Charlotte nodded and hoped her way out would prove just as uneventful.
She followed his directions down the main hall. There was more activity, more sounds than she expected at that time of night. There were lights on in a few of the offices, the squeak of chairs and filing cabinets and keyboards clattering. A door opened down the hall, and a man stepped out, pulled the door shut behind him. Charlotte saw his face, and her legs went numb. She staggered a few steps on stalks of bone and meat, wobbly. Dizzy. Nearly fell.
She lowered her head and scratched the back of her neck, disbelieving. But it was Thurman. Slimmer and older-looking. And then images of Donny curled in a ball and being beaten half to death flooded back. The hallway blurred behind a coat of tears. The white hair, the tall frame. How had she not recognized him then?
“You’re a ways from home, aren’t you?” Thurman asked.
His voice was sandpaper. It was a familiar scratch. As familiar as her mother’s or her father’s voice would’ve been.
“Checking a power drain,” Charlotte said, not stopping or turning, hoping he meant her coveralls and not her gender. How could he not hear that it was her voice? How could he not recognize her gait, her frame, the bare patch of skin on the back of her neck, that few square inches of exposed flesh, anything to betray her?
“See to it,” he said.
She walked a dozen paces. Two dozen. Sweating. Feeling drunk. She waited until she was at the end of the hall, just starting to make the turn, before glancing back toward the security station. Thurman was there in the distance, speaking with the guard, his white hair like the bare sun. Second door on the right, she reminded herself. She was in danger of forgetting the guard’s directions to the comm room, such was the pounding of her heart and the racing of her mind. She took a deep breath and reminded herself why she was there. Seeing Thurman and realizing it was he who had laid into Donny had stunned her. But there was no time for processing that. A door stood before her. She tested the knob, then stepped inside.
????
A lone man sat inside the comm room, staring at a bank of monitors and flashing indicators. He turned in his seat as Charlotte entered, a mug in his hand, a great belly wedged between the armrests. Fine wisps of hair had been combed across an otherwise bald head. He peeled back one of the cups from his ear and lifted his eyebrows questioningly.
There had to be half a dozen radio units scattered across the U-shaped arrangement of workbenches and comfortable chairs. An embarrassment of riches. Charlotte just needed one part.
“Yeah?” the radio operator asked.
Charlotte’s mouth felt dry. One lie had gotten her past the guard; she had one more fib prepared. She cleared her mind of having seen Thurman in the hallway, of images of him kicking her brother.
“Here to fix one of your units,” she said. She pulled a screwdriver from a pocket and briefly imagined having to fight this man, felt a surge of adrenaline. She had to stop thinking like a soldier. She was an electrician. And she needed to get him talking so that she wasn’t. “Which is the one with the bum mic?” She waved her screwdriver across the units. Years of piloting drones and working with computers had taught her one thing: there was always a problem machine. Always.
The radio operator narrowed his eyes. He studied her for a moment, then glanced around the room. “You must mean number two,” he said. “Yeah. The button’s sticky. I’d given up on anyone taking a look.” The chair squeaked as he leaned back and locked his fingers behind his head. His armpits were dark stains. “Last guy said it was minor. Not worth replacing. Said to use it until it gave out.”
Charlotte nodded and went to the machine he had indicated. It was too easy. She attacked the side panel with her driver, her back to the operator.
“You work down on the reactor levels, right?”
She nodded.
“Yeah. Ate across from you in the cafeteria a while back.”
Charlotte waited for him to ask her name again or to resume some conversation he’d had with a different tech. The driver slipped out of her sweaty palm and clattered on the desk. She scooped it back up. She could feel the operator watching her work.
“You think you’ll be able to fix it?”
She shrugged. “I need to take it with me. Should have it back tomorrow.” She pulled the side panel off and loosened the screw holding the microphone’s cord to the casing. The cord itself unplugged from a board inside the machine. On second thought, she undid this board and pulled it out as well. Couldn’t remember if she had one installed already, and it made her look as though she really knew what the hell she was doing.