- Chapter 6 -
The People Who Remembered Their Names
Embedded Files
AUSTIN CLOUT: THE RELATION OF EUGENE NIX
AUSTIN CLOUT: THE RELATION OF EUGENE NIX
By: Michael David Simmons
Volume 1
Volume 1
Chapter 6 — The People Who Remembered Their Names
Chapter 6 — The People Who Remembered Their Names
Morning did not fix Moriah Junction.
The sun rose anyway.
That was one of God’s habits Austin Clout appreciated most. The world could be on fire, wicked men could be running laboratories under dead rail stations, secret machines could be humming under the bones of the South, and still the light came up over pine needles, mud, and broken track like Heaven had no intention of surrendering the schedule.
Austin sat on the edge of the collapsed platform with the cracked railroad lantern beside him and both boots in the swamp water.
He had not meant to sit down.
His body had voted.
Everything hurt. His burned hand throbbed. His shoulder pulsed with each heartbeat. His back felt like somebody had driven a fence post through it and then asked for directions. Mud covered his jeans. His jacket was torn in three places. There was dried blood on his eyebrow, and he had no memory of when it had stopped bleeding.
But Ace Neumanson was free.
That made the pain behave.
Across the platform, Eugene Nix knelt in the wet grass with Ace wrapped inside her coat. She had him seated on an overturned freight crate, both hands on his shoulders, her forehead pressed to his. She was speaking to him softly. Austin could not hear the words over the low murmur of the rescued adults, the dripping station roof, and the distant groan of the flooded ward settling beneath them.
He did not need to hear.
Some conversations belonged to the people who had been robbed of them.
Ace looked smaller in daylight.
In the ward, he had seemed like a symbol because everybody had been trying to make him one. Anchor. Pattern. Subject. Proof. Relation. A boy strapped above a glowing glass river became a prophecy against his will.
Outside, under the morning sky, he was just a child with wet hair, pale cheeks, and bare feet wrapped in Eugene’s scarf.
That was holier than prophecy.
Josiah Creed limped over and lowered himself onto the platform beside Austin with a grunt that sounded like it had traveled through several bad decades.
“You sit like a man wondering whether he died and Texas followed him,” Josiah said.
Austin looked at him. “You got a poetic diagnosis for everything?”
“When a man spends thirty years underground, he either learns poetry or starts arguing with pipes.”
“You argue with pipes?”
“Only the proud ones.”
Austin almost laughed, then winced.
Josiah noticed. “You got ribs mad at you.”
“I’ve got ribs filing lawsuits.”
The older man nodded toward the lantern. “That thing yours?”
“It was my daddy’s.”
“That ain’t what I asked.”
Austin looked at the lantern.
Its glass was cracked from top to bottom now, but the flame still burned low inside. Gold, with a thin thread of blue moving through it like a quiet river under sunlight.
“I don’t know,” Austin said. “Feels more like I’m borrowing it from a responsibility.”
Josiah took that in.
Then he looked toward Eugene and Ace.
“She yours?”
Austin blinked. “Eugene?”
“No. The responsibility.”
Austin leaned back on his palms and stared out over the flooded tracks. “I reckon she is now.”
The rescued adults gathered in small clusters around the ruined station. Some sat in the mud. Some leaned against posts. Some stared at the sky with expressions so open that looking at them felt like trespassing. A few had found blankets from the Bronco. Others wore lab coats or pale ward clothing that hung off their bodies like bad memories.
Nobody had run.
That surprised Austin at first.
Then he understood.
A man who escaped one cage did not automatically know where freedom was.
He only knew where the cage had been.
A woman with close-cropped gray hair stood near the old station clock, touching the cracked face as if trying to remember time. A younger man knelt beside a puddle and watched his reflection shake in the water. Two women held hands and whispered names back and forth.
Names.
That was what began happening after the bells.
It started small.
Josiah Creed had said his own first.
My name is Josiah Creed.
Then the others followed.
Ruth.
Malcolm.
Ana.
Wade.
Caroline.
Deacon.
Sarai.
Thomas Bell, which made three people laugh and Thomas cry because he had not heard himself called anything except W-31 in so long that his real name felt like a rescue all by itself.
Some could not remember yet.
Those hurt Austin most.
A man would open his mouth and only a letter would come out. A woman would say three names and not know which one belonged to her. A younger fellow with a scar along his temple kept repeating, “I had a dog,” as if the dog’s name might drag his own back behind it.
