They put Owen Castell in the back bedroom of the safe house, the one with the good mattress, and Caleb's mother fed him broth he could barely keep down and sat with him while the shaking came in waves.
She had gotten good at sitting with people who had come back from somewhere, and she did not ask him anything.
She let him be a man in a bed instead of a thing in a reservoir. Around midnight he slept, and she turned the lamp down, left the door open a crack, and came out to the kitchen where her son was not sleeping.
"He'll live," she said. "Whether he wants to is a different question, and that one takes longer." She put the kettle on. "You did a good thing today. I can see it cost you. Both of those are allowed to be true."
The comm on the counter chimed once. Caleb glanced at it, expecting the Hacker, a status, a number.
The screen said: INCOMING. SOURCE UNVERIFIED.
