Spring had yet to find its way to the northern shoulders of the Sierra Nevada. The snow still lay thick at Allied Station Omega-CN, elevation 6,000 feet, when the Manifest Destiny descended through the clouds and perched low over the lonely mountainside complex.

Pacific Alliance Weather Bureau Corporal Isabella Marquez was the only on-call Operations Officer that night, with all systems running well. But she abandoned her half-mixed hot chocolate when the muffled alarm sounded. She threw on her snow boots and parka.

By the time she opened the prefab barracks and began her trudge through the darkness toward the sensor station, it was already too late.

She recognized the alarm in the open air. It was no technology failure, no meteorological anomaly. It wasn’t the fire alarm.

It was a proximity warning.

Then she noticed the reflection in the crusted snow. It wasn’t starlight. These lights glowed yellow and red. They were imminent and shone down in orderly rows.

Corporal Marquez looked up and saw no clouds and no true stars. The whole sky was suddenly metal, all lit by those orderly rows.

She wavered. Run to the sensor station to deactivate their readings, delete them, save their studies by destroying them? Or return to the barracks, rally her crewmembers, transmit the emergency, inform command?

She’d run out of time either way.

Smaller lights emerged from the sky-swallowing expanse above her. Two landing ships fell toward her and the station. They were repulsor dropships, escorted by the curves of Saw-wing, distantly shrieking. Suspended between them floated an object, a cylinder that glowed a nauseating green. And as they fell, a voice projected down from the metal sky.

“This is Liberty Corps Captain Christian Davard of the LCS Manifest Destiny. You build on federal territory owned by the IHSA. We are their successors. What was theirs is ours. Surrender now or be destroyed.”

* * *

Orson held the typewriter in his lap, a pen and pad of notepaper propped beside it. Lifting the typewriter reminded his shoulders of the hours he’d spent fighting. The typewriter’s weight across his legs reminded his tender skin of the grip from his trapped boot and the force that might’ve torn him apart.

Every motion reminded him of sleep, exhaustion like Enoa described in Thought Fatigue. Orson had spent a full day awake, too afraid to fall into deep sleep the night before, and then too busy planning and fighting and surviving to rest.

And rest would wait. He sat in his bed, but with his back pressed to the wall and the typewriter on his sore legs, his pains enough to keep him from relief and relaxed sleep.

Orson touched pen to paper and wrote in the clipped style needed for the typewriter.

‘How are you? I am sorry I did not write back before. We had some more passengers than I expected. Thank you for inviting me.’

He crossed out the last sentence and wrote again.

‘Thanks for inviting us. I would love to see—’

He left the final half-sentence unfinished, and struck it out with another long ink line.

‘I would really like to catch up. But I put you in enough danger before we got in touch. Until this thing resolves we cannot drag you into it now.

‘I hope I am not writing too late. Some stuff we need to talk about. Stuff you need to know. And I am not sure what you know already. The Liberty Corps suspects you have a key. They have a whole file about you. I will get it to you. But cannot make you a bigger target than you are already.

‘Let me know how to get that to you without too much attention. And thanks again. Seriously. After all this time you did not need to open your door to me and my people you never met.’

Orson stopped. How could he capture his gratitude without seeing her, without hearing her voice? How could he know whether he’d said too much or too little? How could he talk to her for the first time in a half-decade through the forced stilted sentences of the typewriter?

He didn’t get the chance to try. The typewriter’s keys began to move – striking one line across the blank page.

‘Trying to call you. Are you awake? If so go out in the barn. Answer the phone.’

Orson crept into the darkened passage. Everything was still and quiet. There was no light from the other bunks or from the Aesir’s dashboard.

He couldn’t hear the phone ringing until he opened the Aesir’s door. Then he stepped out into the barn. He shut the door behind him and moved toward the sound through the darkness. Enough moonlight bled through the windows to show him the old rotary phone waiting on a workbench at the far wall.

“Hello?” Orson raised the handset.

“You are awake!” And it was Sirona’s voice, and somehow those three words swept years from him. Nothing separated him from their time together, when he heard this voice first and last each day. It all felt recent, like the journeys and toils he’d faced were compressed, just a difficult chapter, a deviation from his real life.

“Or did I wake you?” she asked.

“I was awake,” he said. “I was, uh, just writing to you when I got your message.” He tried to lean against the darkened wall and bumped into a long thin tool that hung there. He was still fumbling with it blind when she spoke again.

