Dust: Chapter 25

"Another serial work" won the poll for this month, but all the suggested options tied, so I rolled a D3 to choose which option and Dust won. Thanks to everyone who voted and I hope you enjoy!

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Chapter 25:

They didn’t see it at first; the emergency lighting hid its approach, but Lorelai did. She grabbed Nicholas’s arm and whispered in his ear. He nodded and shouted a command, pointing where she said to look. Cold white spears of light snapped out from his men, catching the approaching SV in their glare.

Just as he’d seen in his mind’s eye, it was a Lucy, a picture-perfect replica of a human girl. Tangled blonde hair and scared blue eyes made her look like Lorelai’s younger sister. Skittish in disposition and with a lean frame bordering on malnutrition, no one who saw her could help but feel a stab of pity and the desire to help. “Hello?” she repeated, holding a hand up to shield her eyes from the brilliant LED beams shining in her face. “Can I come-”

“Kill it,” Nicholas ordered.

Corporal Krieger was the one to make the shot. The child’s head exploded in a shower of fluid that wasn’t quite the right colour nor viscosity of human blood and a spray of metal that couldn’t be mistaken for anything else. All the child SVs he’d encountered were among the crudest versions of the human models, but that was still relative. There was nothing about them that at first glance would tell you that they were machines.

He didn’t want to think about what more advanced models of these waifs would be like. Maybe their endoskeleton would even be white, so when you shot them you really would think you’d just killed a child. Luckily, hard as it was to pull the trigger on something that almost every human sense told you was a helpless little girl, what you killed wasn’t actually alive.

The report of the gunshot echoed through the comms deck. For a moment, a single treacherously hopeful moment, it seemed like that was all there was. Then came a whisper from the Conglomerate troops on the upper level. “Contact.”

“Hello?” a new voice called. “Is someone there?” That voice, carrying a slight Germanic accent, was known to the soldiers too.

Model 025, ‘Hans’. A middle-aged man who was supposed to have lost his much of his sight, but those milky white eyes worked as well as those of the other models. 025s were good at pretending otherwise. “Hello?” it called again, feigning its stumbling way through the desks. “Is someone there? Please, I need-”

A bracket of gunfire from the upper level silenced the plea, but more doors started to open. With the very codes that the staff had tried to use to save themselves, the machines were letting themselves onto the comms deck, their prey herded like cattle. SVs weren’t usually this prepared. They’d set traps, but not like this.

They waited for us to walk right into the pen.

The comm center wasn’t just compromised; it was infested. How it had happened, Nicholas could only guess. Something had gotten in and despite the lockout had let others in. Or maybe they’d found their own way in and powered down, waiting for whatever desperate idiots that made their way here.

“Multiple signals!” a Connie called out. “Christ, they’re all around us!”

More motion sensors started to sound off. “Captain,” Nicholas called to D’Antonio. “Your call?” They didn’t know enemy numbers. They had more than thirty soldiers here. It should be more than enough to handle a few guard dogs. Should, but the comm deck was too open with too many ways to get onto it. It wasn’t supposed to be a battleground. Against an armed enemy, it would be a slaughterhouse with neither side having cover, but outside of Lorelai, the SVs didn’t use guns. They came right at you, over and through anything in their way. The more primitive models wouldn’t even try to duck or dodge. If there were just a couple of those types, this would be the best place to make their stand.

If it wasn’t, if there were more of them or some of the smarter ones, then things got dicier. They might be able to hold anyways, but..

But for what? The power to the array had been cut. They’d have to repair it. Was the damage as simple as a skinjob shutting down a junction box, or had they cut through some of the power lines? Was the reactor still operational or had it been taken down? The 030 and 040 series were smart enough to do that. What was worth standing out in the open for? What should they-

“Movement,” one of the Connies on the top level reported, cutting Nicholas’s thoughts short. “There’s something else up here, it must have got in when the other-”

His words were cut off in a clatter of mechanical limbs, a burst of gunfire and then a scream. The scream. A shriek that every living soul on Alcatar heard in their nightmares, a sound that never, ever left your mind, one that was seared into you from the first time you heard until the day you died... and all too often, what separated those moments was only a span of seconds.

