One tap equivalent to one blink?

Crystal wrapped up her conversation, with Golem, Cuff, and Vista in the general orbit of that meeting of paramedics and police. The policewoman in charge was still organizing the grid-like search of the field and the area around the tree.

“Hey cuz,” Crystal said, sounding very tired. Not just fatigue—she was heartsick. “We should look at getting you home.”

“I’m going to stay with Nailfarer,” I said. “I think we worked out our communication system pretty well.”

One sharp tap on the metal pan. Cuff jumped.

“Yeah. Pretty well,” I said, my heart breaking a little.

“This isn’t good for you,” Crystal said.

“Doesn’t matter. They need someone to be their advocate. Slingstone and Scaffold can’t talk?”

“Not much,” Vista said. “Scaffold’s head is a mess, but he’s still alive somehow. Slingstone broke down. They tried to put him under and it seems to have worked.”

“Then I’m going to stay with these guys, see them to the hospital. I’ll make sure they don’t need anything.”

“I can do that,” Crystal said. “I know how your communication system works. I did it with— I’ve done it before.”

I saw her glance at Vista. Vista had some idea. Golem and Cuff—not so much.

“You did it with me. Yeah, I know.”

“Trust me? Let me help.”

“You’re freezing, you just came back from a classified misson, and my dad is expecting you at your apartment.”

“I’ll warm up at the hospital, your dad is in the top one percent when it comes to understanding ‘we had a hero thing’ as an excuse, and I might have just come back from a warzone—”

Golem cleared his throat.

“You didn’t hear that.”

I shook my head.

“…But a classified mission is one thing. You just picked fights with Teacher, Goddess, and Lung.”

“Holy shit. Lung?” Vista asked.

“Wow,” Golem said.

“And Goddess!” Crystal said, wheeling on them. “And a guy who was in the Birdcage for very good reasons, who is now at the top of his game! Major people.”

“Lung is major,” Golem said, defensive.

“Lung was major in our city! These people are major on multiple inhabited worlds!”

“I didn’t fight Goddess or Teacher directly,” I said.

Crystal reached out and gripped me by the front of my coat, only a few inches away from having her hands around my neck.

“If you forced me to go home, I wouldn’t sleep a wink anyway,” I said, raising my eyes from her hands to make eye contact. My voice had that harrowed quality to it again. Robotic, more emotionally dead and hollow than emotional. “I need to make sure they’re okay. Go home. See Dad, sleep. Relieve me in the morning, swing by and take over.”

“Then you sleep,” she said.

“Yes. Then I get my team together, and we work on figuring this out.”