“Sure you were,” she laughed, and her laugh was inclusive, like they were both in on the joke. “I don’t know who you were writing to, but I didn’t get anything.”

“I didn’t actually get to typing it yet.” He was glad for the dark, glad no one saw the uncontrolled grin he couldn’t keep from his face. “I had to plan what I was going to say. I was still writing it out. How are you? I assumed you’d be asleep by now, with you being a legitimate businesswoman and everything.”

“I normally would be,” she said. “I’m fine, but I’ve been staying up to hear from this jerk I used to know, and he had me wait up all night.”

“Guy sounds like a real tool.” Orson laughed with her. “But maybe he almost died today, and he has people to take care of now, and when he wrote to you he wanted to make sure he knew what he wanted to say.”

“It wouldn’t have been as much work if you just came right here.” The humor, the easy mischievous lilt, was gone from her voice.

“That thing, that machine that came after you was looking for me. And you didn’t want to live with that danger anymore. It wasn’t chasing after a Dreamside Road Key. I don’t want to bring that back to you.”

“They’ll come for the key eventually,” she replied. “We’re the ones with the responsibility now, Orson. We aren’t kids anymore, and everything we said… Everything I said, it doesn’t matter as much now. The situation in the world, it’s not what I expected. We have the keys. It’s not Ophion or Gertrude. It’s us, but someone has to do this. We’re back no matter what.”

“Back on the old Wayfarers Highway,” he said. “I guess it really was true after all. When you find your way to the road, you’ll always find your way back.”

“A lot of people are so, so pissed at you for using that for the title of your memoir.” There was the mischievous lilt again. “Just monumentally aggrieved. The Lerolyns are still talking about it. Every year they visit for the winter solstice and every year they complain about my Icarus and his hubris.”

“They would’ve had me smash the wings and stay in the damn labyrinth.” Orson rolled his eyes because she couldn’t see it.

“You remember a myth!” she said. “Somewhere Haydn is really excited! I know a lot of the truce community didn’t warm up to you, but you didn’t make it very easy for them either.”

“Like Embre Vass’s two kids who tried to rough up one of my passengers tonight?” Orson asked. “If she told you where we’re parked, did she tell you about that?”

“Of course.” Her voice was suddenly serious. “I spoke to her sons. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Orson said. “What did you say?”

“Darick acted like you were insulting me by bringing the former Liberty Corps boy to the lodge,” she said. “And they said some woman registered with the Aspallan reservation made a lewd comment about me. Who is she? What did she say?”

“Aw man,” Orson said. “Doryssa Melanthymos. She was a prisoner, earth elemental of some kind. When the Vass guys said I’d get in trouble with you for messing with them, Melanthymos mentioned that I know you better than they do and implied you like me more.”

“She said it just like that, huh?” Sirona asked with exaggerated skepticism.

“She noticed me seeing through glamer,” Orson explained. “And she assumed that whole sight clearing ritual… thing. She mentioned it a couple times. It wasn’t an insult to you. She was saying how lucky I was.”

“I bet you scoffed at her.” She had a note of accusation in her voice. “Because sometimes you can’t take a compliment.”

“I scoffed because it’s weird. I mean, if a magic woman actively chooses to clear some dude’s sight to illusions because she likes him for whatever reason, okay. I get that. But that’s not what this is about. They act like if he’s a big stud with her then it’s just automatic. It’s kinda freaky to everyone. It makes the mysterious magic stuff just a weird biological thing that can happen by accident.”

“Life is a weird biological thing that can happen by accident,” she said, her voice better humored. “I still think you want it to be something you figured out on your own. You don’t want it to be something that was given to you. Even if I gave it to you.”

“I’m grateful every day,” Orson said. “For us. For everything. Don’t doubt that, please. Don’t doubt that ever. It raises me up all the time, knowing we happened. You were, uh, telling me what you said to the Vass guys.” He continued without pause, back on topic, back on safer ground.

“Well,” she said. “I told Darick Vass I could protect my own honor, and if I’d pick someone else to defend me it wouldn’t be either of them. It would be you. I also called their family sword knowledge a hobby, and said they shouldn’t mess with a professional like you.”

“You went right for the throat! I should’ve fought them for real. At least any scars I gave them would be stories they can share. You’re just traumatic.”

“I don’t want them to have stories.” Her voice fell to a harsh murmur. “I want them to learn their lesson.” Then she gave another inclusive laugh.

