Ronan let out a noisy breath as he drummed his fingers against the window. He had been getting more and more restless these past few days. Knees jiggling. Fingers drumming. Pacing. Jumping on top of shit. Jumping off of shit. He dreamt when they needed to dream. Otherwise he didn’t sleep at all. Hennessy thought this game of dominos was changing him. Or perhaps revealing him.

“It’s fucking weird,” he said.

It was hard to feel the true strength of the ley line here, because there were so many things Hennessy now knew obscured it. Low unshielded telephone lines, standing oily water puddled in pitted asphalt, houses crowded on top of each other with wires trailing from them like guts. Satellite dishes sprouted like dark mushrooms from some of the roofs. There was something else, though, that made it truly ugly, and Hennessy couldn’t quite figure out what it was. Maybe it was just her mood.

“Hennessy,” Bryde said sharply, turning from the passenger seat to look at her in the back. “What do you feel?”

“What Ronan Lynch said,” Hennessy replied. “Something’s janky.”

Bryde said, “This will be a difficult one. Three large buildings will need to be leveled. I don’t know how well we will be able to dream when we are at the site, so we may need to use things we already have. We will need to stay focused. I may need you to do this one on your own. I don’t know yet.”

Ronan caught Hennessy’s eye in the rearview mirror; his thick eyebrows went up. This was unusual. She shrugged.

“In fact,” Bryde said, “I need one of you to drive us there, just in case.”

Need. Need one of you to drive. Bryde didn’t need them for anything. They needed him.

But this evening, Bryde pulled Burrito into an uneven parking lot in front of a closed lumber yard. As Ronan and Hennessy briefly scuffled over who would drive in his place—Hennessy won (Ronan was distracted keeping Chainsaw inside the car)—Bryde climbed into the backseat.

After the door shut behind him, Ronan hissed, “What’s going on here?”

“Do I look like his minder?” Hennessy replied. “You ask him.”

They got back in. They did not ask him. No one said anything as they drove through the ugly town and through a few minutes of patchily occupied countryside. The rutted road suddenly ended at a dark, freshly paved entrance to a corporate facility of some kind. A very clean white sign read, simply, DIGITAL SOLUTIONS.

Hennessy glanced into the rearview mirror at Bryde. In the green-yellow light she saw only that he was sitting perfectly still as he looked out the window, his eyes squinted as if against sun.