It's sheer luck Raleigh doesn't drop the phone when he hears Mako's businesslike voicemail. "This is PPDC Engineer Mako Mori. Please leave a message at the tone. If this is urgent, please call back in half an hour." He remembers her recording that, and then shutting it off and saying jokingly, "And if this is Raleigh, try the Drift." He has. All he gets is confused chaos.
"She's not answering?" Kensie is more visibly distressed than Raleigh. She's sitting at the kitchen table, ripping apart some old appliance that looks vaguely like a toaster from hell, and attaching the wires to a circuit board.
"No." He doesn't want to know why. Maybe she's just in meetings, giving someone hell for messing up her Jaeger. Or maybe she's training, working off stress. Or meditating; she did that sometimes after bad days too, and she hated to be disturbed during that. It was so rare that she actually got into that calm mood that she couldn't bear to have it broken. There are lots of good reasons for her not to answer the phone.
He feels suddenly guilty because he's pretty sure this is what he did to her when he left. No warning, no information, no way to know if he was still even alive except a weak, faded Drift connection.
"Here." He hands the phone back to Mike. He's got to find out if she's okay, and he has to start now. Maybe if he can hitch a decent ride he can get to LA within the next 24 hours.
"Is there anyone else you could call?" He could. He thinks he remembers McTavish's number. He knows he remembers PPDC general switchboard. But chances are an outside call like this would get lost in the shuffle. Maybe Herc. He's not Marshal anymore but he might be able to get an in.
He dials the Aussie's number and is releieved when Herc picks up on the second ring with a gruff, "Don't want whatever you're selling, and if you're trying to get me back in a Jaeger, go and…"
"Herc, it's me. Raleigh." There's a clattering crash on the other end. "Herc?"
"Becket? Where the hell are you?"
"Long story. What happened out there today?"
"No one's telling me a damn thing. McTavish sent Mako and Pentecost's son out in Gypsy Avenger but she wasn't ready yet and something went real bloody wrong. She carked it, and the press are all over some Drift glitch. They say there was something wrong in the connections, and that's why they lost control. Still haven't heard anything from Jake or Mako."
"I need to get back to LA. I'm in…" he stops, frowning, yesterday was such a blur. He covers the phone's mouthpiece for a second, no sense in Herc thinking he really went off the deep end. "Kensie, where are we?"
"Pocatello Idaho. Smack dab in the middle of nowhere."
Raleigh leaves off the last part. Herc sounds a bit taken aback. "Okay. Well, I'll get a hold of McTavish. Sure he'll be plenty happy to have you back." Raleigh isn't. No one's bothered to look particularly hard for him. He's honestly surprised when the phone rings again about fifteen minutes later and it's McTavish, telling him they have a chopper on the way.
He's got nothing to pack, so waiting is driving him up the wall. He has nothing better to do than stare at the monstrosity Kensie is slowly constructing on the table. It has too many loose wires to look safe.
"Kensie, what are you doing?"
"Automating the door for Kevin so he can get his wheelchair in and out without needing anyone else." She holds up the complicated system of wires. "I'm going to attach it to the doorbell."
"Won't that open it every time someone rings?"
"Nope. He has a special knock he uses when he needs to get in. I'm going to program the button to respond to the same pattern. And if I do it right I can wire the door to actually unlock when he does it."
Raleigh's seen something a lot like this before. He's watched someone take parts of trash and build something no one should be able to. Geisler. He still remembers Gottleib, slightly drunk in the victory celebrations, repeating "Newton created a neural bridge from garbage and Drifted with a Kaiju."
"How long have you been building stuff like that?"
"Ever since I saw Mako in a PPDC advertisement. I figured if she could learn how to build Jaeger systems, so could I." She taps a few wires with her finger. "Then I figured out I was really freakin' good at it."
"How much do you know about the Jaeger systems?"
"Loads. Half the reason I wanted to meet Mako was that I think I might have figured out a way to make the neural links about twice as fast, if you bypassed the cycling shock inhibitors. They haven't needed those since the Mark II's, not since they added the feedback looping to control neural backlash, but they still go into all the designs." This is all gibberish to Raleigh, but he figures it wouldn't be to Mako. Holy heck. And this girl lives on the streets and does God knows what to make a living. She's smarter than half the people in the PPDC.
"What if something about a Drift system went wrong?"
"I've never seen a real one before. But I'd like to try." He watches her work until he hears rotors. It's one of the "Mercy Hummingbirds", the little choppers designed for city evac that can fit into small street spaces to do emergency airlifts in crowded or damaged areas. Everyone from the house is coming out to see what's happening. It feels like Sitka all over again. Only this time, the Marshal isn't Pentecost, and Raleigh doesn't have to be convinced to leave.
He climbs in and holds the door open behind him, calling forward to the pilot to wait. Kensie is standing there in the street with leaves blowing over her shoes and her arms crossed, holding her thin jacket closed in the rotor backwash. He remembers another girl in the middle of a street, with a broken shoe in her hands and nothing left of the place she called home.
"Get in." Kensie gapes.
"What?"
"I meant it."
McTavish leans out, glowering. "We're not taking a kid."
"It's either her, or leave without me." Raleigh is pretty sure he knows how this is going to go. He's expendable, after all. But McTavish is full of surprises today.
"Fine. She comes."