Tilda Delgado’s voice crackled through the radio at Eugene’s belt.
“Deborah is five minutes out.”
Austin reached for the handset, but Josiah beat him to it with surprising speed.
“Who is Deborah?”
Mercy’s voice exploded through the speaker. “That better not be a man asking disrespectful questions about my tow truck.”
Josiah stared at the handset.
Austin took it from him. “Mercy, we’ve got survivors. Maybe thirty. Some hurt, most disoriented. Ward Station Nine is flooding below us. Dr. Wrong escaped by helicopter.”
There was a long silence.
Then Mercy said, “I’m bringing everybody who can drive, cook, pray, lift, or lie to police with confidence.”
“That’s a wide net.”
“It’s Texas adjacent. Nets are wide.”
Tilda’s voice came through behind hers. “Do not let anyone wander back toward the station. If the underground structure collapses, the soil may go with it.”
Austin looked at the platform.
The station creaked.
“I had that suspicion.”
“You usually do after danger arrives.”
“Ma’am, danger’s been early all morning.”
Eugene came over with Ace leaning against her side.
The boy held the lantern in both hands now. Austin had taken it back once they cleared the shaft, but Ace kept looking at it. Finally, Austin gave it to him because some tools decide who they want to comfort.
The lantern burned softer in Ace’s grip.
Eugene’s face had changed.
Not healed.
Not calm.
Changed.
There was still terror in her eyes. Still exhaustion. Still the raw wound of learning her mother had been “archived” by the same people who stole her son. But now there was something else standing in the wreckage.
Claim.
Ace leaned into her as if he expected the world to take her away if he stopped touching her for even a second.
Austin understood that better than he wanted to.
Eugene looked at Josiah. “You knew my mother.”
Josiah’s face tightened.
“I knew her voice.”
“What was her name?”
He looked away toward the swamp.
Eugene’s hand went still on Ace’s shoulder.
Austin watched her prepare herself for another theft.
Josiah said, “Lydia.”
Eugene closed her eyes.
“Lydia Nix,” Josiah continued. “Before Nix, she was Lydia Vale. I don’t know if that helps you. Names got shuffled in that place like cards.”
Eugene opened her eyes, wet and furious. “It helps.”
“She sang when the tone got bad. Not loud. Just enough that folks knew there was a person still in the room.”
Ace looked up. “I heard her.”
Eugene turned to him.
The boy’s voice was small but steady. “Not like ears. Inside. When the big signal made everything white, I heard a woman singing sometimes.”
Eugene pressed her lips together to keep from breaking.
Ace lowered his gaze. “Was she my grandmother?”
Eugene knelt in front of him.
“Yes,” she said. “I think she was.”
Ace considered that with the grave seriousness of a child trying to build a family out of stolen parts.
“Did she know me?”
Eugene took both of his hands.
“I believe she did.”
Josiah’s voice went rough. “She knew there was a child coming. She said the line was not finished.”
Eugene looked at him sharply. “What does that mean?”
Josiah shook his head. “I don’t know. People talked in pieces down there. If you had a whole thought, the ward tried to take it apart. But she said that more than once. The line is not finished. The child will hear the rail. The conductor will be late, but he will come.”
Austin looked at the lantern.
Then at Ace.
Then at the old tracks disappearing under black water.
“I don’t care for being predicted,” he said.
Ace looked at him. “You were late.”
Austin stared.
The boy’s face stayed solemn.
Then the corner of his mouth twitched.
Eugene saw it and made a sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob.
Austin pointed at Ace. “First joke after liberation. Proud of you.”
Ace looked uncertain. “Was it good?”
“It was personal. That counts.”
A rumble rose from beneath the platform.
Everyone froze.
The old station groaned as the flooded structure below shifted. A section of track near the east end sank six inches into the mud. Steam hissed from between boards.
Austin stood too fast and nearly fell.
Josiah caught his elbow.
“Careful.”
“I’m redefining it slower now.”
Eugene pulled Ace closer.
Austin raised his voice. “Everybody away from the platform! Move toward the tree line! Help whoever’s next to you!”
The rescued subjects began moving, some quickly, some slowly, some with the strange obedience of people still learning that instructions could be meant for their survival instead of their containment.
