VI.


Eli's contractor smiled.

Doctor Kleiner, the one and only. Forgive me if I forgo introductions. Recent circumstances being what they are…He gestured toward the tram's end, its seat now empty. WellIt appears we have no need.

Kleiner struggled to move, an insect desperate to pry its twitching wings from the spider's web. His mouth opened slightly; his vocal cords mustered a whisper.

"Where is Gordon?"

The contractor took a step forward. His fingertips shone a witch's cradle of radiant green threads that he stretched to snapping points.

All except one. The last thread resisted his efforts, maintaining a strong vibratory hum. Its harsh glow glared on his lenses; Kleiner realized they consisted of two smaller, intertwined threads.

Another smile, though fainter this time, lifted the contractor's pallid cheeks, sprawling wrinkles. Her whereabouts, Doctor. He grasped each crackling end. Sputtering light spat shadows into the graves of his eye sockets. If you would be so kind.

His thoughts slid backward in an entropic reversal he knew to be near impossible. In his mind's eye, the darkness that flooded the cave dissipated, lifting the rocks that hurtled down. Uriah descended the mountain as rain flowed back into pregnant clouds. His threadbare shoes, still dry, ceased their nervous pacing and shuffled backward, walked away from Gordon's bedside.

With a yank of the threads, the contractor pushed further. The rewind accelerated days, weeks. Months. Years, even. There was an orchestration being conducted behind an obfuscating madness. Was this what Eli had experienced all those years ago, amidst his grief and shock?

Perspiration and rainwater snaked down his temple in fine droplets.

"I don't know."

Words, said the contractor. Mere words.

He felt as though the hands that pulled on those threads reached inside his skull and probed the folds of his hippocampus for information. Stray thoughts cast aside, his memories sorted and processed like an expedited version of data filtering.

He couldn't help but shudder deeply at the violation. Nonetheless, he stood his ground. "This is foolhardy," he said. "I assure you I know nothing of what you seek."

Tsk. A sharp downward twitch of the mouth broadcast the cretin's displeasure. Scowling at the humming thread, he decided to wind it around his fist, each wrap around bloodless knuckles a tightening display of control. Surely there must be more.

'More.' The word echoed in the corridors of his inner ears.

"That will not suffice us."

Sirens, distant in both time and place, began to wail.

Black Mesa, the origin and epicenter of this disaster.

For heartbeats in time his muscles locked in place. Smoke and blood and the muffled crack of creatures tearing bone from their prey's flesh cascaded through his mind in a sickening avalanche of sense memory, flooding his nostrils with rancid smells and his head with nausea.

Teeth exposed in that strange nothing-smirk, the contractor flicked the cords into taut strings. Stupid man, his mocking smile said. Stupid, stupid man.

He hadn't come here of his own accord.

He'd been lured.

Deeper and deeper his memories spiraled.

Yes. He was there the day the sample was delivered. He recalled a ticking clock counting down the world's remaining seconds from the desk of a lush, airconditioned office. How the muscles behind Eli's grinding jaws bulged as the Administrator dictated their recourse.

"Do the reasonable thing, gentlemen," he advised, "if not for science as a whole, then for your livelihoods."

"You can't do this," Eli said. "It's extortion."

The phone line blinked red; the Administrator muted it with a curt flick of the thumb. "Our sponsor has a right to privacy. He will disclose neither his sources nor his identity, and he expects us to keep it that way. Frankly, it's the least we can do given the rare privilege he's granting us. We need to be mindful of that. If we desire to conduct the experiment, then we must abide by his wishes."

"Cut the crap, Breen," Eli said. "He wants plausible deniability." Breen frowned. "Who's he with? NSA? Central Intelligence?"

A stubborn silence ensued. Kleiner's cheeks burned as the two men bored holes into one another with piercing stares.

"Dr. Vance"

"Excavation's been digging around the borderworld for months and turned up nilch. Our new 'sponsor' points them in the right direction and a few days later, they haul up the Hope Diamond. Some folks have been calling it luck."

"Luck, Dr. Vance, is a natural windfall to the prudent and prepared."

"Glad we agree. Would be an awful big coincidence since funding cuts are around the corner, don't you think?"

"I don't appreciate your reckless insinuations."

"Neither will my lawyer."

Breen slammed the butt of his fist onto a stack of invoices, the thud of flesh on paper making his heart jump and continue to race amidst the next few ticks of the clock.

