“Go ahead and wonder all you want, Brandt. But get out while you’re doing it.”

Brandt shook his head. “I’ve got a job to do.”

Doc walked toward Brandt, stopping when he was between Brandt and me. He folded his arms across his chest.

“You’re not going to touch her.”

The throbbing helicopter blades sounded in the distance. We were all very still, not breathing, until they faded.

Brandt shook his head when it was quiet again. He didn’t speak; he just went to the desk and picked up Doc’s chair. He carried it to the wall by the file cabinet, slammed it to the ground, and then sat down hard, making the metal legs squeal against the stone. He leaned forward, his hands on his knees, and stared at me. A vulture waiting for a dying hare to stop moving.

Doc’s jaw tightened, making a little popping noise.

“Gladys,” Walter muttered, surfacing from his dazed sleep. “You’re here.”

Too nervous to speak with Brandt watching, I just patted his hand. His clouded eyes searched my face, seeing features that weren’t there.

“It hurts, Gladdie. It hurts a lot.”

“I know,” I whispered. “Doc?”

He was already there, the brandy in hand. “Open up, Walter.”

The sound of the helicopter thumped quietly, far away but still much too close. Doc flinched, and a few drops of brandy splattered on my arm.

It was a horrible day. The worst of my life on this planet, even including my first day in the caves and the last hot, dry day in the desert, hours from death.

The helicopter circled and circled. Sometimes more than an hour would pass, and I would think it was finally over. Then the sound would come back, and I would see the Seeker’s obstinate face in my head, her protruding eyes scouring the blank desert for some sign of humans. I tried to will her away, concentrating hard on my memories of the desert’s featureless, colorless plain, as if I could somehow make sure she saw nothing else, as if I could bore her into leaving.

Brandt never took his suspicious stare off of me. I could always feel it, though I rarely looked at him. It got a little better when Ian came back with both breakfast and lunch. He was all dirty from packing in case of an evacuation—whatever that meant. Did they have anywhere to go? Ian scowled so hard he looked like Kyle when Brandt explained in clipped phrases why he was there. Then Ian dragged another empty cot beside mine, so that he could sit in Brandt’s line of sight and block his view.

The helicopter, Brandt’s distrustful watch, these were not really so bad. On an ordinary day—if there was really such a thing anymore—either one of these might have seemed agonizing. Today, they were nothing.