A woman named Ruth helped Thomas Bell across a broken rail. A younger man who only remembered the dog helped an older woman through the mud. Josiah limped beside Ace and Eugene with one hand on a broken walking stick, refusing help until Tilda arrived and insulted his pride.
The station gave another deep groan.
Then the platform at the far end buckled.
It did not collapse all at once. It folded inward slowly, like a tired animal lowering itself to the ground. Water surged up through the boards. The hanging sign, already fallen, slid into the mud and sank halfway beneath the black surface.
Moriah Junction had survived abandonment.
It had survived storms.
It had survived becoming a mask for a secret ward.
But morning after truth was harder on it.
By the time Mercy arrived, the survivors were gathered under the pines.
Deborah came first, engine roaring, red paint scraped, front bumper bent from the collision with the Sun Reich van, tow rig still rattling like a musical instrument designed by a mechanic with unresolved anger. Behind her came Tilda in a white church van with a blue stripe down the side and JESUS IS LORD painted on the rear window in peeling letters. Behind that came two pickup trucks, a cattle trailer, and a sedan missing one hubcap.
Mercy kicked open Deborah’s door before the truck fully stopped.
She took one look at Austin, one look at Eugene, one look at Ace, and her face changed so completely that Austin would remember it long after the mud dried.
Her fierceness did not vanish.
It bowed.
She walked to Eugene and Ace without saying a word.
Eugene stiffened.
Mercy stopped two feet away, as if asking permission without making Eugene answer out loud.
Ace looked up at her.
Mercy’s eyes shone.
“Hey, baby,” she said softly. “I’m Mercy.”
Ace studied her.
Then he looked at the bat in her hand.
“Do you hit bad people?”
Mercy sniffed once. “I provide correction.”
Ace nodded.
“That’s good.”
Mercy covered her mouth, turned away, and took three steps before pointing at Austin with the bat.
“You.”
Austin straightened. “Yes, ma’am.”
“You look terrible.”
“I’ve heard.”
“You rescue children looking like that?”
“Didn’t want to overdress.”
She hit him in the shoulder.
Not the bad shoulder, because Mercy saw everything.
“Ow.”
“That’s for almost dying.”
“I did not almost die.”
Eugene looked at him. “You absolutely almost died.”
Josiah raised one hand. “As a witness, he spent a considerable amount of time near death’s porch.”
Ace nodded solemnly. “The porch had rails.”
Austin looked at the boy. “Whose side are you on?”
Ace leaned harder into Eugene.
“Mom’s.”
Austin put a hand over his heart. “Correct answer.”
Tilda Delgado emerged from the church van carrying a medical kit in one hand and a thermos in the other. She wore boots, a quilted jacket over her pink robe, and the expression of a woman who considered chaos a guest that had overstayed.
She surveyed the survivors.
Then she looked at Austin.
Then Eugene.
Then Ace.
The old woman set down the thermos, crossed herself, and touched Ace’s cheek with the back of two fingers.
“Child,” she said, “you are welcome under my roof.”
Ace blinked.
He did not seem to know how to receive welcome.
Tilda understood.
She did not ask him to respond.
She turned to the group. “Food in the van. Blankets in the trailer. First aid by the tailgate. If you can walk, help someone who cannot. If you can remember your name, tell it to Mercy so she can write it down. If you cannot remember your name, you are still a person and will be treated as such until memory catches up.”
A silence followed.
Then people began to move.
Tilda clapped her hands once. “That was not decorative. Move.”
They moved.
Mercy started collecting names on the back of an old receipt pad, writing them with a carpenter pencil she found behind Deborah’s visor. Every time someone said a name, she repeated it back like a judge entering truth into record.
“Ruth.”
“Ruth.”
“Malcolm.”
“Malcolm.”
“Ana.”
“Ana.”
“Thomas Bell.”
Mercy looked up. “Strong name.”
Thomas wept again.
Mercy wrote it down carefully.
Austin watched from beside the Bronco while Tilda wrapped his burned hand. She did it with no sympathy in her fingers, which was good because sympathy would have made him notice the pain more.
“You are dehydrated,” Tilda said.
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Possibly concussed.”
“Possibly often.”
“Shoulder injured.”
“I disagree.”
She pressed two fingers near the joint.
Austin saw a bright white star behind his eyes.
“I withdraw the disagreement.”
“You will need a doctor.”
Austin looked toward the survivors. “We got one?”
Tilda glanced at Dr. Wrong’s vanished helicopter path. “One we like?”
