Marcus had not moved off his tree since they got back. He leaned forward and worked his left boot off, and when it came free there were tears in his eyes. Marcus was tough about this kind of thing. He was suffering.
As he slowly took his sock off, he sucked air through his teeth and winced.
“Sam. Put your light on it and tell me what you see.”
The campground was immediately below them.
“Turn around so we are facing away from the campground,” said Samantha. She got the headlamp out of her hip belt, turned it to the lowest setting, and cupped her hand over it to direct the light.
The back of his heel had a raw patch the size of a quarter where the blister had been. The skin around it was red and shiny for several inches in each direction, and there was swelling all the way up over the bone of his ankle. She put the backs of two fingers against it. It was hot to the touch.
Vlad leaned in to look and quickly backed away.
“That smells like something crawled into your boot and died.”
“Thanks, Vlad.”
“It’s infected,” Samantha said.
“Yeah.” Marcus didn’t look surprised. “I figured.”
She wanted to hit him. He had kept it in the boot for two days so he wouldn’t be the reason they stopped.
“Is it bad?” Marcus asked.
“It’s already worse than bad. Next it goes up your leg.” She turned the light off. “You need antibiotics right now.”
“Great. I’ll add it to the list of things I need.”
He started to pull the sock back up.
“Leave it off. It needs air.”
He sat there with his bare foot out in the cold, looking at it.
“I can’t do six more nights on this,” he said. “I can probably handle another day or two, but then you or Vlad would have to carry me, and Vlad can’t carry anything.”
“I carried the power bank.”
“For a quarter of a mile.”
“Seth,” Marcus said. “Seth would come get us. He’d get in the Range Rover tonight and be here by breakfast.”
“Seth would get in the Range Rover tonight,” Vlad said, “and everybody who is reading his phone would come with him.”
“Nobody’s reading Seth’s phone.”
“I am reading Seth’s phone.”
“He called the three of us for the whole first morning. Then he called a physicist at CU, and after that a lot of people I do not know.” Vlad pulled his hands up into his sleeves. “If I were looking for us, I would go sit in the physicist’s office.”
“What about his burner?”
“The burner is the one number of his I can see without trying.”
“That’s not what a burner’s for.”
“No.”
Vlad hadn’t needed to look any of that up. Samantha figured he had crossed Seth off days ago and not bothered to tell either of them.
“There is the file,” Vlad said.
“No.”
“You have not heard what I was going to say.”
“You were going to say it’s easy.”
“It is easy. We write one line in it and they know we are alive.”
“They want to secure it,” she said. “And me.”
She pulled her knees up and put her arms around them.
Something screamed up the drainage.
It started low and climbed into a high whistle that cracked at the top and then broke into three hard grunts. It was loud.
Samantha didn’t move. Marcus had Vlad’s sleeve in his fist.
“What the fuck was that?” Marcus whispered.
“Elk.”
“That’s not an elk.”
“It’s a bull. He wants a girlfriend.”
“It sounds like somebody is killing a woman,” Vlad said.
“That’s how they ask.”
“So it sounds like Marcus in a bar.”
Marcus let go of the sleeve. “I have never once sounded like that.”
“You have.”
Samantha snorted.
The elk bugled again, lower down, somewhere near the lake.
“Somebody’s going to come in after him,” she said.
“Who.”
“Bowhunters. They walk in before it’s light, sit in the trees where he’s been, and wait for him to come back through.” She looked at the dark slope they were sitting on. “Trees like these.”
“So people with weapons are going to walk toward us in the dark,” Vlad said. “On purpose.”
“Yes.”
“When.”
“They’ll be in here in a few hours.”
Marcus looked down at his foot.
“Up is away from them,” Vlad said.
“I can do up,” Marcus said.
“You could not do down.”
“Say it,” Vlad said.
“What would it take to get to Kestrel and run Persephone.”
She waited for him to kill it.
He didn’t take any time at all.
“A car. Four hours of road. The room, which Eleanor does not have yet. And you in it.”
Four hours of road was inside a day or two. Six nights was not.
“I’ll get the car,” Marcus said.
“From where.”
“From people. I’m good at people.”
“Your face has been on television for a week.”
“I have a beard now.”
Vlad looked at Marcus’s lame beard for a while but then didn’t say anything.
“You said no to this,” Samantha said. “When it was your idea.”
“I said no to six hours on a wire through Mirage. There is no wire. You would be standing next to it.”
“There wasn’t a machine.”
“There is one now. You asked Eleanor for a machine you could use.”
“I wanted to see if it would hold on somebody else’s machine.”
“That is using it.”
“It’s six thousand atoms I’ve never touched,” she said. “I’d have to put everything on it from memory.”
“How long.”
“A night, if it goes well.”
“And if it does not.”
“Then I don’t know. It might not hold at all.”
She was scared of Persephone.
“It’s the two of you,” Marcus said. “That’s the deal. I just get the car.”
“Yes,” Vlad said.
“Yes what,” Samantha said.
“Yes, we go.” He was already getting the Mini out of the bag.
“Fuck,” Samantha said.
He set it back up in the open spot on its kickstand and squatted in front of it until it came up.
“Sixteen,” he said. “And four hours before your people with bows.”
He held the tablet out to Marcus. Samantha took it instead.
“I thought I answered her,” Marcus said.
“Not this one.”
She typed: We’re coming to Broomfield. I’m going to run it. We need the room as soon as he’ll give it to us.
The answer came back in under a minute.
He has not answered me.
I am not going to wait for him.
Then nothing for a while, and then: How are you.
Samantha looked at it for a long time. Then she held the tablet out to Marcus.
“You answer that one.”
Marcus took it in both hands and started typing with his thumbs.