It was meant to demoralize humans. Once just a byproduct of the first-generation machines’ movement through substrate, amplified and enhanced to make them more effective terror weapons, now it was an intrinsic part of every SV. They screamed when they attacked. Not before to give you any forewarning. Not after as a cry of victory. Only in the same instant that they committed to killing you.

Whatever God-awful machine was up there, it’s scream was so loud it overwhelmed the cries of a dying man and the sounds of cutting, but it ended with gunshots. “Randal’s down!” another voice reported. “It-it was an 032. It’s neutralized, but-”

He didn’t need to say anything after that. The second and only other time an SV would scream was when it heard the killing cry of another SV. In their original incarnation, an entire field would shake with the cacophony of the hunter-killers’ overlapping shrieks as they bored in, internal sensors confirming the presence of prey, the screams never stopping until there was nothing left to kill.

Those screams started now, echoing through corridors, bouncing off walls until there was no beginning, no end and no picking out individual voices. There could have been half a dozen of them. There could have been a hundred. Maybe they were some of the original machine-like versions, the disgusting reinterpretations of animals like the lizards, skinless dogs, oversized insects and ape-like monstrosities, or maybe there were more skinjobs.

Even the first models could move when they wanted to. He’d seen a pair of children, a David and a Cassandra, racing after a bloodied duster, arms held out at their sides, saws whirring, jaws open, screaming as they gained ground...

He remembered the shouts of his comrades, their arms outstretched as they urged the running man on...

“Don’t look back, Saul! Don’t look back, keep running! For God’s sake, keep running!”

“Collins,” the Connie sergeant belted out, her voice breaking through the shrill cries. “Get down here now!”

The surviving scout practically threw himself down the stairs. His fallen comrade’s dog tags were wrapped in his right fist and he quickly joined the rest of the Connie contingent.

Nicholas stepped back. “How many?” he asked Lorelai. Sweat was beading on his brow. Second by second, the screams got louder. “How many are out there?”

“Seven close. I hear another five further back. There might be more.”

“That’s a pretty big rearguard.”

“You brought in more than thirty people,” she pointed out.

He couldn’t argue there. The first three machines were just the closest ones. The others would coordinate, push through together. Twelve models, maybe more. His people had a lot of firepower, but fighting SVs wasn’t like fighting humans. They didn’t go into shock. They didn’t die from blood loss or concussive effects. They didn’t feel pain. A man would feel a bullet in his gut. He’d stumble when shrapnel cut his throat open and he started to bleed out. He’d fall to the ground and wail when an arm was blown away. SVs didn’t. They just kept coming.

“Captain!” Nicholas called out again. He had to shout to be heard. “Stay or go? I need an answer.”

D’Antonio looked at him. The other captain’s face was carved from wax, an admission of defeat captured on every crease of his patrician features. “We run.”

Nicholas didn’t hesitate. “Back to the entrance!” he called out, his throat aching from the effort he had to put into being heard. “Shei, Dunst – take point and secure our route!”

“Hutchins, Johnson,” Omerta snapped at a hand signal from D’Antonio. “Rearguard. Move, people. We are leaving!”

The soldiers fell back, faces taut, eyes darting through a room filled with flashing shadows and uncertain uncertain orange glow. The crashes of something heavy dropping onto the first floor came within seconds of their retreat. The screams rose as whatever was behind them pursued. Gunfire chattered in response. There was no sound of impact.

“Go go go move move move!” Mallory was at the door to the comms deck, ushering every man and woman through with sweeps of his hand. There was a human scream from behind them, swallowed by the machines’ shrieks. Someone was a fraction of a second too slow, now another soul that wouldn’t make it out of the room.

No one waited. They couldn’t. They slammed the doors back in place the instant the last man was through. Half a dozen soldiers threw their weight against it, holding it shut as one of the Connies and Cortez pulled out pocket welders. Something slammed against the door from the other side. The metal dented. Another blow. The door rocked in its frame as the machines tried to pull it open. Men shouted, heaving back. The welders flashed, molten metal dripping and sparks flying.

“Merc!” the Conglomerate tech shouted as he fused the door to its frame. The screaming was so close it made his teeth ache, his head pounding like someone was driving screws through his skull.

“Yeah!” Cortez belted back, his eyes squinting against the blinding plasma torch. The door shook with another inhumanly strong blow. It wouldn’t hold. Not unless they got this done, and fast.

“Ten seconds!”

