The car smelled like Elara, like it always did, clean and faintly of gun oil. Caleb got in the passenger side as he had a dozen times, buckled the belt, and watched her hands on the wheel.
Ten and two. Light and even. He knew what those hands looked like when a name landed wrong in them now, because they had not moved on the wheel three nights ago when he said *Marcus taught you to shoot*, and a person's hands move when the past walks across them, and hers had not.
"The estate's forty minutes," Elara said, pulling out. "The Division's lighting up about the vault, but nobody's mobilizing, which is its own kind of strange."
"I can get you to Aldric's road before anyone with a uniform decides to care. After the wall I can't help you. One road in, no cover past the gate. You know the shape of it. You've been."
"I've been."
She drove. She was good at it, smooth and fast and certain.
