Chapter 23: The Warden Begins to Remember

The dark did not close after Desta stepped back from it.

That was the first thing she noted: the breach remained open in the way a hand remains open after it has finally released something it carried too long. Not empty. Resting.

She wrote the date. She wrote the time, 0314 hours, to the nearest minute. She wrote the compass bearing and the grid coordinates and the notation in her careful, unchanged hand. Then she stood with the pen still touching the page and did not write anything else for a while, because the next thing she would have to write was what had actually happened, and she was not yet certain the language existed for it.