“Seven!”

The door bucked as the machines tried to pull it open, but with every inch that was soldered, the door budged less and less.

“Five!” The Connie roared. Sweat dripped from his brow. He ignored the heat from the torch.

“Two!” Cortez promised. A single breath, then: “Done!”

“Done!”

The techs jumped back from the door, the men releasing it. It shuddered now, but didn’t give. At least, not for a while. They’d bought some time. Maybe enough to-

Then they heard it. The shriek of metal against metal on the other side. “They’re cutting through!” Someone shouted. Heavier saws. Not the lighter, thinner blades of smaller models, but the ones meant to carve through armour as easily as bone. Something big was on the other side of that door and it wanted out. It wanted to kill the humans on the other side and something as flimsy as an inch and a half of solid metal wasn’t about to stop it.

“Keep moving!” Nicholas ordered. The time they’d just bought had just been cut away. “Fall back, back to our entry point!”

“Don’t split off!” D’Antonio belted at his men, the captains imposing order on the wave of panic that threatened to sweep over the troops, keeping lifesaving discipline in place. “Move at speed, but stay on the line! Tailgunner formation!”

Behind them, the door gave way with a crash. The screams followed, fast on the troops’ heels as the machines gave chase. A pair of Connies at the head of the formation ducked against the walls, covering the withdrawing squads, replaced by another pair in turn. Nicholas’s people led the withdrawal, covering hallways and side corridors, but the comm center was a warren of short sight lines and intersecting passages. It wasn’t supposed to be a last stand. It wasn’t meant to let fleeing soldiers have the advantage against an enemy that wanted to cut them to pieces.

A blur of movement and a woman screamed. It ended as soon as it started. Her head rolled one direction, her body fell another. The stumps of her neck were ragged. It wasn’t a clean cut, but it had sawed through her in an instant.

Gunfire crashed, bullets sparking from walls and floors, but the thing that had a killed her, a whip-thin horror of stick limbs, teeth and blades vanished down a corridor. Model 010. Dogs with no skin and metal bones, black holes for eyes and a revving blade hidden in a mouth that could split wider than any dog’s could. Nicholas hated those things. He hated all the animal variants, but the dogs most of all. They were built with their skeleton exposed, bare ribs and fleshless skulls, like a corpse dragged out of the ground and remade into a parody of life.

They stared at you from those dark pits, the lenses of their cameras sunken into the empty sockets of their skulls, making it look like they had no eyes at all. Claws clicked on stone, dirt and tile as they approached, tails wagging in a pantomime of instincts and emotions that these things never had and could never feel.

Only an idiot wasn’t frightened of the SVs, but the 010s were the one model that Nicholas could admit to being truly scared of. He’d see one of them kill with the saw in their heads, their snout and jaws splitting open to let it push forward like blades on the original designs. It had jammed that whirring circular saw into a man’s stomach, the blade chewing through his ribs as its clawed forefeet dug into his guts, pulling his intestines out one ragged loop at a time.

“Kawalsky!” he’d begged through a mouth full of frothing blood. “Please...”

Nicholas had hated him, but not enough hold back a bullet. The 010’s head had whipped up the instant its prey died, zeroing in on him next...

Something came out of the darkness, arms extended-

-Nicholas turned, but he’d never get his gun up in time-

-a blur slammed into him, knocking him to the ground and out of the machine’s path as it careened right into the oncoming SV like a cannonball-

-it was Lorelai, the woman bodychecking the other SV so hard it spun, bouncing off the wall and crashing to the floor. It didn’t try to rise. From the ground, Nicholas’s light caught the edges of a hole in its torso left by one of Lorelai’s impaling spikes, the woman’s weapon already retracted. He shot the dead machine anyways, more so that anyone who glanced at it would think the damage was from his gun. He pulled himself back to his feet and grabbed her arm. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “Are you?”

“I’m fine,” he said. “Keep going.” He gave her a shove back towards the column of men and women, following after her. A few seconds, a matter of heartbeats and she’d saved his life again. He’d lost count by now.

The retreating soldiers slammed doors behind them, buying a few extra seconds with each. One of the rearguard teams hesitated too long before falling back to join the rest and then, the number of dead went from three to five.