“Fair.”
Eugene sat with Ace on the church van’s back step. Someone had found socks for him, too large and gray. He wore them pulled halfway up his calves. He held a paper cup of hot chocolate in both hands and watched the steam rise as if it might try to escape too.
Mercy brought him a biscuit.
Ace stared at it.
“It’s food,” Mercy said.
“I know.”
“You want it?”
“I don’t know.”
Mercy sat on the bumper beside him.
“Sometimes the body knows before the mind catches up.”
Ace looked at Eugene.
She nodded.
He took the biscuit and held it for a long moment before biting.
His eyes widened.
Mercy’s expression sharpened with pride. “That right there is not institutional cuisine.”
Ace swallowed.
“It tastes like outside.”
Mercy looked away fast and pretended to inspect her pencil.
Austin turned before she caught him seeing.
Tilda finished wrapping his hand and tied the bandage tight.
“There,” she said. “That will hold until you do something stupid.”
“So, minutes?”
“Seconds, if you keep improving.”
Austin flexed his hand. “Thank you.”
“You can thank me by explaining why my radio keeps trying to speak in a woman’s voice.”
Austin went still.
“What woman?”
Tilda nodded toward the church van.
“I put the black cylinder you found in a coffee can with foil, because it seemed like the kind of object that should be both contained and humiliated. It stopped blinking. Then it started speaking anyway.”
Austin stood.
Tilda grabbed his sleeve. “Slowly.”
He walked slowly because she did not let go until she believed him.
Eugene saw him coming and stood, leaving Ace with Mercy.
“What is it?”
“Tilda’s got the cylinder.”
Eugene’s face hardened.
They moved to the church van. Inside, amid boxes of granola bars, blankets, water jugs, hymnals, and one emergency tambourine, sat a metal coffee can wrapped in aluminum foil and duct tape. A small hole had been punched in the lid. From inside came a faint red pulse.
The voice spoke.
“Station Nine event incomplete.”
Eugene climbed into the van and crouched beside the can. “Who are you?”
Static.
Then the voice answered.
“Supervisory Node Augusta.”
Austin frowned. “Augusta like the city?”
No response.
Eugene looked at him. “Could be a call sign. Could be a node designation.”
The voice continued.
“Conductor confirmed. Maternal line confirmed. Neumanson subject bonded. Legacy Choir compromised. Initiating relation cascade evaluation.”
Tilda leaned into the doorway. “I don’t care for any of those nouns.”
Austin folded his arms. “You and me both.”
Eugene’s eyes had gone distant, calculating.
“Legacy Choir,” she said.
Austin looked at her. “That mean something?”
“My mother’s recording. The lullaby. The voices. The bells.” She swallowed. “They were using vocal memory as a stabilizing layer.”
“Like the opposite of the tone?”
“Not opposite. Older. Human. Dr. Wrong built a machine around what they could not erase.”
The cylinder clicked.
A burst of static turned into a map-like pattern of beeps.
Eugene grabbed Tilda’s paper pad and began writing.
Austin watched symbols become lines, lines become numbers, numbers become coordinates.
Eugene whispered, “No.”
“What?”
She wrote three city names.
BIRMINGHAM.
ATLANTA.
MEMPHIS.
Then a fourth line appeared in the signal, not a city but a label.
RELATION CHOIR: SOUTHERN BELT.
Tilda’s mouth tightened.
Mercy came to the van door with Ace beside her. “What’s wrong?”
Eugene covered the paper with one hand too late.
Ace saw it.
His face went pale.
“Birmingham,” he said.
Austin crouched to his level. “You know that place?”
Ace looked at the lantern, which now sat on the van floor. The blue thread in the flame moved faster.
“I heard it in the wall,” Ace said.
Eugene knelt beside him. “When?”
“In the chair. Sometimes the big signal sounded like places. Ward Nine sounded like water and bells. Birmingham sounded like metal teeth.”
Austin glanced at Tilda.
She was already listening harder.
Ace closed his eyes, trying to remember without sinking back into fear.
“There was a woman voice. Not the doctor. She said the next relation was furnace-line ready.”
Eugene’s hand tightened around the paper.
“Furnace line,” she said.
Mercy looked between them. “Birmingham has old steel history, right? Iron, furnaces, railroads?”
Tilda nodded. “Steel city. Old industrial bones. Lots of rail. Lots of places to hide something underneath.”
