Chapter 82: Gap (III)
Sera sat on the inside of the blast wall with her back against the panel, her axe resting across her knees, her left shoulder in its usual position, and watched Michael standing in the channel with the bolt driver still in his hand, blood dripping from his right forearm, and the seventh Aberrant lying at his feet.
He looked at her shoulder.
"How bad," he said.
"Don’t know yet," she said honestly, which was the most honest thing she’d said about an injury since she arrived in this building.
He crouched in front of her, examining her shoulder without touching it, simply observing.
She watched his face as he interpreted what he saw, experiencing the peculiar sensation of being evaluated by someone other than Dr. Kang.
This person’s focused gaze carried a unique, distinct quality.
"I need Dr. Kang," he said.
"After," she said.
"Now," he said, in the tone that wasn’t a suggestion.
She looked at him. He looked back. His right forearm was still bleeding and he hadn’t mentioned it once and she looked at it and looked at him.
"After we check the pulse," she said.
He looked at her for a moment and then pulled up the pulse.
She watched his face read it and waited.
The turrets had completed their task. The southeastern and southwestern engagements had penetrated the Aberrant approach wave, causing the signatures at the wall exterior to drop significantly.
The approach absorbed the turret fire as Michael had predicted, confirming the Aberrant group’s estimate that turret fire was an acceptable cost of approach, an estimate that had cost them dearly.
The remaining signatures were located at the wall base, neither climbing nor pressing nor advancing.
Pulling back.
She read it in his face before he said it.
"They’re withdrawing," he said.
She glanced at the sealed panel behind her, then at the space that was once just a gap but now was sealed, and finally at the seven Aberrant bodies in the blast wall channel between the interior and the former gap.
"How many did the turrets take," she said.
He looked at the pulse. "Thirty one at the wall exterior," he said. "Seven in the channel." He paused. "Thirteen withdrew."
She considered thirteen Aberrants with cognitive retention withdrawing from an engagement and taking their information, feeling the particular weight of it.
"They learned something," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"They’ll come back with the information they learned," she said.
"Yes," he said.
She examined the sealed panel, the seven bodies, the blast wall channel, and the surrounding building, then looked at Michael crouched in front of her with the bolt driver, a bleeding forearm, and a specific expression of someone who had just reseated a wall panel from the outside while a contact remained active in the channel behind it.
"That was stupid," she said. "Going through the gap to the exterior."
"It worked," he said.
"That’s not the same thing," she said.
He looked at her. She returned his gaze, and her left shoulder kept sending detailed signals about its condition.
She maintained eye contact and reflected on what she told him the night after the clearing operation, about avoiding calls that could put him at the greatest risk because he believed he was the most expendable.
He’d gone through the gap to the exterior.
She had been pressed against the blast wall with the seventh Aberrant on top of her.
She looked at him.
He looked back.
"Thank you," she said. Simply. Just that.
He regarded her for a moment with his dark amber eyes, wearing a peculiar expression that had been hard to define for forty days.
He remained silent, and she was glad he did, because whatever he might have said would have been less meaningful than the silence itself.
"Dr. Kang," he said eventually.
"Yes," she said. "Alright."
He helped her up, and she allowed him, which was a subtle form of acknowledgment.
Together, they moved through the blast wall interior toward the lobby.
Behind them, the sealed panel remained intact, while outside, the thirteen remaining Aberrant signatures headed southeast back toward the park, carrying what they had learned today.
The variants were gone from the pulse entirely.
She noticed that as they walked through the lobby. All three variant signatures, the two that the turrets had taken at the wall and the one that Rens had dropped in the courtyard, absent from the pulse.
She thought about the thirteen Aberrants moving southeast.
She thought about the variant population in the northeast that they still hadn’t fully counted.
She thought about Dr. Kang saying the virus is still mutating in the hallway outside the clinic and the particular quality of that statement in retrospect.
She walked through the lobby beside Michael and looked at the control panel where Maya was still at the turret management interface and Maya looked at both of them, at Sera’s left shoulder and Michael’s forearm, and her face did something complicated that she controlled back down.
"The variants," Maya said.
"All three down," Michael said.
"The Aberrant group withdrew," Maya said.
"Thirteen survivors," he said. "Moving southeast."
Maya looked at the display. "The turrets cycled through thirty one engagements," she said. "The advanced unit tracking maintained target acquisition throughout the approach wave without losing coverage on the priority zones." She paused. "The zone configuration held."
"Yes," he said.
She looked at him. "The northwest turret secondary arc," she said. "The adjustment I made this morning. The north face mid gap. Did it matter."
He thought about the contact and the turret engagement and the coverage analysis running in real time through the battle and looked at her.
"Yes," he said. "It mattered."
She held his gaze for a second and then looked back at the display and he could see her filing that information somewhere specific and he thought that Maya would do something significant with it and he was right but that was later.
Dr. Kang appeared from the clinic doorway and looked at Sera’s shoulder and looked at Michael’s forearm and said "both of you, now" in the tone that wasn’t a suggestion and wasn’t going to become one.
They went.
The clinic was quiet and clean and the overhead light was bright and Dr. Kang worked on Sera’s shoulder first because it was the more serious injury and she worked on it with the focused precision of someone who had been preparing for exactly this since the hospital run and had the supplies and the space and the capability to do it right.
Sera sat on the examination surface and let her work and looked at the ceiling.
Michael sat on the floor outside the clinic doorway with his back against the wall and his right forearm wrapped in the field dressing he’d applied himself because the forearm was a secondary problem and Sera’s shoulder was the primary one and that was the correct prioritization.
He looked at the pulse.
The building interior was clear. The courtyard was clear. The wall exterior showed no active signatures. The thirteen Aberrant survivors were eight blocks southeast, moving in the direction of the park, the signatures compressing together in a way that suggested the group had consolidated after the withdrawal.
The three variant positions in the northeast were empty.
He looked at the northeast for a long moment. Three variants had approached from the northeast. The turrets had taken two at the wall face. One had breached the wall and Rens had taken it in the courtyard. Three total. All three accounted for.
But Gareth had tracked three variants in the northeast.
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