Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town Part 65

"She's very pretty," Barry said. "Prettier than Mimi."

"If you say so."

"Kurt's awake."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. You could introduce me to him."

I did it for your own good, you know. She couldn't bring herself to say the words, for the enormity of what she'd done was overwhelming her. She'd found three of his friends and treated each of them to an evening of terror and hurt, and none of them would tell her where her brother was, none of them knew. Maybe they'd been innocent all along.

"Where are you?"

"Far from you," he said. In the background, she heard a girl crying.

"It's going to happen, we're going to cover the whole Market," Kurt said. He had the latest coverage map out and it looked like he was right. "Look at this." The overlapping rings of WiFi false-colored over the map were nearly total.

"Are those our own nodes, or just friendlies?" Alan asked, all his confusion and worry forgotten at the sight of the map.

"Those are our own," Kurt said. "Not so many friendlies." He tapped a key and showed a map of the city with a pitiful sprinkling of fellow travelers who'd opened up their networks and renamed them "ParasiteNet."

"You'll have more," Buddy said. Kurt looked a question at Alan.

"My brother Brent," he said. "Meet Kurt."

They shook.

"Your brother?"

Adam nodded.

"Not one of the missing ones?"

He shook his head. "A different one."

"It's nice to meet you." Kurt wiped off his palms. Adam looked around the little private nest at the back of the shop, at the small, meshed-in window on the back wall. Danny watched at that window sometimes.

"I'm gonna send a screengrab of this to Lyman, he'll bust a nut."

It made Anton smile. Lyman and Kurt were the unlikeliest of pals, but pals they were.

"You do that."

"Why aren't you wearing shoes?"

Anton smiled shyly. "No volunteers today?"

Kurt shrugged, a jingle of chains. "Nope. Slow day. Some days just are. Was thinking of seeing a movie or something. Wanna come?"

"I can't," Anton said.

"Sure," Brett said, oblivious to the fact that the invitation hadn't really been directed at him. "I'd like that."

"O-kaaay," Kurt said. "Great. Gimme an hour or so and meet me out front."

"It's a date."

He was half a block from home when he spotted Natalie sitting on her porch, staring at the park. Kurt and Link were gone. The patio at the Greek's was full. He was stood in his bare feet in the middle of Kensington Market on a busy shopping day, and he had absolutely nowhere to go. Nowhere he belonged.

He realized that Natalie had never put him in touch with her boss at Martian Signal.

Barefoot, there wasn't much of anywhere he could go. But he didn't want to be home with Mimi and he didn't want to walk past Natalie. Barefoot, he ended up in the alleyway behind Kurt's again, with nowhere else to go.

Blake and Kurt got back around suppertime, and by then Alan had counted every s.h.i.+ngle on the roofs of the garages, had carefully snapped the sharps off of two syringes he found in some weeds, and then sat and waited until he was ready to scream.

Blake walked confidently into the shop, through Kurt's nest, and to the back door. He opened it and smiled at Adam. "Come on in," he said.

"Right," Alan said. "How was the movie?"

"It was fine," Kurt said.

"Incredible," Burt said. "I mean, *incredible*. G.o.d, I haven't been to the movies in ten years at least. So *loud*, Jesus, I've never heard anything like that."

"It was just A&E," Kurt said. "a.s.ses and explosions."

Alan felt a wave of affection for his friend, and an indefinite sadness, a feeling that they were soon to be parted.

Kurt stretched and cracked his knuckles. "Getting time for me to go out diving."

"Let's go get some dinner, okay?" Andy said to Brad.

"G'night guys," Kurt said, locking the door behind them.

"I'm sorry," she said. There had been five minutes of near-silence on the line, only the girl crying in the background at his end. She wasn't sure if he'd set the phone down or if he was listening, but the "sorry" drew a small audible breath out of him.

"I'm really, really sorry," she said, and her hands felt sticky with blood. "G.o.d, I just wanted to *save you*."

Mimi was back in bed when they got home. Alan took a shower and scrubbed at his feet, then padded silently around the shuttered bedroom, dressing in the dark. Mimi made a sleepful noise.

"I'm making dinner," he said. "Want some?"