Chapter 103| Another Six Hours

Chapter 103: Chapter 103| Another Six Hours

"You’re taller than I thought," Aldous said finally.

Devian looked at him. "You’re shorter," he said.

Something moved in Aldous’s expression — not quite a smile, the specific movement of someone who had been exchanging dry observations through HVAC panels for six years and was now experiencing the upgrade to in-person delivery.

"Sit down," Aldous said. To all of them. To the workshop in general. "All of you. I’ll put the kettle on."

The workshop accommodated six people the way workshops accommodated things they hadn’t been designed for — with functional indifference, the workbenches and shelving and stacked equipment units providing enough surface area that everyone found somewhere to be without requiring organization. Kira took the position nearest the door. Sable took the workbench with the best flat surface and had her tablet open before she’d fully sat down. Elena and Mara settled into the space between two shelving units with the natural adjacency they’d developed in the back seat. Damian sat on a crate near Devian.

Aldous made tea with the efficiency of someone who had been making tea in this workshop for eleven years and had reduced the process to its absolute minimum viable components.

He handed cups around without asking who wanted one.

Devian took his and looked at it and looked at Aldous.

"They know I’m gone," Devian said.

"I figured," Aldous said. He sat on his own stool at the workbench and wrapped both hands around his cup. "The facility called this afternoon. Cancelled next week’s maintenance visit. No explanation." He looked at Devian. "They only do that when something’s happened that they don’t want outside contractors on site for."

"The sweep found my room at 2:45 PM," Devian said.

Aldous nodded. "They’ll run the contractor manifest within forty eight hours. Cross-reference everyone who’s had access to the facility in the past six months." He looked at his cup. "My name will be on that list."

"Yes," Devian said. "I’m sorry."

Aldous looked at him with the expression of someone who had made a pragmatic decision about his own conscience around year four of his contract and had been living with it for seven years since.

"Don’t be," he said. "I knew this was the direction it was going when I started passing you books." He drank his tea. "I’ve got a cousin in the north. Been telling me to come up for years." He looked at Devian. "I’ll leave tonight."

Devian looked at him for a moment with the dark brown eyes that were Damian’s eyes in his face.

"Thank you," he said. "For the books."

Aldous looked at him for a long moment. At the facility uniform. At the workshop around them — the HVAC units, the tools, the specific ordinary reality of a space that had been the other end of a six year correspondence conducted through access panels.

"There’s a box under the workbench," Aldous said. "Left side. I’ve been holding it for about eight months. Wasn’t sure when you’d need it."

Devian looked at the workbench. At the left side. He crouched and pulled out a cardboard box — sealed, his designation written on the top in Aldous’s handwriting. SB-002. He looked at it for a moment. Then he opened it.

Clothes. Civilian clothes — dark trousers, two plain shirts, a jacket. A pair of boots in approximately the right size. A notebook. A pen. A small amount of cash in an envelope.

He looked at Aldous.

"You planned for this," he said.

"I planned for a lot of things," Aldous said. "Eight months ago something changed in the notes you were passing through. The frequency increased. The content shifted." He looked at his tea. "You started asking about exit routes."

Devian was quiet for a moment.

"You noticed," he said.

"I notice things," Aldous said. "It’s why I’m good at my job."

Devian changed in the workshop bathroom while Aldous briefed the group on the facility’s contractor manifest process — what it contained, how quickly it moved, what the cross-reference against Nexarion’s known associate database would produce and when.

Kira listened and asked two questions and filed the answers in the place she filed operational variables.

Sable documented everything.

Mara and Elena listened with the focused attention of two people who understood Nexarion’s administrative architecture from the inside and were cross-referencing Aldous’s briefing against what they knew without saying so.

Damian drank his tea and looked at the workshop door.

Devian came out of the bathroom in the civilian clothes Aldous had prepared. Dark trousers. Plain grey shirt. The jacket slightly large in the shoulders but functional. He looked at himself in the small mirror above the bathroom sink for a moment before he came out — the specific look of someone seeing themselves in civilian clothes for the first time.

He came out and looked at the group.

Nobody said anything immediately.

Then Mara looked at him with the expression she’d been wearing since the research wing corridor — the one that had recognition in it that she hadn’t explained yet.

"Devian," she said. Quietly. Like she was confirming something.

He looked at her.

"That’s what you call yourself," she said. "In the notes. You signed them Dev for the first three years. Then Devian."

"I needed a name," he said. "Nobody gave me one."

The workshop was quiet for a moment.

Damian looked at his twin — at Devian standing in civilian clothes in a contractor’s workshop on the edge of a city he’d never been in before today with the outside world arriving around him in increments and absorbing each increment with the focused methodical attention he brought to everything.

"Devian," Damian said.

His twin looked at him.

"Good name," Damian said.

Devian looked at him for a moment with the dark brown eyes and the dry expression.

"I know," he said.

Aldous left at 6:00 PM.

He packed a single bag with the efficiency of someone who had been half-ready to leave for eight months and shook Devian’s hand at the workshop door with the specific grip of someone who had more to say and had decided the grip covered it.

Then he got in his van and drove north and the workshop received the six people left in it in its specific functional quiet.

Kira looked at the group.

"We need a location," she said. "The workshop buys us tonight. Tomorrow the contractor manifest runs and this address is on it."

"Eren’s cottage," Sable said. Without looking up from her tablet.

Everyone looked at her.

"It’s six hours," she said. "It’s off every grid Nexarion has mapped. And it’s the one location in this operational picture that has someone in it who has been preparing for exactly this situation for thirty years." She looked up. "Eren hasn’t met Devian yet. He’s been building toward this moment since before either of them existed."

The workshop was quiet.

Devian looked at Sable. "Who is Eren," he said.

"The man who built the system that found your brother," she said. "And who has been waiting thirty years to meet you."

Devian absorbed this with the methodical thoroughness he applied to everything.

"Another one," he said.

"Another one," Damian confirmed.

Devian looked at the workshop ceiling. At the corrugated roof. At the HVAC units stacked along the fence line visible through the window — the specific equipment that had been the medium of the only outside relationship he’d had for six years.

"Alright," he said. "Six hours."

[Flux: 51%]

Damian looked at the Flux reading and looked at the group and thought about six hours and an old man in a cottage who had been building toward this moment since before either of his sons existed and who was about to meet the one he’d never planned for because nobody had known there were two.

He stood up.

"Let’s go," he said.