt to save them.

“That’s the worst fucking part,” Kalico muttered as she skimmed her aircar through Capella’s first morning light and across the treetops on the descent from the Corporate Mine compound down to the Number Three portal. The need to go down to the Number Three had been like an itch; it had filled her dreams, left her too restless to sleep. So, first thing, after breakfast and her morning briefing on the Numbers One and Two, she’d walked out, climbed into her aircar, and spooled it up.