Alpha Prime's Arc

Chapter 4 of 4

The stone outside had turned pale gray, but Alex Morrison was still there. Alpha Prime saw him from the doorway. He stood across the street with his hands in his pockets, watching the building the way a cat watches a hole. He had not left. He had only stepped out of sight and waited. The fox at the threshold flicked one ear back toward Alpha Prime. Any door they used, he would see. Any street they took, he would follow. Alpha Prime crouched by the fox and spoke low. They needed him gone, not just avoided. They lifted the brass ornament so the fox could see it. The fox looked at the ornament, then at the boy in the street, then stood. Its pale blue markings brightened a shade. Alpha Prime understood the plan without words. The ornament had stopped him once on the first night. It might hold him again long enough to matter. Alpha Prime stepped into the doorway in full view. Alex Morrison smiled and started across the street toward them, unhurried. Alpha Prime raised the ornament. He stopped mid-step, one foot off the ground, as if the air had thickened around his knees. The smile stayed on his face. His eyes moved. His body did not. The fox slid past Alpha Prime's leg and crossed to him in four quiet steps. It circled him once, sniffed his hand, and pushed him hard in the hip with its shoulder. He tipped sideways and did not catch himself. He landed on the stones and lay there, still smiling, still watching. Alpha Prime walked past him. They did not run. Running felt like something he could hear. The fox trotted at their heel, then took the lead, guiding them along the front of the plain gray hall and around its corner. Behind them, Alex Morrison did not get up. Alpha Prime looked back once. He was turning his head in the dust to keep them in sight, slow as a clock hand. The ornament had bought them distance, not silence. When he could stand again, he would know exactly which way they had gone. The fox stopped at the mouth of a narrow lane and waited. Alpha Prime caught up. Their hand around the ornament ached from gripping it. They had solved the watcher at the door. They had traded one problem for a worse one: he had seen the ornament work a second time, and he had seen which corner they turned. Whatever he was, and whatever he answered to, it now knew the shape of their only weapon. Alpha Prime tightened their grip and followed the fox into the lane. Half-light was here. The town was starting to wake, and the waking was the part they had been afraid of all night.