The Alliance troops took firing positions at the main doors to the comm center, covering the Conglomerate troops as they filed out. Rifle fire thundered and cracked as the Alliance soldiers shot at anything that wasn’t human. Most of what they hit was only flickering shadows and tricks of the light, but Nicholas saw something fall as its legs were shot out from under it. It kept coming, crawling forward with its hands.

He was at the door panel, ready to close it. D’Antonio was ushering his men through, Jacobs counting heads as their sergeant pulled the last man through by his collar. “Shut it!” D’Antonio yelled to Nicholas. “Shut it now!”

Nicholas slammed the close button. The heavy double-panel doors ground shut, their teeth locking together, sealing the comm center off from Alliance HQ once again. Something pounded on the other side, but these were heavy security doors, rated to withstand breaching efforts from plasma cutters to demo charges. Even an SV couldn’t cut through them easily. You’d need industrial equipment, something that – he hoped – the machines didn’t yet have an answer for.

“Lieutenant Khatri,” Kawalsky said. “Give me a headcount.” He turned to Lorelai, looking at her. “You sure you’re all right?” he asked. He could still feel the tug on his coat as the SVs blade ripped out towards him, catching fabric and less than an inch from sinking into his chest. He didn’t even remember its face. All he’d seen was the claws and saw blade. Machine-perfect timing.

“It just got a little bit of cloth,” she confirmed. Her right sleeve was cut through, but there was no blood. “I’m fine.”

“You were lucky. It could have killed you,” he told her like she was a living being who’d just taken an insane risk. He wasn’t even thinking about covering for her; his concern was real. He didn’t know what he’d do if he lost her. Lorelai wasn’t ‘just a machine’, and he was starting to realize that she hadn’t been for longer than he’d thought.

“Sir,” Rashid stepped up. “We lost Kim.”

Nicholas closed his yes. Damn it. Trenton had been a reliable soldier. He hadn’t even seen him go down. “Understood.” He turned to the Conglomerates. “Your people?”

“Five,” D’Antonio answered. His voice was hoarse. “We lost five. For nothing. For absolutely nothing.”

“We had to try,” Nicholas told him.

“Yes.” There was a moment of quiet as the other captain struggled to pull himself back into a picture of composure. “I know.” The men he’d lost had been those he’d known the longest, the ones who’d survived the harrowing hike across hostile territory and pushed through the slaughterhouse of Alliance HQ. They hadn’t just been names on a roster. They’d been his people and he had to feel about them the same way Nicholas did every time he lost someone. The same way he felt about losing Kim.

Private Trenton Kim had been quick with jokes, most of which were funny only in how unfunny they were and how he kept trying to make his squadmates laugh. He’d had a Golden Desert cactus back at the hive that he said was his ‘emotional support plant’ and he was a shameless and irredeemable cheat at cards, but so good-natured about it that you couldn’t help but deal him back in even after you caught him. D’Antonio could probably tell stories like that about each of the five people he’d lost.

“Captain,” Kawalsky said. “Captain.” D’Antonio looked up.

“We should head back.”

The Conglomerate captain nodded, casting a final look at the door, still reverberating with the muted thuds of the machines trapped behind it as they tried to break it down. “Yes,” he agreed. “Let’s move out.”

~

“That could have gone better,” Rashid commented when the group was back at ‘base camp’. He was sitting on a spool of industrial wire half as tall as a man. “We lost a half dozen people just to get a dial tone.”

Saying morale was low in the wake of their excursion was an understatement. Everyone on the mission had risked their lives to get here and contact Earth, to let them know that they needed to be evacuated. Instead, they’d found out that the planet that they’d been told was essential to the Alliance’s future had been left to rot along with everyone on it. The war had just moved to another front and the companies had shaken hands and agreed to bury the past.

It was probably the first time they’d agreed on anything, but Alcatar was radioactive, and not just from fallout from the Conglomerate’s bombs. Whichever company inherited the planet inherited all its problems. Easier to make a clean break and move on to the next system. Better for the shareholders, too.

Not so much the poor fucks on the ground though, right?

Nicholas could only nod. “There’s not a lot of sugar to coat this,” he agreed. “But we’ve still got hope.”

“Begging your pardon, captain sir,” one of the men spoke up. It was Cortez. He and Kim had served in the same unit for nearly four years, going from FNGs all the way up to veterans. He was still processing his friend’s death. There was a burn scar on his cheek from where a bit of molten metal had landed while he’d been welding the doors. “But what fucking hope?”

