Logan Howlett's Arc

Chapter 5 of 10

They reach the ridge as the last light drains from the sky. The others are waiting in a tight circle, faces drawn, weapons close. Laura takes the test tube from her jacket and sets it on a flat stone, ready to run the test she promised herself. Logan crouches beside her. The purple liquid catches what light is left, calm and still. Whatever it tells them, he wants to hear it with her, not for her. Laura unscrews the cap and adds a single drop of reagent. The purple hisses and boils over, eating through the stone. She jerks back. Logan catches her wrist. Past the tree line, half-buried in the slope, sits a rusted rack of labeled glass cylinders and feeder pipes — a sampling rig the enemy had run straight up from the warehouse. Her name is scratched on one tube. They have been milking her abilities for months, turning what she made into a weapon pointed at her own chest. Laura's jaw sets. She does not flinch. She looks at Logan and says, flat and steady, that they hit the enemy first, tonight. Logan nods. The hard call just got made, and she made it. The two veterans step closer, reading her face, then his. Logan stands and slings his pack. He tells them they move now, while the rig is still warm and the enemy still thinks she is bleeding for them. Laura caps the broken tube and pockets it as evidence. The circle breaks. They start down the ridge together, toward the pipes, toward the fight he had been holding off. The waiting is over. At the bottom of the slope, past the rig, an old wooden brig sits propped on cracked timbers, sails patched and still. The enemy used it as a dry dock — a place to store what they pulled from her. Logan sees lanterns moving on its deck. Laura sees them too. She does not slow. She draws her claws, quiet as breath, and Logan draws his beside her. They cross the open ground side by side. Whatever broke open on the ridge cannot be put back. They are done waiting, and the enemy does not know yet that the leverage just turned in their hands.