Chapter 13: What Corin Kept

Corin had the roof watch, and he had asked for it.

At four in the morning, Ashbourne was a black valley with one lit window, and the lit window was hers.

He stayed away from it and looked at the gate road instead.

The television had said Port Alder only hours ago, and he had been waiting for the dead to come south since the day he woke.

He knew how they walked.

He had known it for years, and he had known it for three weeks in a body that had never seen one.

On the seventeenth of October he had woken on his bunk at Fort Ashcombe with a clean uniform on the chair and no scars.

He had sat there holding his own hands for an hour.

Then he had packed his bag, because he knew Rhys would call, and he knew what the call would be about.

He had not known it would be Jessa's voice behind the call.

She had been alive on the other end of that phone, and he had stood in the barracks with his back against the lockers, unable to breathe.

Now she had told them how she died, and he had walked out of the room.

He knew exactly how she died.

He had helped.

The Director had sat across a steel table from him, warm and tired and sorry, and said the general wanted Jessa on his list.

Corin had said no, and she had offered a trade.

His clearance and his silence, in a sealed unit as a volunteer, and the girl's name came off the list.

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