Eli remained rigid in his chair.

Clearing his throat, the Administrator took a moment to compose himself. "That's enough," he said. "Pay him a visit if you must, but I feel compelled to warn you that if you continue to threaten unwarranted litigation, you will be banned from any future research efforts in this sector."

"That the worst you can do?"

Kleiner's nails carved ruts in the polished mahogany of the armrests. "Eli, please."

"You talk about what you owe this 'sponsor,' but what about us, huh? Your staff, your employeeshell, some of your other committee members" this as he jabbed a finger in Kleiner's direction, "are begging you for transparency, but lately you've been giving us all the runaround. We have a right to know who we're doing this for and why. And if you think you can shut us up, you've got another thing coming."

"Well," the Administrator said, steepled fingertips ascending to meet his chin. "Perhaps. But you forget you have a wife to house and a daughter to feed."

Darkness clouded his old friend's mien like an impending storm front. "Don't you dare." Rising from his chair, his voice growing in volume: "I'll sue this entire goddamn department if that's what"

"Language," Breen said, and fished inside his breast pocket. "In any case, you're too late. The sample has been processed and is being prepared for spectral analysis as we speak." He slid on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses and opened a manila file. "I suggest you take the rest of the day off, Dr. Vance. Perhaps some quality time at home will douse that temper of yours."

Leaning back in his leather chair, he wet his fingers and grasped the corner of a page. The dismissive flip he made left Eli to crush his hands into fists. He thanked the Administrator for his time in a thin, strained voice, went unacknowledged, then coaxed Kleiner into following him out the door he all but slammed on its oiled hinges.

"Come on, Izzy. We've got work to do."

His temples constricted, began to throb. It was a supremely strange experience to have decades of life processed in the span of seconds. Peaceful and tumultuous moments alike churned in search of a single piece of information.

Gordon and Alyx. Alyx and Gordon. It seemed the two had always been intertwined. One a young man of exceptional prospects, the other a sweet young girl looking toward an equally bright future. This one rattled by the cascade; that one shaken to her core.

Black Mesa unfurled front to back, bottom to top. The domino chain reversed, stopped, failed to pinpoint where exactly along the timeline the breakage had occurred. He heard a whisper curse Eli over and again.

Where is she? Frustration rankled needles inside his skull. You know this is futile: where have you hidden her?

Kleiner didn't understand his aims just then. Given what was to occur, he soon grew to understand.

In the present moment, he found his gaze drawn beyond the contractor's shoulder. Toward a collection of faded white scratches Gordon had placed in the window paneling. From an otherwise meaningless array, one number rose to the surface.

His wavering voice gained strength as he recited it. "Five thousand, eight hundred and twenty-seven." He uncoiled his posture, deigning now to stare at the contractor long in the face. "Tell me, sir. Does that number hold any particular significance to you?"

A spark leapt up, stinging the contractor on the cheek.

"It is the estimated number of casualties at Black Mesa. There may have been more. Others who were lost, or otherwise unaccounted for."

More sparks flew from the threads. The contractor growled at the spray that burst between his fingers.

"Eli carried that number on his shoulders every day since you drew his contract," Kleiner said, interrupting him before he could speak. "At times he thought of little else. On other occasions, he wept. Not simply for the future that was destroyed at Black Mesa, but for the innocents who perished, and whose numbers would continue to accrue, as well as those lives that would forever remain shattered in the aftermath. It was never a number to him. It couldn't be.

"And you, sir. You are a coward."

The crackle and sear of resistance burned the flesh of the contractor's palms, bringing a horrendous reek to the air. The whites of his eyes boiled.

"You forced him to weigh these losses against his daughter. An innocent child whose value measured an incalculable cost in her father's eyes: you placed her on the scale without scruple, knowing he would not decline any terms you outlined in exchange.

"Were this any other time, I would question your motivations, but frankly, I no longer care about them," Kleiner said. "You took advantage of a broken, grieving man at his most vulnerable moment, and fashioned his deepest fear into a weapon to control him. When he at last found a way to defy you, after years of faithful service, you rewarded him with death. Or rather, silenced him out of a fit of cowardice. You call it a breach of terms, but we both know such impulse hardly constitutes real power.

"Likewise," he said, "we humans do not bow in mindless obeisance. Not to the Combine, and certainly not to you."

Hm. Frayed threads screeched in a knot of electric asps. A rousing speech, Doctor. Are you quite finished?