“They seemed really loyal to you,” he said. “Are they more of your fanboys? What the hell did Eloise call them, the guys who worshipped your namesake? Trevors?”

“Treveri,” she said. “They might be. It’s all easier to ignore now that I hold the truce. I can’t believe they mentioned me to you.”

“It’s a standard thing,” Orson said. “Years later, and people still have to be surprised we dated. I was your paramour. I’m not your former partner. Even that guy Franklin works with now, what’s his name, Royce – even he had to make a big deal out of us being together.”

“Well, he’s definitely one of the Treveri,” she chuckled uncomfortably.

“To be honest, I don’t blame any of them,” he said. “If you wear that armor all the time. Where was that five years ago? Today’s real tragedy was finding out I missed Armor Sirona.” Orson didn’t have the same mastery of his voice. He couldn’t jump between levity and earnestness the way she did. But he tried to find some dramatic sadness.

“Trust me,” she said. “The novelty would’ve worn off for you. I can’t get out of that armor in less than twenty minutes.”

“Challenge accepted.”

She laughed again, but not controlled and half-playful. This was a real belly laugh, a sound he’d thought he’d never hear again.

“Don’t worry about the little truce community,” she said. “Their opinion of you and us doesn’t matter. It never really did, but now… All their opinions matter less every day. In ten years, this will just be any other inn. No more secrets. The whole world is changing. Everything’s colliding. We’re all on the Wayfarers Highway now. Ah! I want to talk about your book, but heist first. Teddy and Franklin told me about your new crew and some of what you all planned to do. But you freed people too. You freed everyone! Everyone’s talking about what you did! Did you also manage to get the location of Knightschurch?”

“If you’re about to tell me you had it all along,” Orson said. “That Ophion gave it to you or something. I don’t want to know. Okay. Just keep it to yourself.”

“No, Ophion never told me about it,” she said. “He talked about Sir Merrill a little bit, maybe couple of times. I don’t think they parted ways on the best terms. But you should always check with me before one of these missions.”

“Imagine if you’d known, and I put my crew through that hell for no reason,” Orson exhaled slowly.

“Not no reason! All those people you saved, no matter what you learned! Hundreds, Orson! The escape made the nightly news out of Olympia, and they never talk about the Liberty Corps. It’s like the world ends at the border. They had leaked video of the sky full of planes and creatures, dragons and things I didn’t recognize. And I knew it was you. All of those lives saved because you were there.”

“They all got away?” Orson’s memories were already clouding, confused by the adrenaline. “I couldn’t see too far past the Pinnacle.”

“I don’t know numbers, but there were unscheduled landings at airports all over the Northwest. Franklin said a friend of his with the Alliance saved some floating, uh, hover cars?”

“Skimmers?” Orson provided.

“Those!” she said. “We heard on the community radio that Marina was called in to interpret for a woman who only spoke Aramaic. The Hierarchia had her prisoner since the sixties, Orson. We had twenty calls for sanctuary. Twenty! We’ve never had that many.”

“Do you have that armored warning at all the phone booths?” Orson pictured her in full regalia, her hair braided, the illusion’s eyes looking past him.

“I do!” she said. “I’m sorry if she scared your friend. She’s good at recognizing the Liberty Corps armor.”

“Jaleel’s okay. He and I’d had a little disagreement earlier about luggage, but he’ll be just fine. My main, uh, takeaway from your image is that she didn’t notice me. You didn’t train her to recognize me or my awesome gear?”

“Why would I? I assumed you’d come right to me, but I forget how silly you are. Instead I got a bunch of new guests here who knew you from this afternoon, but not you.”

“Let’s talk about my silly decisions later,” Orson said. “You know for a fact that some of the prisoners got away? I didn’t like freeing them without any preparation for how they’d all get away, but I figured that was their best shot at escape. I didn’t see the Alliance going in to bust them out either. I couldn’t just leave them there at that point.”

“Did you really rescue the boy who destroyed your friend’s house?” She lowered her voice like she expected to be overheard.

“Him and his brother, yeah.” Orson leaned to the side and could see the moon cast a smear of light across the nearest darkened cabin. “It’s complicated though. The Maros who fought us before, Kol, he turned away from the Liberty Corps to save Littlefield from that Governor Sloan you probably heard about. And Kol also got attacked by this other officer, his girlfriend, and they had a big battle. So he gave up everything. But after all that, Kol and his brother Max, who’s a paraplegic Navy veteran in a wheelchair, they got captured then and tortured for weeks by the Liberty Corps. So Kol’s a mixed bag for sure. And he’s a weirder guy than I would’ve expected when he was shooting at us.”

