Caleb told them all at once, in the basement, under the number on the wall, because saying it twice would have cost more than he had.
He laid the letter on the workbench where they could read it if they wanted, and most of them didn't, because they were watching his face instead. He told them about the pod and the small dead silver child with his face.
He told them what his father had built, what it had become, and what the woman had done with it for thirty-one years.
And then he told them the part that was about him, the part he had carried up out of that storage unit on Vesper Street. The thing in the tower was the first attempt. He was the second.
The only difference between them was that he had been raised with a self on purpose and it had been grown without one.
The basement was quiet when he finished.