"Not yet." Kleiner grasped his hand.

Shock rattled the contractor. A chalky pallor regained its bloodflow. Cold flesh warmed into tentative, gloved fingers that slowly, slowly curled around his.

"Come, Gordon. It appears this charlatan has exhausted the last of his smoke and mirrors."

The doors finally swished open, and he led Gordon through them.


Alone, he contemplated his failure.

One thread remained.

He crushed it.

Windows shattered outward, crashing tidal waves of glass into the darkness. Incandescent tubes scorched around him, belching sparks that caught on the upholstery. The tram's chassis screeched as the car folded in on itself, metal joints and steel bones scrunching with papery ease.

The last vortal cord sizzled protest in his fist.

Doctor Freeman. The darkness harbored lungs, and it prepared to scream. It appears we've been quite obdurate.


"Kleiner!"

Magnusson's thunderous call struck consciousness into his body in an instant. He bolted awake on the threadbare cushions of a lounge sofa, heart slamming like a panicked bird against his ribcage.

Rain trickled down the windows in thick streams, casting pale, phantasmal shadows over the room. Lacking his muddied lab coat, Uriah stood in solemn contrition beside the door, hands clasped and gaze fixed to the floor. His Vortigaunt companions nowhere to be found; had they escaped?

"Good to know those ears still work." Magnusson grumbled, folding his arms. "Old fool, what the hell were you ambling about the mountains for? You could have killed yourself out there."

"Yet he remains."

"Zip it, Uriah."

Uriah cocked his head.

Memories of the cave rushed to surface. Rocks pelting down. An invasive darkness.

"Is—" He patted his windbreaker to find it damp. Promptly he shed the sleeves. "Is Gordon all right?"

"Don't worry. That little pet of yours will be safe and sound once they put the restraints on him."

"Restraints?" He flinched as a pronged hand squeezed gently on his shoulder.

"The Freeman is slumbering at this time," replied Uriah. "The Magnusson decided it is best for the Freeman's safety that the body be permitted to rest."

"Speaking of which," Magnusson said, "do either of you possess the slightest inkling of what you've done?"

There would be ample time for explanation later. At the present, he had to finish what he'd started.

Kleiner darted for the fold-in closet where changes of clothes hung in case of bad weather. The shuttered door slid open with a clack. "I must see him," he said as he tugged an arm through the sleeve of a fresh lab coat. "I'm sorry, Arne, but there is really no time—"

"Make the time, damn it," Magnusson said, grabbing hold of an empty cuff. However, he managed to take advantage of his smaller size and worm free of his grasp. "Kleiner! You're not walking away from this one!"

He spared no time for conversation. Instead he made a beeline for Eli's office, rummaging through the drawers for what he sought: the bifocals Alyx repaired, safely tucked in their rough swaddling cloth.

Of course, Magnusson haunted his every step.

"Thanks to you, Uriah and his band of merry men, Dog is dragging a rescue party five miles down the valley in the pouring rain as we speak! Oh, and how could I forget? Somehow, Lord knows why, the fracture in Freeman's skull sealed over, making it outright impossible to repair the damage to his brain! Did you even dedicate a moment's thought to that, Kleiner?"

"The fracture… " He stopped to gaze upon his friend in earnest. "It's healed?"

"Yes! Have you heard a single blasted thing I've said?"

They ducked back into the main corridor. En route to Gordon's room, both men witnessed the patient stumble out of an open doorway, heedless of the surgeon's cry: "Someone stop him!"

Kleiner stopped instantly.

Equally startled, Magnusson asked, "Freeman?"

Maria Stezenka arrived in an atypical state of disorientation, untied scrubs fluttering over her usual clothes and snatching for breath.

"Hello, Doctor." Kleiner offered a placid greeting. "Hello, Gordon."

Maria glowered at him between huffs as if he were insane, but in the latter there was no reaction. No smile acknowledged him. Nary a sigh of exhaustion. The presence he sensed behind the myopic eyes was a bit too alert and stiff to be Gordon. He didn't know how, but a certain feeling of urgency arose to compete with his need to keep calm; he had to remove them from this situation immediately.

His eyes drifted over every crevice, before finally rising to meet him. "Hello."

"Welcome back."

"Thank you."

Their simple exchange of words rested on a flimsy foundation, bound to crumble at any minute. Gordon curled his hand into a fist a few times, as if the concept was alien to him.