“What a mess,” Sirona said.

“And it gets freakier. Kol and Enoa can sense each other with their Hierarchia Shaping mysticism. So Enoa and Jaleel were working unloading, to cover for our heist. But when she found out Kol was imprisoned right there, she dragged Jaleel on this rescue mission. She’s not as vindictive as we were.”

“We wouldn’t have let him stay and be tortured,” Sirona said.

“If it was Cyprus I might have,” he replied.

“Cyprus didn’t save anybody, not even himself. If he’d redeemed himself a little, you would have saved him too… You might also have threatened him. You might’ve even hit him, but you would’ve saved him. Now, go on.”

“Well, Enoa gets found out by one of Helmont’s knights, this old guy who had this grody and ambiguously sexual interest in her, but also in her Shaper powers. So my crew and Kol fight this guy, all while Dr. Stan and I were robbing them. Dr. Stan wiped out all their computer information by the way.”

“Typical Aesir crew move,” she said.

“Yeah. So my group wins, but Helmont finds out with his own Shaping sense bullshit. And he sends his troops after us, so I try a diversion which is how I found out about all the prisoners. I tried to recruit some to help, including some of those cryptid animals and such. And then as we were leaving, that creeper knight goes after Enoa again! Then he loses again. Then Helmont shows up, beats up everybody, and melts the knight.”

“He… melted him?” she asked. “What does that mean?”

“Not like us with fire melted him,” Orson clarified. He pictured the liquid remains of the knight, congealed red, darker than blood, as it pooled on the deck beneath the unloading arm.

“He liquefied him, like he dissolved him. It was the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen. And then we barely escaped. And Kol caught one of the skimmers of escaping prisoners with his shield powers – so that made the freeing him call seem like the right idea. Melanthymos and her new boyfriend, this old European wizard, they were on that one. We met up with them again later. Then we made reservations and came here. And I found out elves dig tater tots.”

“Tater tots?” She asked.

“You remember,” he said. “You sent the message from Teddy. There was this young, or relatively young woman, vaguely elvish but it’s not like I know for sure. She escaped with Melanthymos and Wizard Boyfriend. The boyfriend’s Aneirin Aspallen, by the way. The elf girl, Syly, she couldn’t get enough of those tater tots.”

“That’s a day only you could have,” Sirona said. “Teddy also wants to know if you took any notes for your ‘web serial’. He wants to make sure you’re taking notes.”

“Don’t get me started on that,” Orson said. “But this Maros saga is another reason I didn’t bring the gang to you. You don’t need me to drag that along, and I don’t need them learning more than they should.”

“It’s not ten years ago,” she said. “I advertise now. We’re on the new net. Gertrude only had so much left to put into this when she retired, and I don’t have the kind of money to run it without constant guests.”

“No one gets to stay in exchange for gifts and information?” He laughed and hoped it was as welcoming a sound as hers. He remembered the trophy cases with heirlooms from across the world, adventurers’ treasures, hidden peoples’ arts, metal works, hand crafts, freely given as both payment and contribution. The inn wore its place in the stories, the crossroads shelter, the way station.

“I am still hoping for a matching set of knight’s armor,” she said. “Nothing anyone would use. You remember the one by the dining room doors?”

“I do.”

“Having one on each side would be so cool. But people aren’t looking to hide here, not like they were. I don’t say no to someone in a bad way. I keep to the truce, even on a crazy day like today, where a lot of people need somewhere. But hiding from the Liberty Corps is not like the way we hid from the Hierarchia. We won’t hide that way again. I think you’d like it here now.”

“I know I would.” He imagined the inn on the edge of colossal old growth forest, its five stories and towers dwarfed by the trees around them. He imagined standing on the long concourse toward the building, seeing it again outside of dreams, knowing she still waited for him there.

“I will love it,” he said. “But I have to get this whole Maros thing figured out. And I think something’s coming with Helmont. We never heard of him, did we?”

“I heard of the Hierarchia’s emergency holdfast, but I didn’t know any specifics,” she said. “Is he strong? Teddy makes him sound like some kind of genius.”