Austin looked east again.
The same direction Dr. Wrong’s helicopter had gone.
“Metal teeth,” he murmured.
Ace opened his eyes.
“He wants you to go.”
Austin nodded. “I figured.”
“No.” Ace shook his head. “He wants all of us to go.”
Eugene pulled Ace closer. “Then we do not.”
The boy’s gaze lifted to hers.
“But there are people there.”
That stopped her.
A child who had just been rescued should not have had to think about others still trapped.
But Ace did.
Because the ward had made him hear suffering in network form.
Austin hated that.
He also respected it.
Mercy said, “We just pulled thirty people out of a drowned basement nightmare. We are not charging Birmingham with biscuits and a tow truck.”
Tilda said, “Agreed.”
Austin looked at her in surprise.
She met his gaze. “Do not confuse my courage with poor planning. Rescuing one child with desperation is a miracle. Repeating it with no plan is vanity.”
Eugene nodded. “She is right. Dr. Wrong wants us moving emotionally. We need medical help, intelligence, rest, transportation, and a way to protect Ace from the network.”
Ace lowered his head.
Austin noticed.
He stepped closer. “You are not a burden.”
Ace did not look up.
Austin crouched again, ignoring his ribs.
“Look at me.”
Ace did.
“You are a boy.”
The child’s eyes flickered.
“That means you get to be hungry, tired, scared, cranky, curious, and occasionally hilarious. It does not mean you are a map, a key, a radio, a weapon, or a problem.”
Ace looked uncertain.
Austin tapped the lantern with one finger.
“This is a tool. You are not.”
Ace swallowed.
“What if I hear them anyway?”
“Then we listen careful and decide slow.”
Mercy nodded. “And we feed you first.”
Tilda pointed toward the church van. “And shoes. He needs shoes.”
Ace looked down at the too-large socks.
“I had shoes in the ward.”
Eugene’s face hardened.
Mercy said, “Those don’t count.”
“Why?”
“Because they came from villains.”
Ace accepted this legal distinction.
A distant rumble rolled across the ground.
Not thunder.
Everyone turned toward Moriah Junction.
The old station shuddered.
Then the middle of the platform collapsed downward with a roar, sending a burst of water, steam, and blue light into the morning air. The rescued subjects cried out and backed away. The church van rocked on its springs. Birds erupted from the trees.
The blue light faded quickly.
What remained was a sinkhole where the platform had been.
Ward Station Nine was gone.
Or at least, its mouth was.
The sign that had once read Moriah Junction slipped from the roofline, fell through the porch beams, and vanished into the hole.
For a moment nobody spoke.
Then Josiah Creed removed his cap.
Others followed.
Not because the station deserved respect.
Because something had ended there.
Good or bad, endings ask to be witnessed.
Eugene held Ace against her side.
Austin stood beside them.
Mercy had her bat lowered.
Tilda whispered a prayer so quietly only the closest heard it.
“Lord, receive what was stolen, restore what can be restored, and expose what still hides.”
Ace looked up. “Amen?”
Tilda smiled at him.
“Yes, child. Amen.”
The radio in the church van hissed.
The cylinder spoke again.
“Station Nine mouth closure confirmed. Asset trail redirected. Relation observers engaged.”
Mercy lifted the bat. “Can I hit the coffee can?”
Eugene held up one hand. “Wait.”
The voice continued.
“Public contamination risk moderate. Civilian witness count thirty-seven. Local suppression required.”
Austin’s eyes narrowed. “Suppression?”
Tilda immediately turned toward the road.
In the distance, engines approached.
More than one.
Mercy climbed onto Deborah’s step and looked over the brush.
“Black SUVs,” she said. “Three. Maybe four.”
Austin’s body wanted to sigh.
His soul declined.
He grabbed the radio handset. “Everybody load up! Now! Church van first, pickups behind. Mercy, Deborah takes rear.”
Mercy’s grin returned. “Deborah likes rear.”
Tilda began directing survivors with terrifying efficiency.
“You, with the cane, front seat. You two, help him. Blankets in the back. No one sits alone unless they ask to. If you remember a medical condition, say it loudly. If you remember a relative, write it down. If you remember a sin, tell God, not me. We are on a schedule.”
People moved faster this time.
Freedom had found its legs.
Eugene helped Ace toward the Bronco, but he stopped and looked back at the sinkhole.
Austin followed his gaze.
“What is it?”