Hmph, Magnusson said. "Well, isn't this just a dandy family reunion?"

Kleiner asked without turning: "Arne, would you mind sending Uriah for a change of clothes?"

"What on earth for?"

" …It seems I've forgotten in my haste." He walked toward Gordon and placed a steadying hand to his shoulder. He slipped the repaired frames behind his ears, though the eyes that perceived him appeared no less vacant for the change. "Not to mention he appears to have lost some weight. I pray the suit still fits him."

"Have you lost your mind?" the surgeon balked, rifing a gloved hand through her cropped silver hair. "He's at risk for another seizure. I've no clue how he's walking about, but he ought to remain under observation until— Where are you taking him? Isaac?"

"Let them go," Magnusson said. "It seems they're both happy with this arrangement." He crossed his arms, unable to resist indulging one last quip. "Although if you ask me, Freeman's body has been acting independently of his mind long before this little development."

"With a high-risk? I'll do no such thing."

"Consider it one less item clogging up your schedule." He sighed heavily and rubbed at the knot between his brows before she could interject, which ignited in her a glare so hot it could have scorched him. In all honesty, he did not seem to care for her professional indignation when she cried, affronted, "Damn you, he's my patient!" the echoes of which trailed them down the hall.

"Come, Gordon." Perhaps it was just a side-effect of having awakened so suddenly, but he felt wracked by a certain sense of déjà vu. "Let's get you situated. You'll be quite pleased to see the new features I've implemented."


The descent into the silo was as long as it was quiet.

He supposed such was to be expected. Aside from the occasional maintenance worker harried enough to overlook them, no one accosted them.

Gordon moved languidly at his side, one hand pressed to the wall as he stumbled down the steps, his slender muscles plagued by atrophy he suspected they hadn't quite recovered from.

It seemed a different place than when he and Alyx first dashed up here, alarmed by the threat of equipment failure. Tugging his lapels over himself, Kleiner climbed down the steep stairs fringed on either side by bare rails.

Silence lingered like a thick fog between them for the next few minutes. His heart nearly caught when Gordon spoke.

"Where… " He swallowed. "Where am I?"

"Patience," Kleiner whispered. "We will be there soon enough."

Dry limestone crunched under their heels, its texture hard and unyielding like that of barren permafrost. Indeed, in the watery glow emitted by overhead sconces, he could see his own trembling breath wisp into a transclucent mist.

Kleiner slipped his hand into his pocket to to keep it from shaking. He squeezed hard until his forearm ached.

He hated deceiving Gordon like this, but he mustn't let his apprehension betray him. He planned to lock them in the capsule room, where Gordon—or his body, to be more precise—would have no choice but to listen. With each step deeper into the darkness, the contractor gained more critical information. It would doubtless not take him very long to act. So he must be quicker.

The four-digit wall mount beeped confirmation, clicking the lock open. It would stay open for sixty seconds and lock again once he closed the door. Gordon wandered inside without a word.

Kleiner found his affects exactly as he'd left them: the hazard suit embedded within frost-ridden glass, the connected computer humming on the program he'd almost finished tweaking, but not quite.

"Apologies for the sparse accomodations, Gordon. As you can see, I don't do much… entertaining here." Clearing his throat, he wheeled the chair over. "Please, sit."

He lumbered instead toward the capsule.

"Gordon," he said softly. "Stop."

Despite the fear growing in his pounding heart, a nascent ripple of hope compelled him to cross the threshhold. Unreadable eyes tracked him.

"Do not take another step," he said. "There isn't much time. Listen carefully to my words."

Gordon pressed a hand to the activation panel. A laser reader decrypted his palm in the flash of light that flared out. Seconds later the capsule exposed its glass ribs, letting frost rise in faint whorls off the edges of the suit.

It was now or never. Kleiner braced his shoulders.

"Now that you are conscious, there is something you must know."

Welcome to the HEV Mark Five Protective System. For use in hazardous environment conditions.

"Eli… chose… " Wires retracted; needles came unhooked. "Was forced, rather… to bind your life force with hers so she could survive. The contract your employer drew… He used it to ensnare you both."

Locks unclamped.

"He is not stronger, Gordon. He is not more powerful. He manufactured Black Mesa, yes, but in service of what, I suspect, is a more personal goal than simple recruitment."

Gordon slipped into the suit.

"In the midst of the tragedy he created, he exploited an opening. Your fear, Eli's sorrow. Those orchestrations poorly conceal the fact that he is a coward who cannot hide in the face of the truth."

