The waterfall kept falling.
Noah stood at the basin and looked at his reflection and said nothing for a while and the General stood beside him and gave him the silence without making it a gesture.
"Eight months," Noah said finally.
"Yes."
"So they were here." He looked at the water. "And then they weren't."
"The reassignment was standard protocol for their clearance level. I can get you a location within—"
"It's fine," Noah said.
It wasn't fine. The General didn't say that because he wasn't stupid and Noah didn't say it either because there was no point.
'Always just out of reach,' Noah thought. 'That's the thing. It's never that they're gone, it's that they're always somewhere. Somewhere reachable in theory. Somewhere that requires one more step, one more clearance, one more month of waiting. And by the time you take the step they've taken one too and the distance stays the same.'
'I came here covered in alien blood to see two people who aren't here.'
