Page 47 of Thorne
"What about a princess movie?" Halo suggests, finally looking up from a pile of Uno cards he's been absentmindedly sorting on the coffee table. "Cinderella? Sleeping Beauty? You could wear a crown, and we could all bow."
Lily scrunches her nose so hard her whole face disappears for a second. "No. I told you. Princesses are boring. I like dinosaurs. They're real things you can play with. And they're strong."
"Dinosaur movie it is," Brass sighs, sinking into the cushions and surrendering the remote. "But if I cry when the leaf falls,nobody mentions it in the debrief. I'm serious. Whisper, you better not record it."
Whisper doesn't even look up from the corner, but he gives a single, subtle thumbs-up.
I move to the sofa, and the moment I sit, Lily is on me. She scrambles into my lap, her small, warm weight the most grounding thing in the universe. She smells like baby shampoo and the outside world.
My mother walks over, pressing a hand to my cheek. Her eyes are soft but searching. She knows I've been to the dark places. She doesn't say anything, but she presses a bowl of chicken soup into my hands.
"You're eating, Colt. I know you think you don't need to, but you do. You're hollowed out." She then turns her attention to the rest of the room. "And you lot. I went to do Lily's laundry and found a pair of tactical socks in the basket. You know the rules. Your laundry is your problem. I am not your maid."
Brass winces, looking like a scolded schoolboy. "It was me. I was in the middle of a gear check, and I just forgo?—"
"I don't care if you were in the middle of a firefight. Take your socks out of my clean laundry," she snaps, though there's a flicker of a smile she's trying to hide. She turns to Halo, who is trying to sneak a sandwich off the tray. "And you. I noticed the sink. Those dishes didn't walk there themselves. If you can hack a mainframe, you can operate a sponge. Go."
"I'm a specialist," Halo groans. "This is a misuse of high-level assets. My hands are calibrated for fine electronics, not Palmolive."
"It's a misuse of my patience," she retorts. "Move."
Whisper is already on the floor, clearing a space for the "theatre." He doesn't say a word. He rarely does, but he moves a stray boot out of the way, clears the scattered math scratch-paper from the floor, and gestures for Lily to bring her blanket.There's a quiet, fierce loyalty in the way they all settle around her. They've adopted her as their own, a collective of uncles who would level a city to keep her safe.
I hold my daughter close, her small, warm weight finally pushing back the cold hum of the safe room. I look at my parents, at the team: the family that grew out of the dirt and blood of a dozen different wars. They are the only wall between Lily and the plague that is Stratton.
I look toward the hallway, toward the locked door. I think of Stratton sitting alone, her mind a weapon she doesn't know how to disarm. I think of the heat of her skin, the look in her eyes, and the terrifying, unavoidable fact that I want her more than I hate her.
But I can't think about Stratton right now. I need to focus on what's important.
I kiss the top of Lily's head and try to believe she's right. That there is a Great Valley at the end of this. That I can keep the predator in the shower separate from the father on the sofa.
The lights in the bunker dim, the overhead tactical strips giving way to the soft, golden glow of a few scattered floor lamps. It's a false evening, a manufactured dusk, but the team settles into it with the kind of ease that tells me they're as hungry for thenormalas I am.
Lily doesn't stay in my lap for long. She's a restless creature of shifting affections, and tonight, the team is her captive audience. She slides off the sofa, dragging her weighted blanket behind her like a royal cape, and wedges herself onto the floor between Whisper and Torque.
Whisper doesn't move. He rarely does, but his hand reaches out instinctively to tuck the edge of the blanket around her feet. Torque, a man who once held a breach point in Fallujah for six hours with a shattered collarbone, looks down at her withsomething akin to terror before he adjusts his position to give her more room.
"Uncle Halo?" Lily looks over her shoulder, her eyes fixed on the screen where the animated dinosaurs are navigating a treacherous mountain pass. "Why did you ask me about being a princess?"
Halo leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Just curious, munchkin. Most girls your age want the castle and the sparkly dress. You don't like sparkles?"
Lily scrunches her nose, her eyes reflecting the flickering blue light of the TV. "I like sparkles. But princesses are boring. They wait in towers for people to find them. If a Sharp-Tooth came to a tower, a princess wouldn't know what to do."
"And what would you do?" Brass leans forward, a low rumble of amusement in his chest.
"I'd have a plan." Lily proudly lifts her chin, clutching her purple stegosaurus, Theodore. "I'm going to be a big girl one day. Big girls need to know how to take care of themselves. I'm going to know how to do that. I'm going to be like Daddy. I'm going to be the one who does the finding."
The silence that follows isn't tactical; it's heavy. I feel the weight of every man's gaze in the room. They see what I see: a child who has spent half her life in a hospital bed, learning that the only way to survive is to be the strongest person in the room. She doesn't want a fairy tale because she's been living in a horror story, and she's already determined she's the hero.
"That's a good mission statement, Lily-bug," Torque murmurs, his voice unusually thick. "Better than most of the ones we get from Command."
"Is that what you do?" Lily tilts her head back to look up at him. "Do you find people?"
"Sometimes." Torque glances at me for a split second before turning back to her. "Mostly we make sure the 'Sharp-Tooths' ofthe world don't get to the Great Valley. We're the wall, Lily. We keep the scary things on the other side."
Lily nods, seemingly satisfied with the explanation, and turns her attention back to the screen. For the next hour, the only sounds are the film's sweeping orchestral score and the occasional whispered commentary from the guys.
They analyze the herbivores' "tactical retreat" and debate the "perimeter security" of the Great Valley, turning a kid's movie into a debrief just to keep their minds from wandering back to the hallway.