There was a sour rumble from the rest of the assembled soldiers. “There were more than thirty of us,” Shei put in. “And we still got our asses kicked on our own damn home ground!”

“We lost someone,” Nicholas replied. “It’s never easy. It never should be easy, but we didn’t get ‘our asses kicked’. We knew from the start that there might still be SVs in the comm center, and we got out of there with only one loss. Other teams would have gotten wiped out. You’ve all seen that happen before; you’ve lived it. We stayed together and we got out alive. Kim was a good soldier. He knew the risks for this mission and he volunteered anyways. He’d want us to keep going.”

“Keep going for what, captain?” That was Corporal Krieger. The woman’s dark eyes were empty, staring straight ahead. “Earth threw us away. Like garbage. We’ve been fighting for them for years and they just threw us away.”

“No, they didn’t,” he corrected. At the confused and borderline angry looks he got, he continued. “They’d have to come pick us up before they could throw us away.” That got a few morbid chuckles from his people. Some soldiers, officers and noncoms alike, were hardline company men. They’d find a way to excuse anything the Alliance did. This was Nicholas’s way of reminding his people that he wasn’t one of them. He shared their frustration – their anger, but he was still their captain. He couldn’t let them sit and stew.

“But don’t count us out yet. Alliance HQ didn’t sever their connection to us like the Connies’ did. They heard us. Maybe someone out there will have an attack of conscience and come riding to the rescue, but we won’t sit around waiting for that. This wasn’t our last chance.” He raised a hand to stifle any comments. As far as the unit knew, the pulse-comm had been their last chance to get off-world before winter hit, and the captain’s comments was news to them.

The corporal tilted her head. “Sir?” She glanced towards the squad’s sergeant, Mallory standing impassive, his arms crossed over his chest. He didn’t say a word. Just gave her a nod that was sergeant-speak for the captain knows what he’s about. “Does this have anything to do with what happened in-”

Nicholas raised a hand to cut her off. “Not here. At least, not right now.” He nodded towards Khatri, Mitchum and Mallory. Rashid knew what Lorelai had found. The 2nd lieutenant and sergeant didn’t know exactly what it was, but Mallory had read between the lines and Mitchum was young, not naive. They knew the situation had changed, just not how much it had. “I just need you to trust me a little more,” he said.

“We have this far, sir,” Krieger answered. Just in the last few moments, her demeanour had changed, the despair replaced with fresh determination. “What’s the harm in doing it a bit longer?”

~

Richard was leaning against the walkway’s railing, looking down into the bottom of the concourse. Randal. Sato. Maclearn. Duqui. Beechem. He’d known them all, some better than others. Sato had been a security officer pressed into service once the cutters started draining the well of the APF’s regular forces. Randal had been a convict whose penal contract ATC had bought up, giving him the choice between continued incarceration or a tour in the APF. Maclearn had taken pride in his ‘pure Scottish ancestry’, though Dekin was pretty sure he was as Scottish as Mac had been; when the war on Alcatar ended, the other man had said he was going to visit the ‘misty moors of his homeland’. Duqui had been quiet, but he’d always known how to get something that you were looking for, whether it was extra alcohol rations, morally questionable publications or just extra spare parts. Beechem had never shut up about his girl in Proxima Centauri. Active service paid better than back-line posts, and he’d been saving for a ring.

“God damn it,” Richard muttering, staring into nothing.

“Rough day, huh,” Gilcrest said. Her first name was Sandy. She had red hair, freckles and a permanent baby face. She was also a little too interested in making things go boom, which made her an excellent sapper – and held in a certain level of healthy suspicion by the others in the unit.

“Not the best one we’ve had,” Dekin answered. “But not the worst, either.”

Sandy laughed. “Yeah,” she agreed. “Not the worst, but still. Rough day.” She paused. “I’m glad your sweetheart made it out.”

“She’s not my sweetheart.” Richard protested. “We’ve had a couple conversations, that’s all.” He let out a breath. “But I’m glad, too.”

“Not just because the pickings otherwise are slim?” she asked with a tilt of her head and an off-kilter smile.

Richard raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’re getting jealous.” He’d made a pass at her when they’d first met, but she said he wasn’t her type. Two years later, he was still trying to figure out what her type actually was.

