Chapter 8: The Night Shift

The team came through the door two minutes later and made the fuss he'd predicted.

The medic checked my strips, said they were better than hers, and told Eamon to keep the hand dry for ten days.

The director, a gray man I'd only seen from across the hangar, signed off on light duty.

"You can't hold a drawing board," he told Eamon. "Nine will draw to your dictation until it heals."

Eamon opened his mouth to object, and the director was already gone.

So that night we were alone in the lab with the heaters ticking and everyone else asleep.

He sat at the long bench with his bandaged hand flat on a roll of paper.

I stood beside him with a pencil and a ruler and took down every number he said.

He was precise even when he was tired.

"Chamber pressure on the new carbine's gas port," he said. "Point three eight. No, point three six."

"Which?"

"Whichever I said second."

I crossed out the first one.

It was nearly two in the morning.

I leaned across him to reach the far edge of the paper, and my hair slipped out of its tie and swung down beside his arm.

He stopped talking.

The pencil in my hand stopped too.

I could smell cutting oil and coffee and soap on him.

He had one good hand on the bench, and the knuckles had gone pale.

I did not move away from him.

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