Zelda Verada's Arc

Chapter 3 of 5

Zelda was back in the clinic tent by the time the sun cleared the fence. Sinclair was sitting up, drinking water, watching the flap. She changed his bandage without speaking. When she finished, she heard boots on gravel outside. Light steps. Steady. She knew before she looked who Kira had sent. Donovan O'Niel ducked under the flap with a pack on his back and a radio rig clipped to it, and he grinned like a man reporting for a job he wanted. "Oh man, you've got the place wired tighter than I figured," he said, scanning the cot, the shelves, the diagnostic wand on its hook. "Kira said one week. I figured I'd start by sorting whatever's broken. That tends to get around faster than introductions." He set the pack down. A worn leather journal slid halfway out of the side pocket, its cover stamped with a Ranger mark Zelda recognized. He pushed it back in without comment. She didn't ask. She filed it. She put him to work on the autoclave first. While he worked, she opened the small brown-and-grey rolodex on her supply crate and pulled a thin notebook from behind the cards. Her promise ledger. Every name she had ever traded with sat in it, with a column for what they said and a column for what they did. She wrote his name at the top of a fresh page. Under it she wrote: brought a Ranger-coded journal, didn't hide it. She left the second column blank. By midday he had the autoclave running and a shielded relay strung along the tent pole. "Your signal in here was leaking," he said, casual. "Anybody parked on a bunker channel could hear your inventory count. I plugged it." He named the frequency. It was the same one the buried dish had been transmitting on. He said it flat, the way a man says a thing he already knows you know. Zelda watched his hands. They didn't pause. She wrote in the second column: told me about the leak before I asked. The test came at dusk. Marcus walked in without knocking and said Andy Cerberus wanted a word from the office. He looked at Donovan. "Your commander's been on the wire twice today asking about a tech she loaned out. You want to tell her anything?" Donovan didn't look at Zelda. "Tell her I'm fixing an autoclave," he said. "Hell if I know what else she wants to hear. She loaned me. I'm loaned." Marcus held the look a beat longer, then nodded and left. Zelda closed the ledger. She had her answer, narrow as it was. Donovan would not lie for Kira in her tent. He might still lie elsewhere, but here, inside this canvas, he was hers for the week. She handed him the next broken thing and started counting what she could build before the week ran out.