Page 50 of Monster Queen Rising

We reach the staging house after dark, fourteen miles north of the lab, and sleep four hours on the floor.

I wake at six. One room, a kitchen, a porch, pine boards, a wood stove going low. No beds — the pack's on bedrolls across the floor, except the ones already up. Thaw's at the table with the floor plan. Harek has the medical kit open on the counter. Crull stands at the door, watching the dirt road that switchbacks twice before it reaches anything.

Fen's beside me on the bedroll, his arm under my head, his other across my stomach. He's been awake longer than I have. Neither of us moves.

Eighteen hours to midnight.

I lie against him and breathe and don't sleep.

At noon Thaw walks me through it one more time, and I read it back without the page.

"East entry. Crull at my shoulder. Cross the corridor, two flights up, analysis room is the second door on the left. The voice on Linden when I find her. The drives. Out the way we came."

"And if Linden's not in the analysis room."

"I find her. If she's dosed, I wake her. If I can't, I bring her out."

"Yes." He folds the plan. "You've done it in your head twenty times. You do it in your body once."

He puts his hand over mine on the table and holds it a moment. "East wing with Harek and the twins. Four minutes out. You call, I'm there."

I close my hand around his. He goes back to the plan.

The table goes quiet. Nothing left to say that we haven't.

The afternoon goes slow and nobody hurries it. Crull cleans his hands. Harek seats the compounds in their loops, one at a time. The twins run comm checks, low and clipped. Nobody reaches for anyone. It's the last quiet, and everybody spends it their own way.

Evening. The stove going, the light low.

Fen's at the counter with the valve schematic in his hand. He's had it memorized for two days. He's just looking at it. The shift sits at half where he's held it since morning — dark lines at his throat, shimmer at his wrists, canines partial.

He folds it and puts it in his jacket.

"I'm going up to the ridge," he says, to the room.

Thaw looks up. "Yes."

"Now. Down to the roof at twenty-three forty-five. Valve at twenty-three fifty-nine." His eyes come to me. "Outside."

I'm already moving.

He stops on the porch step and turns and puts his hands on the sides of my face and kisses me. Slow, the shift quiet under it, his palm coming to rest flat on my sternum where the mark burns.

He pulls back.

"The truck. Twelve-thirty."

"I'll be there."

He kisses me once more, brief, and goes. I watch him cross the open ground and reach the trees on the south side, and they close over him. He's the first of us out, and the only one going up alone. The mark on my sternum stays hot the whole way down the slope until the distance levels it to a steady burn.

I stand on the porch until I can't see where he went.

The pack splits at twenty-three thirty.

Thaw takes the east team — Harek and the twins, in at the east entry by twenty-three fifty-five. Crull and I take the southern approach, Crull at the wheel, out at twenty-three forty.

Crull drives in silence. I sit beside him with my palm over the Fen-mark. Hot. He's on the ridge, coming down.