Chapter 387: Another Day Without a Plan.

I turned the tap and the water came down on me from above.

Cold. It hit the top of my head and ran in sheets over my face, my shoulders, the closed wound at my throat, the smooth places on my back where her nails had been. I stood under it with my eyes shut and let it take the night off me — blood, the residual of her, the thin mineral film of the cell.

Why does he want it stopped?

I didn’t have an answer. I had the shape of one, and I didn’t like the shape.

If they lied to me, then whatever it was for is evil.

Or Monica’s in my head. That’s her whole ability.

[ The last part isn’t something I’d overlook if I were you. ]

"Shut up."

[ Okay. ]

The water ran down me, cold enough to keep me awake inside my own skin. It pooled at my feet and found the drain in a thin continuous sound. Steam didn’t rise; the water was too cold for it. My breath showed once in the air and vanished.

Monica hadn’t denied it. That was what I kept coming back to under the tap. Every word out of her had been built to take my legs out from under me, and when I said the awakening would kill innocent people, she didn’t argue. She agreed. She called it a small price. A small price, with the dress smoothed down and the centuries back in her posture and my father’s name still sitting in the corridor behind me.

I turned the water off.

The last of it ran from my hair onto my shoulders and stopped. The bathroom held the drip of the shower head and the quiet of hanging clothes at the far end of the rod.

"You know what I’m going to do?"

[ You told me to stay quiet. ]

"Don’t be petty."

[ Fine. Tell me. ]

"I’m going to find the Veyron girl." Water ran off my chin onto the tiles in a single dark coin. "Pull everything you’ve got on her. Every trace. And I’m going to stop the awakening."

[ Good to have you back. I thought Monica had you. ]

"I’m not doing it for you." I pushed my hair back off my forehead. Cold strands. Skin underneath still stinging from the water. "I’m not doing it for him either. I don’t care anymore who’s right and who’s lying. I’m doing it for the people I love. That’s the only reason I trust."

[ For clarity. ]

[ Nothing we have worked toward has ever been anything but stopping the deaths of innocent people. ]

"I’ll find that out for myself."

I crossed to the rod.

Boxers first — still damp through, cold where they touched, clinging at the hips — then my trousers, the same, the fabric dragging against wet skin at the knees. It wasn’t going to be the worst thing that happened to me this morning. The tee had dried properly. I pulled it over my head and it was the first thing all day that felt like mine — dry cotton, the familiar weight of it settling on my shoulders.

I took Melissa’s dress off the rod, and her underwear with it. The black fabric hung over my arm, still holding a faint shape of how it had dried. I walked out with them.

The decision had been made somewhere under that water, without me noticing the moment it happened.

I was still going to find the Veyron girl. I was still going to do what needed doing, because the awakening was still coming for people I knew inside these walls, and nothing Monica said changed what it would do to them.

But I wasn’t going to do it blind anymore. Not the way I’d done everything since the life layer — walking wherever I was pointed and trusting whatever showed up in brackets in front of my eyes.

I need another word with Monica.

Sophia and Melissa are marks. They’ll do anything I tell them. They won’t tell me anything I need.

The corridor was quiet.

Hard white light. Painted stone. The bar of real sunlight from the ceiling hole lying across the floor in one long gold line, cutting the artificial white in half.

Sophia was snoring now — soft and even behind her door, finally getting the rest she’d fought for all night. Melissa was awake. I could hear her moving in my room: the mattress shifting, bare feet on stone, the small sounds of a woman finding herself alone in a bed that had held two.

Monica’s door was still standing open.

I walked toward my room with the dress over my arm.

Ingrid had been clear. Max was executing us this evening. And I’d be out of this cell before evening came. I was sure of that the way I’m sure of very little.

I reached my door.

Something hit the steel at the end of the corridor.

A heavy, deliberate sound — palm or shoulder, not a knock. I stopped and looked.

The cell was opening, and it was still morning.

The door swung all the way back on its hinges. Corridor light and the harder light from beyond mixed in the frame. Max Donman stood in it — blonde hair, the same composed face that had watched a man come apart on a roof, the radio unit nowhere in sight and not needed for this.

Beside him, a girl with blonde hair and a face I knew without ever having seen it. Becky’s features, close enough to put something cold down my back — the same set of the mouth, the same eyes, but younger.

And in front of them, hands tied behind her, Ingrid.

Three infected stood behind the group. One of them had to duck to fit under the frame, the top of its head brushing the lintel as it came to a stop.

Max put his hand flat between Ingrid’s shoulder blades and shoved.

She went forward into the cell without the use of her arms. Couldn’t catch herself. Hit the floor hard — knees, then shoulder, then the side of her face against the stone — and the sound of it carried the full length of the corridor to where I stood.

Another prisoner. Five of us now.

I stood with Melissa’s dress over my arm and didn’t move.

That was my way out lying on the stone. The only person above ground who’d been willing to open that door for me. The only card I had left for getting to Sherry before Vince did. Blood at the corner of her mouth where the floor had caught her. Hands still bound. The cold from the open seal already moving down the corridor in a thin draft.

Ingrid lifted her head off the floor and found me.

Her eyes said it plainly.

Today was going to be another day without a plan.