Logan Howlett's Arc

Chapter 9 of 10

Logan leaves the captain cooling on the planks and drops through the hatch. The hold opens wide below, lit blue. Laura follows. Link stays up top to watch the deck. The smell down here is wrong — chemical, sweet, close. They clear the hold fast. Empty bunks. Empty racks. Logan expects a room of healers and finds none. Laura points to the floor near the bow. A small blue book sits open on a crate, a child's hand on the cover. Not hers. The page shows a careful drawing of a bridge in pencil, towers and cables, every stone counted. Logan kneels. The crate under the book is bolted down wrong. He pries it sideways. A seam shows in the deck plate beneath. A hatch. No handle. Laura sets her knuckles to the metal and cuts a circle clean through. They lift it out. A narrow stair drops into a sealed chamber the journal never drew. Steel walls. Soft yellow lights. A heavy door at the back with a shield etched into it. Panels blink along both sides like a workshop someone left running. The air is warm and clean. Someone has been living down here. In the center sits a bed full of slow swirling liquid, blues and pinks moving on their own. A small shape is curled on top. A child. Breathing. Tubes run from the bed to the walls. On a shelf beside it: more drawings. More bridges. A worn medical kit with the red cross half peeled off. Laura's hand goes to her mouth and stays there. She does not flinch. She steps closer. "Another one," Logan says. His voice comes out rough. He had come down here to burn a hold full of soldiers. He found a second donor instead. Laura looks at him over the bed, and he sees it — she is not asking him what to do. She is deciding. "We take the child," she says. "Then we burn the rest." Logan nods once. The mission just got heavier, and smaller, and his.