Page 45 of Fifth
The man’s mouth twitched, not quite a smile. He nodded to Locus as if acknowledging an equal. “Thank you.”
Her mother pulled away enough to study Hannah’s face like she could memorize it again. “You’re not hurt?”
“I’m okay,” Hannah said. “I’m being cared for. Ipromise. We should sit.”
They didn’t sit. They hovered around the small coffee table as if the furniture might bite. Locus scanned once and surveyed the room. Window with sheer curtains, thin enough to see motion outside. Side yard visible through a narrow slice of glass. He saw a shadow move across the patch of winter grass and knew at once that they weren’t alone.
He didn’t turn toward the window. He didn’t distract Hannah with his gaze. He let his eyes pass softly across the hallway and into the kitchen doorway. The air there carried a smell that didn’t match the lemon-clean. Cigarette smoke, stale. Oil on metal.Men.
“Where are the others?” Hannah asked, her voice too bright, as if covering nerves. Her eyes flicked toward the kitchen the same way his had, catching the faint wrongness in the air. “Dad, where are the boys?” Her breath grew ragged. “Where’s Emmy?” Hope made the last word dangerous. Locus felt the thin rattle ofit.
Her father’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen, the movement so quick it might’ve been a blink. “Boys are safe,” he said.“They’re not here. We were told they’d be safer away from the house until you arrived.”
“Who told you?” Locus asked. He alreadyknew.
Silence fell like a curtain. The air in the room thinned. His skin tightened from the inside. He shifted a half step so his body covered more of Hannah without looking like a shield. She sensed the change in him because her breath altered, not faster, just deeper. She pressed her shoulder into his side, small and defiant.
The voice that came from the kitchen doorway was familiar the way a wound was familiar long after it should’ve closed. Smooth. Amused. Cruel without strain.
“I did,” the headman said. “And you are very welcome.”
Hannah’s mother made a strangled sound. Her father swore, low and blistering, and reached for her arm. Locus pivoted and placed his palm in the air, not toward the headman, toward the father. Stay. Don’t run at a blade you can’tsee.
The headman stepped into the living room as if he were a friend invited for coffee. He wore an Armani suit that fit his shoulders like stolen cloth. He smiled as if smiles were weapons. Two men with rifles came behind him, boots soft on the rug. Athird stayed in the kitchen where the doorway constrained the angle of fire. Locus didn’t take his eyes off the headman, but he saw itall.
“Guns down,” Hannah’s father said, voice gone iron. “This is my home.”
“It is today,” the headman said with a smile that never reached his eyes. “Tomorrow depends on who pays the most.”
Hannah’s mother lifted her hand as if to strike him and then saw the angles of metal and froze. The threads of her heartbeat tripped and then steadied. He admired that. Courage that learned to choose its moment impressed him more than the kind that charged withoutplan.
“You don’t belong here,” Hannah said. She stepped forward. Locus didn’t stop her because she had to look this man in the face to know she wasn’t small or insignificant.
“I belong wherever the cameras say I belong.” He glanced past her toward the window. The glass caught a glint, small and red, adrone’s lens peering through the sheer. “Audience is down a little for morning reunions. We’ll fix that.”
“Get out,” her father said as if he could push a hurricane away with a single command.
The headman’s eyes warmed. “I like you.”
Locus didn’t move when the headman looked at him. He let the man see the way stillness could be a kind of threat. He didn’t blink. The headman’s smile slid. He didn’t like being treated as unimportant. That was useful.
“Let us begin,” the headman said, clapping his hands lightly as if starting a game. “Your daughter is the reason my books don’t balance. She’s the reason the last Challenge didn’t meet expectations. Iam a practical man. Ibelieve in finishes. We’re going to finish this story. For the buyers.”
“You’re not putting her through anything else,” Hannah’s father said, and now his voice shook because he saw too much metal and not enoughair.
“Hush,” the headman said without looking at him. Then he looked at Locus and smiled again. “Alien. Ithink your human pets don’t quite grasp what you are.”
“He isn’t—” Hannah started.
“No, no. He is whatever you decide later when you’re sobbing on a camera for me. Right now I want your mother to see what’s been in her daughter’s bed. Show her, alien. Drop your little mask. It’s boring.”
Hannah’s mother’s head jerked so fast Locus thought she’d faint. “What mask?” Her voice was rising toward panic. He couldn’t handle panic in a woman who needed to keep breathing steady because rifles waited for any bad sound.
“Don’t listen to him,” Locus said to Hannah’s mother. “He is a man who collects screams and calls that music.”
The headman shrugged. “A fair description, but it avoids the point. Drop it or I’ll ask one of my men to motivate you.” He tilted his chin toward the kitchen doorway. The man there didn’t lift his rifle at the parents. He aimed through glass at the house across the street where thin curtains moved in a child’sroom.
Hannah made a small sound that struck Locus like a blade through his ribs. He could kill these men quickly. He could take their throats and their tendons and their guns. The problem wasn’t here. The problem was every other man the headman had placed around this neighborhood. His body screamed for release, to end it now, but discipline forged in war kept him still. He wouldn’t risk Hannah’s family for the satisfaction of blood.