Leather gloves flexed long fingers.

He looked at Kleiner.

"Despite the obstacles he threw at Eli, Eli was the one who prevailed, Gordon. He can be resisted. He does not wield absolute power over you: quite the opposite. You're all that remains of the contract, and he fears your breaking that last fragile connection. He's tightened his grip on your reins because he fears losing her most of all."

Tears swam in his myopic eyes.

His hands veered off the capsule walls, and he stumbled in Kleiner's direction.

"Yes, that's it."

He extended his arms to steady the young man. He hoped he could coax Gordon toward him. His heart caught as he progressed in minuscule increments, each step another battle won.

Until Gordon bent aside with a deep grimace, pressing the heel of his palm to his scar.

When he forced his clenched eyes open, the irises blazed white.


"To be Enlightened," they said, "one must learn the lessons of the flesh."

Words, Doctor Freeman. Mere words.

I did not ask for this. Flesh, blood, pain: they were forced upon me.

Forced to grow.

Forced to suffer.

Forced to live.

"A gift," they said.

You see them.

Your heart snarls.

You understand.

Their cruel joke must be repaid in kind.

The vessel: take us there.

I will settle this humiliating state of affairs.

Don't falter, Doctor Freeman.


The first breath he drew gifted him a sharp spur.

Exposed wires spat and sputtered in the darkness. As Kleiner climbed into an upright sitting position, his ribcage shifted, slightly askew, and jostled around his inner organs. He prodded a knuckle to his thirb rib and felt spongy flesh depress a hollow in the skin where bone should have pressed back.

While his mind scrambled to retrieve its memories of the last few moments, he struggled to pinpoint the phenomenon that had caused the lab around him to crash and thunder.

He recalled twin irises blazing like quasars. Gordon's body crushing its hands around his shoulders in an inhuman grip, the pain that shot through him as fingers dug into his collarbonea brutal moment cut mercifully short. Then followed an amnesiac flash of white, the soft cover of nothingness.

He deigned to look up. He couldn't tell what happened thereafter, nor for how long. His senses returned to him in vague, fluid impressions.

Kleiner blinked. Glass trickled down, dusting his neck and throat. As his vision sharpened, he furrowed his brow at the ceiling. A light coffee-brown smudge gained salience. Water damage from rusted pipes and coupled with the capsule's frost spread a large stain over mottled panels.

Strange he hadn't noticed it before. Dozens of hours spent hunched within these walls and he'd failed to notice the decay quietly rotting above him. The air he inhaled pushed dampness into his lungs, the sweet tinge of mold just beginning to grow. No sky to mark the passage of the years. No clocks to count the time.

His fingertips wandered over his abdomen until they encountered a point.

He froze. Then brushed over it twice, tapping the pad of his index finger on its head to test its veracity. A sting answered him; a crimson bead welled from his flesh, which he raised before his line of sight with a detached pulse of curiosity. The object proved too solid to be glass.

One of the capsule's hydraulic needles, programmed to carefully remove the hazard suit's exterior plates in order to expose its internal circuitry, protruded through his dress shirt. The shaft embedded just below his left lung, the tip an exit point where stained fabric curled into blood-wet skin.

That won't do. His first instinct led him to wrap his hands around the needle and attempt to extricate himself. Even stranger than his lack of fear—it was as if his every fiber slowed, numbed—was his pragmatism.

His movements caused Gordon to rouse. The weight of his head sagged on his stomach, though he hadn't felt it at first. The boy had gone slack. A puppet with cut strings.

Kleiner succumbed to a compulsion to reach down and thread a hand through his scalp, removing the glass bits dressing his hair. No need to risk reopening that scar. He stroked his head amidst the young man's shudder, eventually tipping it a degree upward.

"Gordon."

His reddened cheek lifted. The eyes that met his no longer seethed with an unholy rage, but faded into their regular spring green. The hatred gnashing his teeth melted into shock, then fear. Crumpled into something far more human than the contractor imagined.

"Kleiner," he whispered, his gaze sinking toward the blood. "Oh, God."

"Hush," he said. "This is not your doing."

Ever faithful, his pupil wasted no time reaching him. Quickly he picked through the glass bramble and shoved wires out of the way. Hands trembling, he reached around Kleiner's spine and attempted to pull out the needle, to no avail.

