Page 74 of The Captain
The gray-suited man finally found his mouth. “Kill the room feed,” he said, and a tech actually flinched before looking at Langford, not him.
“No,” I said, before I could remember my rank wasn’t real here. Every head tilted toward me like I’d thrown a glass. “You do not shut me out of my own facility.”
“It’s an operational—” the suit started, and McGuire cut across him without moving her eyes.
“She stays,” she said, flat, and I loved her for it.
“Sector to White,” the speaker said, hedging around me. “We need a sweep on Blue’s last. Give me a spiral, inside to out.”
“Copy,” White-Lead said, still maddeningly cheerful. “Spiraling.”
“Dominion Hall,” another voice slid in, cool and dry. Atlas, maybe. “We’re adjusting the net.”
“Do it,” Langford said. “Quietly.”
On the other side of these walls, the world I could actually touch kept moving without me. The Kogia would be ticking her breaths. The bottlenose would be floating like a tired queen, sling whispering against skin. Becca would be counting, Miguel measuring, Tamika making herself a post—none of it in my ears, all of it in my bones.
We ask the animals for faith every day—let the lines hold you, let our hands be the water. I stood in this room with a headset and realized it was my turn to do the animal thing: trust. Trust the net. Trust the plan. Trust the man who left clothes in my drawer and promised he’d come back.
Okay, I told myself.
“Blue team, check in,” Sector said, and a string of strangers said their call signs like proof that at least some people in the world were still where they were supposed to be. Not Jacob.
“Noise floor just went to hell,” a tech murmured. “What is that?”
“Foreign,” someone else said, too quickly, and Langford made a tiny slice with his hand.
“Dominion Hall, Sector,” the speaker said again, voice narrower. “We’re NORDO on Blue-Three, Blue-Four, and Blue-Two. Repeat, no radio contact with boarding stack.”
NORDO. No radios.
“Could be shielding,” McGuire said, half to the admiral, half to the ceiling. “Could be battery dump. Could be?—”
“Don’t,” I said. “Don’t make a list for me.”
She didn’t. Her jaw lifted a millimeter and then returned to its work.
“White-Lead,” Sector again, controlled. “Status.”
“Spiral complete,” White said, and for once I didn’t want to throw something at the tone. It was steadier than mine, which I resented. “Nada. We’ll start again.”
“Start again,” Sector said. It could have been a prayer.
I took three steps away from the table and then came back like I was on a leash I’d tied to my own work. The part of me that knows how to make a body stay alive when it has decided to remember death tried to put a towel across this moment and couldn’t find the right angle.
I put my fingertips on the cool, humming metal of the rack and closed my eyes and did the only thing that has never betrayed me.
“One,” I said under the room’s noise. “Two. Three.”
I pictured the Kogia taking a clean breath—the soft lift, the hush of it—and the memory alone made me stand up straighter, because I am a ridiculous animal and will take that trade forever.
“Sector to all units,” came through, ragged at the edges now. “Hold positions. Blue team presumed NORDO due to interference. Continue search. Do not escalate. I say again—do not escalate without command.”
Marcus’s voice, out of nowhere and everywhere at once. “Copy, Sector.”
“Copy,” came a scatter of replies. Not his again. Not Jacob.
The room realized it had hands and started using them. A tech’s keyboard clicked. Someone reprinted a map that had been printed five minutes ago and put new dots on it as if rearranging the jewelry would change the neck it lay on. Langford steppedaway to talk into a radio on a private channel whose tone made my chest hurt. McGuire stood exactly where she had been and became a lighthouse.