Ace whispered, “Someone is still singing.”
Eugene froze.
The approaching engines grew louder.
Austin looked at the sinkhole.
Steam rose from the broken station. Mud slid into the dark. The structure below was flooded and collapsed. Going back was impossible.
But the lantern flame flickered blue.
Ace took one step toward the station.
Eugene caught him. “No.”
His eyes filled. “It’s a woman.”
Eugene’s face twisted.
“My mother?”
Ace shook his head slowly.
“I don’t know. She’s far. Not under here. Through here.”
Austin understood.
The ward station had not just been a place.
It had been a node.
A track.
A crossing.
Someone, somewhere else in the network, was using the broken connection to call.
The black SUVs appeared at the far end of the muddy road.
Mercy shouted, “Company!”
Tilda slammed the church van doors shut.
Austin looked at Ace. “Can you tell where?”
Ace held out one hand toward the lantern.
Austin picked it up and passed it to him.
Eugene looked alarmed but did not stop it.
Ace closed both hands around the handle. The flame brightened blue-gold. The boy closed his eyes.
The approaching SUVs accelerated.
Mercy started Deborah.
The tow truck roared like a red judgment sermon.
Ace opened his eyes.
“Birmingham,” he said. “Under a furnace. But not yet. She said not yet.”
Austin frowned. “Who said?”
Ace’s eyes shifted to Eugene.
“The woman singing.”
Eugene went pale.
“What did she say exactly?”
Ace looked toward the east, voice distant.
“She said, ‘Tell my daughter the line is not finished.’”
Eugene staggered.
Austin caught her before she fell.
The SUVs hit the muddy approach road.
Doors opened before the vehicles stopped.
Men in dark tactical clothes stepped out.
Not Sun Reich operatives in full gear this time. These looked more official. Cleaner. Badges on belts. Dark jackets. Government-adjacent faces.
One raised a loudspeaker.
“Remain where you are. This is a federal containment action.”
Mercy leaned out of Deborah’s window and shouted, “Contain this, alphabet soup!”
She threw the tow truck into reverse.
Austin barked, “Mercy, no!”
Deborah slammed backward, not into the SUVs, but into the muddiest section of the approach road, tearing open the ground with her rear tires and tow rig. Mud flew in a wave. The first SUV tried to correct and slid sideways, blocking the second.
Mercy whooped.
Tilda’s church van peeled away down the service track with two pickups following.
Austin shoved Eugene and Ace toward the Bronco. “Go!”
Eugene snapped back into motion.
Ace climbed into the passenger side. Eugene slid in beside him and pulled him close. Austin jumped behind the wheel, slammed the door, and turned the key.
The Bronco coughed.
Once.
Twice.
“Do not choose now to become theological,” Austin growled.
It started.
A man in a dark jacket ran toward them, one hand raised, the other near his weapon.
Austin recognized the look.
Authority without explanation.
He put the Bronco in gear.
The man shouted, “You are interfering with a classified recovery!”
Austin rolled down the window.
“Sir,” he said, “I was born interfering.”
Then he drove through a curtain of brush.
Branches slapped the windshield. Mud sprayed over the hood. Behind them, Mercy used Deborah to create a traffic problem that might be studied by civil engineers and admired by vandals. The church van bounced ahead along the logging road, survivors packed inside, faces at windows, hands braced against one another.
Eugene held Ace in the middle seat.
The boy clutched the lantern.
Austin drove hard through the pines.
For several minutes there was only engine roar, branch strike, and the wild rattle of old suspension doing more than its manufacturer had intended.
Then Eugene said, “They said federal.”
“People say things.”
“They may be actual government.”
“Then the government needs better friends.”
Ace leaned forward.
“They didn’t sound like the doctor.”
Austin glanced in the mirror. “No?”
“They sounded like people who clean up after him.”
Eugene closed her eyes.
“The Sun Reich has public containment channels,” she said. “Not everyone in them knows what they are protecting. Some think they are stopping biological hazards, terrorism, leaks, panic.”
Austin took a hard turn onto a dry track.
“So some are bad, some are fooled, and some are paid not to care.”
“Yes.”
“Fantastic. Complicated punching policy returns.”
Ace looked down at the lantern.
“I’m sorry.”
Austin’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror.
“For what?”
“All this.”
The Bronco jolted over a root.
Austin slowed just enough to answer right.
