Logan Howlett's Arc

Chapter 6 of 10

They cross the last stretch of open ground and the brig grows larger against the dark. Then boots scrape behind them and stop. Logan turns. One of the veterans has planted himself beside a black limo abandoned in the weeds, its roof turret tilted at the sky. He will not take another step. He says it plain. The girl is bait. Walking her at the enemy is the same as handing her over, and he did not sign on to watch a kid bleed for a hard call she was talked into. The other veteran shifts his weight, uncertain. Laura's jaw tightens. The circle Logan thought was closed is splitting in front of him. Logan feels the old guilt rise and pushes it down. He does not argue. He looks at Laura. Her choice now. She steps onto a dry patch of cracked dirt between them, grass tufts crushed under her boot, and pulls the broken tube from her pocket. She sets it on the hood of the limo where they can all see the purple stain. "They've been drinking out of me for months," she says. Flat. No tremor. "I'm not bait. I'm the reason we get close." She reaches into her pack and pulls out a worn leather journal, its cover soft with pressed flowers and faded ink stars. She opens it to a page of careful sketches — the rig, the feeder pipes, the brig's lantern routes. "I mapped it. While you were waiting on him to decide." The veteran stares at the journal. Then at her. Something in his shoulders gives. He picks up the tube, weighs it, and hands it back to her like a thing that belongs to her. He nods once at Logan. Falls in behind. The other veteran exhales and follows. The crack closes, not because Logan sealed it, but because Laura did. Logan watches her tuck the journal away and start toward the brig without looking back. He follows. The girl stopped flinching at the hard call a while ago. Tonight she made the rest of them stop too.