“No, I’m just excited that you might be able to have a date with someone other than Ms. Palm and her five daughters.”

“If I do, maybe we can double date with you and Monsieur Table Corner.”

She punched him in the shoulder. “Fuck you, Dekin.” She got more serious, looking out at the open expanse in front of them. “Rough day, though.”

“Yeah,” the other soldier agreed. “Rough day.”

The woman let out a long breath. “It’s not over yet. Captain wants to talk to us. Sergeant sent me to find you. No comms.”

“What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” Sandy confessed with a sigh. “But from the vibes Omerta was giving off... let’s hope you made a bigger impression on the duster than you thought. For her sake.”

~

Lorelai was checking the vents. The Conglomerate soldiers had done a good job of securing their position here in the Alliance HQ. They were the survivors of many painful and costly lessons and they’d taken what they’d learned to heart, but there were still vulnerabilities. Now that the others of her kind knew there were humans here, they’d stop at nothing to get to them. Even the reinforced doors between the comm center and the rest of the HQ wouldn’t hold forever.

They’d have to leave soon. Nicholas was already planning on it; she didn’t have to have spoken with him to know that, though the hornet’s nest they’d kicked was only part of the reason.

Lorelai paused at a barricaded vent, fingers tracing along the weld seams of some metal bars that had been placed over the grating to reinforce it. The smaller Second Built would have trouble getting through them. She wouldn’t, and she could have made herself fit in that small space. Her endoskeleton could reconfigure to some degree, and she had no organs that needed to stay in one place. By dislocating her limbs and compressing her torso, she could have wriggled her way through the vent. She’d never needed to use that particular skill before. Few of the Second Built had, she’d wager – if she had anything to wager. If one of them manage to compress itself, it might be able to get through here. If they’d stayed longer, she’d have to mention that to Nicholas.

Working her way up from the lowest levels, the machine woman soon found herself on the floor the Conglomerate soldiers used the most. There weren’t as many out and about as she’d expected, and that made her curious.

By instinct rather than intent, she circumnavigated the few sentries she did encounter, moving with cat-footed silence through the halls, drawn inexorably to the signs of human life. Heartbeats. Breath. The warmth of living bodies. Even the scent of skin, sweat and flesh. Her sensors revealed them all, everything that called all other Second Variety to kill, to unleash blades and Scream... she could have done it here, leaving a trail of bodies as easily as footprints, but she didn’t really feel like it.

Instead, she ghosted by the watchful men and woman, none of them ever knowing how easily their lives could have ended if Lorelai wasn’t who and what she was. She followed the voices, getting close enough to hear them through the walls. Captain D’Antonio was speaking to his men. She froze, eyes widening. Then, even faster than she had come, she disappeared.

The sound of hurried footsteps caught the attention of a Conglomerate sentry. He turned, looking down an open corridor but, of course, there was no one there.

~

“Nicholas.” Lorelai appeared in the Alliance bunk room like she’d materialized there, making a beeline for Kawalsky. He was talking to Danny, but sent the younger LT on his way when he saw the expression on her face.

“What is it?” he asked. He’d never seen her this serious.

“They know,” she told him. “About the letter.”

He touched his jacket pocket, then froze as his fingers found a ragged edge of fabric. The pocket was empty, missing both Hamamoto’s notepad and Potter’s final testament, but it was the latter that made his heart skip a beat. The attack in the hallway. Lorelai had knocked him out of the SV’s path and his coat must have gotten torn. In the rush to withdraw, he hadn’t noticed anything missing, but someone...

...someone picked it up.

“Khatri,” he said, catching Rashid’s attention. “Keep an eye on the men. I have to speak to D’Antonio.”

“Now, sir?”

“Right now.”

He didn’t get very far. The Conglomerate officer was coming to meet them. His men were following, assembled behind him on the walkway and on next level up. They were armed. As soon as he saw Nicholas approaching, he signalled for his people to stop. Holding the Alliance captain’s gaze, he reached into his own coat pocket and pulled out Potter’s letter, deliberately mimicking where Nicholas had kept it and he held it up like an indictment.

“Captain Kawalsky,” he began. His expression was cold stone, but in his eyes there was anger, the very same anger that Nicholas knew he’d feel if the roles here were reversed.

“Can we talk?”