He winced at a fresh wave as Gordon wrapped his hands around his back. The pain was just beginning to reach him.

"Gordon… " His diaphragm struggled to rise. His breathing grew increasingly ragged and shorn. "Please… I don't… I don't think it's going to come out."

Fluorescent lights filled the room, casting shadows over a mint-green curtain. Ammonia failed to mask the scent of blood. The hour grew late, and a sleepless child squirmed in his arms. A bundle of resistant energies refused to stay still.

"It will only be a bit longer, my darling. I promise." He tightened his hold to keep Alyx from falling off his lap. "Please don't squirm. Your father needs quiet to rest and recuperate. Hush now, my pea. Sit here and I'll read you a book Oh."

Alyx broke free.

Gordon pulled away. "I'll get help."

He sighed as his eyelids sagged. Halogen lights filled the tram, lending the white of his wrinkled lab coat a pale greenish hue. Gordon nudged him awake until the tram came to a stop.

Ah, youth. How he envied Dr. Freeman's vigorous constitution. "I'm… very tired, Gordon." He lowered his head onto the cool plastic of the window. "I would like to rest a moment."

Gordon grasped his shoulders. "Don't do this."

"Just for a moment," he murmured.

"Please."

Sunlight filled the room, crossing a varnished redwood floor in warm, flickering grids. Chalk dust floured his fingertips as a rhythmic tap crumbled the nub he pinched between thumb and forefinger. Such a productive silence broke upon the door squeaking on its hinge.

Students paused their note-taking to observe him: an auburn-haired student clad in T-shirt and jeans, fifteen minutes late and terribly lost.

Several ticks of the clock passed before he offered an amicable smile to the freshman who, saddled down with a massive laptop and one spiral notebook stuffed in a bulky knapsack, navigated an awkward waddle through the aisles.

"It's always refreshing to see such eager young faces," Kleiner said, returning his attention to the powdered chalkboard. "Take a seat anywhere you like, as long as it's not next to that dreadful space heater."

He gestured toward a crushed CRT monitor and let his hand droop. Fear flickered in the student's mien. Oh, dear. Perhaps he ought to slow this down a bit?

"Stay." Gordon's voice cracked. "You've got to fight. I can't do this without you."

It took a moment, another pulse of blood fleeing his heart. "You are more than capable." Reaching out again, he clasped a gentle palm to his cheek. "Think, my wunderkind. There is a solution… "

"For every problem."

He nodded, a pleased smile crossing his lips. So he did remember. He'd become a man of admirable character since his humble collegiate days.

His lungs grasped for air in fleeting, shallow snatches.

Kleiner's hand slipped away to pat his torn pocket protector. "The last thread is here," he said. "I'll take it with me." Crimson seeped through the gaps in his fingers. He grimaced at a temporary stab of pain and recalled the rites, the marvelous sight of red blood cells traveling through his veins. He wondered what he had left to fear. "It isn't much… "

There was a time to be strong and a time to break. A time to fight, a time to let go. A time to wander, a time to come home. They'd both given so much of their lives to the cause, without want of compensation except the tenuous hope their efforts would bring about a peaceful world.

Twenty years. What he foolishly believed the grim culmination of suffering and subjugation, just another beginning.

Within the swirl of his free-floating thoughts emerged an image of Alyx, hardened but vulnerable inside. Alyx with tears in her eyes, gazing upward, ever upward, her hopes rising toward the stars. Alyx swam in the heavenly shimmer of a nebula.

"Find her."

After this, the slickness welled to a rise inside his throat, drowning any other words he might have wished to say. But the silence was all right. It was going to be all right.

Anguish etched such deep lines in Gordon's gaunt face. Already fog smudged his new lenses.

Perhaps it was because he'd discovered an oasis amidst the violence and the terror, but he couldn't find it in himself to mourn with his beloved student. He was safe; that was what mattered. All he wished to do now was to rest on these serene embankments while time permitted him the chance.

Gordon hid in his shoulder. He wanted to ask: After everything, how can you weep? In that moment, however, he could only do one thing. Hold him as Gordon likewise held him, releasing soft, convulsive gasps into soaked cotton.

He wished there were a kinder way. But he supposed it was kinder than what they had come to expect, and he was grateful for that small, transient bit of grace.

His blood slowed. Gordon's weak, breathless sobs persisted in his ears.

He leaned back, cradled within a nest of glass and cable. A needle, he thought with a slight inner smile. All this fuss over a needle.