Quiet suited me just fine. I nodded, so he’d be done and leave me alone. If acting like you’re in control is the same as being in control, even while your mind is slipping sideways, I was there. Probably I was in shock, seeing how my responses were so tamped down. I’d seen it enough in newbies rescued into the den to recognize the symptoms.

Julian rechecked the security of the door bars, then slouched over to the window, sliding the curtain open a crack to let in a slice of dusk. Not much, but the room expanded in my mind and I breathed a bit easier. Daniel rose to grab one of the silvery water bottles. He set it in my lap. When I just sat there, he uncapped it and wrapped my fingers around it.

“Drink.”

This seemed a reasonable, non-threatening idea, so I took a long, long swallow. The water was cold and sweet. Spring water, from somewhere I’d never be allowed to go.

Boots pounded around on the other side of the cinderblock. One vehicle took off uptown at a roar. Others charged up and down the ramps.

Julian fretted. “Better friggin’ keep away from my wheels.”

Daniel went to the door, laid an ear against it. After a while, he straightened. “He’s walking.”

“You sure?” Julian was disappointed.

“They just told him to look sharper next time. And no talk about a door.” Daniel resettled himself at the far end of the couch. “Guess I didn’t hit him so hard after all.” He let his head loll against the back. When I glanced at him sidelong, he was asleep.

After an endless time, engines revved, drove off. The boots seemed to gather in a pack and clomp off down the street. Voices faded, along with the light from our small window, its curtain half-drawn, until we were sitting, still and silent, in the almost dark.

I put the time to use: shove the emotional baggage aside, like the image of Daniel braining some poor dude with a cinderblock. Start cataloguing the new input. I probed for the memory that went back farthest, then worked forward to Abel. There were huge gaps, but Rubio had guessed right: boats and the water were a big part of it. The rising oceans. Marina life, a blur of sailboats, the striped swell of a spinnaker. And yes, I’d lost my mother to Abel’s Wave, but not the way it went in my storm vision, where I took full blame. I’d been securing stuff below when Haiku’s boom snapped its tie and swept her into the tempest. Never saw her go. But survivor guilt works overtime, conjuring horrors. I’d have a lot to share with the shrink when I got back to the den.