“Son, listen to me. You did not build that station. You did not kidnap yourself. You did not lie to your mother. You did not make Dr. Wrong evil. You survived a thing grown men should have burned down before you were born.”
Ace stared at him.
Austin’s voice gentled.
“None of this is your fault.”
Eugene wrapped both arms around Ace.
The boy nodded, but the idea had not landed yet.
It would take time.
Some truths have to circle a wounded heart before they find a door.
The convoy regrouped two miles east at an abandoned logging yard. Tilda’s church van sat under a stand of pines, engine idling. Mercy arrived last, Deborah coated in mud, one headlight dangling like an exhausted eye.
She climbed out with a grin that looked illegal in four counties.
“I bought us eight minutes,” she said.
Austin leaned against the Bronco. “With mud?”
“With Deborah.”
“Apologies.”
“Accepted.”
Tilda stepped out of the church van holding the wrapped coffee can. “We cannot go back to my place.”
Eugene nodded. “They will find it.”
“Already figured. I sent my nephew to move Betsy, the pickled okra, and anything that glows.”
Mercy’s eyes widened. “You moved the okra?”
“That is how serious this is.”
Josiah Creed limped over, now wearing boots two sizes too large and a blanket over his shoulders. “Where do people like us go?”
That question settled over the group.
Thirty people with stolen years.
A rescued child.
A mother hunted by a network.
A Texas man with a glowing lantern.
A diner owner with a weaponized tow truck.
An older woman whose emergency planning included both maps and theology.
Where did people like that go?
Austin looked at the church van.
At the pickups.
At the trembling rescued subjects.
Then at Eugene and Ace.
“We need someplace big enough to hide folks in plain sight,” he said. “Someplace with food, beds, and people who know how to keep quiet for the right reasons.”
Tilda lifted one eyebrow. “You thinking church?”
Austin nodded slowly.
“Not one church.”
Mercy smiled. “Network?”
Austin looked east.
“The good kind.”
Eugene’s expression shifted. “You want to use churches against the Sun Reich network?”
“I want to use people who still believe names matter.”
Tilda nodded once, approving. “There is a mission retreat outside Longview. Old camp property. Mostly empty during the week. Pastor owes me a favor because I once removed a snake from the baptismal.”
Mercy stared at her. “You never told me that story.”
“I do not reward nosiness.”
Austin looked to Eugene. “Will it work?”
“For a little while.”
“How little?”
She looked at Ace, then the wrapped cylinder in Tilda’s hands.
“Until the next relation cascade.”
“Then that’s our clock.”
Ace tugged gently on Eugene’s coat.
Everyone looked at him.
The boy lifted the lantern slightly.
“The woman singing said one more thing.”
Eugene went very still.
Ace looked directly at Austin.
“She said the next bell is not in Birmingham.”
Austin frowned.
“But you said Birmingham.”
“The next ward is there,” Ace said. “Not the next bell.”
Josiah Creed inhaled sharply.
Tilda crossed herself.
Austin asked, “Where’s the next bell?”
Ace turned his head toward the south.
Not east.
Southwest.
Back toward the heart of Texas.
He looked confused and frightened by his own answer.
“Fort Worth,” he said.
Austin felt the world narrow.
Mercy’s smile vanished.
Eugene whispered, “That is where this started.”
Austin looked at the lantern.
The gold flame rose.
The blue thread curled through it like a question.
Fort Worth.
His city.
His home.
His diner.
His father’s garage.
His mother’s prayers.
His ordinary life, which had apparently been standing on the tracks longer than he knew.
Tilda’s radio hissed.
The female voice from the cylinder spoke one final time before the signal died.
“Relation loop closing. Conductor origin confirmed.”
Then silence.
Austin looked toward the distant road, where the black SUVs were surely finding their way through the mud.
He put on his hat.
“Well,” he said, “I always knew Fort Worth was important.”
Mercy folded her arms. “This is not the time for civic pride.”
“It is always the time for civic pride.”
Eugene stepped beside him with Ace tucked under her arm.
“What do we do?”
Austin looked at the survivors.
Then at the lantern.
Then toward the west, where Fort Worth waited without knowing it had become a bell.
“We hide the rescued,” he said. “We feed the hungry. We find who can still tell us what happened. Then we go home.”
Ace leaned into Eugene.
Austin’s eyes hardened.
“And this time, when the doctor comes to my town, we make sure he hears Texas answer back.”
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