Page 38 of Monster Queen Rising

I nod and I stay at the wall. I let the rest of it happen without me in it.

Vance is talking. I hear her voice the way I hear water in a pipe — there, steady, not for me. Thaw asks. She answers. Dean's pen moves on the map. Words come past me. Site Allison. A road off a highway. Outbuildings, a number of them. Forty-one of something. A residence, a lab, a basement. Harek asks her a question and she answers that too. None of it is mine. I let it go by.

Then something I can do. A tank.

My head comes up off the wall.

"—reservoir on the second story of the original building," Vance is saying. "External. West-facing. Master tank for compound twelve. Open it into the ventilation intake and the whole force goes down. Minutes. They come back up slowly."

Tank. Second story. West. Open it.

That is what I need.

"Floor plan," Thaw says.

"I can draw it."

Dean slides the printout across. Vance takes the pen in her cuffed hands and draws. Harek leans in over her shoulder, watching her hand, asking her to mark the cameras, the patrollines, where the intake sits. Crull stays in the doorway with his eyes on her the whole time. She does not look up at any of them.

She hands it back. Dean takes it.

Thaw studies the drawing a long moment.

"You've given us Allison. The road, the buildings, the tank." He doesn't look up from the page. "You haven't given us where Linden is."

Vance's jaw tightens.

"Because I don't know."

"You've met Linden."

"At Allison." She shakes her head. "More than once. But I don't know if Linden's still there."

Thaw studies her.

"If you had to bet?"

"I'd start with Allison."

"Crull. Take her back."

Crull crosses. Hand on Vance's shoulder. She stands, doesn't look at me, and they go. The basement door closes.

"Allison," Thaw says.

Harek says it back. Thinking.

Madison moves.

She comes to the table. Looks at the map of Allison.

"I want it all gone. The research, the files, the history. Gone.”

"And Linden. I want him dead. I don't need him alive to do this again. I need him to know I helped. Tell him."

"We will."

She nods. Goes back to the counter. Hand on her stomach. She's done her crying.