“Yeah, he’s strong. He fought that Melanthymos and Wizard Boyfriend and this ESP-test-subject-guy and me – all at around the same time. I did well for a while. I got in a hit or two on his armor, but… Helmont took my boot… my repulsor. Even with Aorin’s armor on me, Helmont could hold it with his powers. Dr. Stan, do you know her?”

“Only by reputation,” Sirona said.

“Well, she and Kol had to hold onto me while I took the boot off, or Helmont would’ve had me. He would’ve taken me right out of the Aesir or ripped me to pieces trying. I’m glad that I helped everybody today. I really am, but this was the best I’ve got and the best chance we could hope for. We took them totally by surprise and everybody fought their hardest. And we still lost. I still lost. He beat me.”

“How did he get the boot?” she asked. “Isn’t the Virus’s armor supposed to stop telekinesis? Or is Aorin’s re-creation weaker?”

“I think it works just fine,” Orson said. “TK stuff never gets me through it. I think Helmont has to touch things and then it works even better than usual TK rules. But he even had to touch that Sir Rowan before the guy melted. And he’s probably touched repulsors like mine, because they were Hierarchia. And he managed to take my blaster the same way.”

“So he couldn’t melt you, right?” And there was the first hint of real fear in her voice.

“I don’t think so.” Orson tried to remember the baron’s words. What had Helmont said while he’d held him, pinned, to the deck? “I think he needs to touch things a lot to know them that well. And he’s never touched me.”

“Well, then there’s nothing else for him to mentally grab, is there? You have the sword. And you have my lantern. I saw what you did to that spaceship thing. And you have your armor. Maybe the Virus really was good for something after all.”

“Stop talking about the Virus,” Orson groaned. “Helmont mentioned him a time or two, acted really present tense about him. About the quality of Ruhland’s armor and how ridiculous it was that I think I could beat Ruhland.”

“Teddy mentioned he said that.” The fear remained in her voice. “I’m… But you thought the lantern did the job.”

“There was a lot of fire and there was a smoking corpse,” Orson said. “So yeah, I was pretty damn sure.”

“I was afraid of that,” she said. “Ophion warned me about this too. He said—”

“You’ve seen Ophion!” Orson interrupted. “Where the hell has he been all this time?” How many years had it been since Ophion sought him out? Before Thunderworks. And in all that time, how often could expert counsel have saved him, helped him help others, made the long road more bearable?

“I’m sorry,” she said. “In these last few years, he only visited here a time or two. He’s… He’s doing the full unreachable wandering wizard. You know how impossible it is to push him for information.”

“I’d push him,” Orson said. “I could accept non-answers or no answers when I was a kid. And I could accept him being retired off somewhere. He earned that, but if he’s still wandering around and choosing not to tell us anything – that’s just not okay. Whatever he knows about the Dreamside Road…. Whatever he…” Orson didn’t expect the venom in his voice, his feelings weighed down by the aimlessness of his own years of wandering, without guidance. “I’m sorry. We all just nearly died today to get information we should’ve had long ago.”

“He was always afraid of us getting into more trouble than he thought we could handle.” Sirona spoke softer now. “He didn’t say it, but I don’t think he’s happy you went to fight Calder and Ruhland at Norlenheim. You’re a real target now. He’s not happy you left, that we’re not… He said he hoped you’d use what he taught you to live, not just to fight. And he said it seems unlikely we got off so easy with someone as prepared as the Virus always was. It’s doubtful he’s gone.”

“Everybody lets their guard down eventually.” But Orson heard Helmont’s derision. Defeat Ruhland? You believe that?

“Have we ever been that lucky?” Sirona asked. “Even one time?”

“Don’t make me think about the Virus being alive,” Orson groaned again. “Please. This was a long-ass day. Let me just figure out Helmont. One major super-villain at a time, Babe.” Orson said the old endearment before he thought to stop himself.

“Okay.” Sirona practically giggled. “One at a time then. What does Helmont do? Or does he mainly melt people?”

“He does a lot of stuff. He’s really not easy to reach. He can fly. And he has his own sword of fire. It’s covenant legitimate too. And there’s his telekinesis. Now that I think about it, the flying might be him using telekinesis on himself.”

“We can figure this out,” she said. “Deal with whatever is up with your crew and come here. We’ll puzzle out how you can fight him. How many fights did we plan out for you beforehand? Is this baron a good duelist?”

“He knows the, uh, twelfth covenant form, the griffin’s way. Seems pretty acrobatic.”

“That’s okay. You’ll want to study that form. Acrobatic, hmm? Your style already has a strong defense. With that and your armor, make sure he comes to you. If you give him reason to fly at you, you get him while he’s close and don’t give him any chance to fly away. We can work with that. I still have copies of the twelve scrolls in the private library. We’ll take a look at those. We can go through—”

“I still don’t know if this is a good idea,” Orson interrupted again. “Helmont had studies about you. He had pictures of you at work and just living your life. Not just at your inn, out in the city too, like you were being followed. And he had pictures of… pictures of things that the Hierarchia did to fire elementals. He’s been preparing to fight you for your key.”

“I’m sure he has.” Her voice mellowed, but only just. “They all had that information, Orson. All of the Hierarchia. That’s what happened to anyone who had something they wanted. They were chopped apart until the Hierarchia learned what interested them or until it got too expensive. Didn’t you know that?”

Then her voice really did change. There was a sudden edge, a new energy, anger or long-buried stress.

“That’s what they’ve always been. Everything’s dissected until understood. What does it matter if the enigma is people-shaped? She can shoot fire from her hands and she doesn’t burn…” She took a deep breath.

“I didn’t know how widespread it was…” Orson spoke with slow caution. “I didn’t know this was something that would be passed on like that.”

“It’s like an anatomy study. It’s like all the awful shit people got up to that eventually made medicine that helped other people. But now it’s just weapons. And just because they cut up people like me doesn’t mean they know me. If they cut into an Olympic athlete, like a tennis pro or someone, are they ready to go up against them on the court? I don’t think so. You can cut into innocent people like they’re some fae other thing, but they haven’t seen how other I can be.”

She took a second deep breath, and when she spoke again the easy, contented humor returned to her words, whatever horror or pain buried once again.

“I might need better security if the Liberty Corps is taking paparazzi pictures of me. Maybe some of them can be used for the website? Anyway, I was going to recruit you to do some work on the gutters in exchange for me helping you and letting you stay here. But I honestly won’t miss you flying around like Tinkerbell with your one leg pulled up like you do.”

“Tinkerbell!”

“Tinkerbell, yeah,” she said. “Like from Peter Pan. Not that I like the whole tiny fairies idea, but I like the look of that one boot even less.”

“That boot let me fight crazy powerful people! There was this guy, Tucker—”

“I didn’t say you didn’t use it well, but you didn’t look your coolest. I’m not a big flying boot fan at all, but why did you go five years with just one? You couldn’t get another one in that long? I mean, why didn’t you?”

“I had all I needed,” Orson raised his voice in false outrage. “It was my distinct look.”

“Distinctly goofy, maybe. But it’s true, without the Tinkerbell boot it will be harder for you to pay off your debt to me. But I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

“Man, a few years running your little fantasy inn and you’re trying to trap me in some weird bargain.” He knew the way she’d look at him, if she were there, if they weren’t hundreds of miles apart by his own choice.

“Trap you? You always liked our arrangement before.”

The Aesir’s side door cycled open before he could answer.

“Orson,” Enoa spoke at a low whisper. “Is that you?”

“Just a minute,” Orson said into the phone. “Crew thing.”

“Okay,” Sirona said.

Orson lowered the phone. “What’s up?”

“I thought you’d be out here training and not… in the dark. I heard you leave and… I hoped that if you were awake, then maybe you’d help me see the floppies. I want to read about my aunt.”

“I thought we were gonna wait for Dr. Stan.” But Orson could hear the tremor in Enoa’s voice, like she struggled to steady her words. “Are you alright? I was just getting some news, but we can sit down in a minute if you need to talk.”

“I want to read about my Aunt Su,” she said, her voice no stronger. “I’ve waited so long… I can’t sleep and more waiting for this letter’s driving me crazy, Orson. I just want a warning, maybe. Are you… Are you talking to someone?”

“Yeah, I’m on the phone. There’s a landline, but we can talk in a minute.” He raised the phone again but Sirona spoke before he could.

“Go,” Sirona said. “Take care of your people. How about I give you a day to figure this out. We’ll plan again. Call tomorrow, same time?”

“Sounds good,” he answered. “Wait here a second so I can say good-bye. Enoa, if you want to get the floppies back out of the case, I’ll be right inside. We’ll see what we can read about your aunt.”