Day 66. Strength 25.5. Stamina 24.4. Agility 14.9. Intelligence 17.5.
Colby sent the screenshot at 6:02 in the morning, which meant he'd set an alarm for it.
It was the party page in the DDA app. Grey header, our name in capitals, and under it the two lines that had read Pending and 0 for thirty-two days:
TWO PAIRS · Status: Registered · Clears on record: 1
He'd put eleven exclamation marks under it. Then a second message, just the word "REGISTERED," and then a third one that was a picture of a cow.
I was behind the desk. Priya was on the rower, getting her whole hour, because I'd been on time every morning since the one she lost twenty-two minutes of it. She looked over when the phone buzzed against the counter the third time.
"Good news?"
"We're a party."
She was wiping down the rower, her hour done. "You weren't before?"
"Not on paper."
"Huh," said Hector, from the bench, without looking up from his western, and turned a page.
That was the whole celebration at Grindstone. I put the phone face down and wiped the counter, which didn't need it, and then I picked the phone up again and opened the screenshot and read our name in capitals one more time.
* * *
Tom's text came at 7:20. He'd have been in the truck in the lot in Tolleson, with the air going, just off a night shift.
Sent Okafor the three readings + Ren's pics. Times on all of them. Lead sends.
You may be wondering why Tom sent it and not me. I'd had Ren's photos since Saturday night, all three, because she'd put them in the group thread from the tailgate. On Sunday afternoon I'd typed an email to the address on Okafor's card. Subject line, the three numbers, the air temperature, the bit about the wall being cold. It was a good email. I'd read it over twice and it was clear and correct and it had my name at the bottom.
Then I'd deleted it, because I'd remembered Wednesday, and Tom's face, and "it was just smaller."
It took one second to delete. It took most of Sunday to stop opening the drafts folder to check it was gone.
At 9:15 Tom forwarded her reply.
Received 07:18. Logged as a supplementary observation, Laveen, reference LV-S-0031. Readings and photographs attached to the file. Re-inspection request submitted. I am not able to estimate the queue.
For your records, this is the second entry for Laveen this year. The first is your party's call of last Monday.
The April page of the intake log is numbered IN-0411, IN-0412, IN-0414. I have asked Records why there is no 0413. I have not had an answer.
Ren replied to that with a single question mark. Nobody answered her. I think we all read it the same way and none of us wanted to be the one to type it out. Dev had phoned in April. I thought about 0413 for the rest of the morning.
* * *
Coach had me on the floor at half past nine with the steel.
It's the same carry as at home, only on her concrete and under her eye, with the hip shelf gone and the rim off my hip on every turn. Arm first. Then ninety seconds. Then lungs. She sits on the end of the bench press with the stopwatch on a string round her neck and her cane across her knees and she doesn't talk unless something's wrong.
On Day 55, the first morning after she'd found the shelf, my arm went at thirty-one minutes. I remember because she'd said it out loud, pleased, which she almost never is.
That morning it went at forty-seven.
I knew before it did. Somewhere past thirty-five there's a long flat stretch where the arm is tired and isn't going anywhere, where it'll hold the shield forever if you let it and nothing in it is breaking, and I walked that stretch for twelve minutes looking at the clock over the door.
When it went, I set the shield down against my leg, and she clicked the watch.
"What was it Thursday?"
She had it written down. She has everything written down.
"Forty-one."
"And last Monday."
"Thirty-six."
"And what did I say, the day I took that rim off your hip?"
"A week. Maybe two."
"It was eleven days." She wrote the number on the card in her lap. "Heavier shield, or a slower number. Which?"
"I don't know."
"You know the price of one of them," she said, "and I know the price of the other one, and neither of us likes it. Lungs. Go."
I did the lungs. They went at fifty-two, which was also longer than last week.
That evening, at home, I'd find out the second carry wouldn't fail before ten o'clock however I walked it. I'd stop at ten anyway and go to bed. Three tenths in Strength instead of four, and three in Stamina. First time since Day 32.
At half past nine all I had was the stretch in the middle, and how much longer it had got.
* * *
Sandoval was in the lot at noon.
It was a hundred and eight. She was leaning on the side of her car in the one strip of shade the building throws at midday, which is about two feet wide, with her Copper Vale jacket off and tied round her waist, and she pushed herself off the car when I came out.
"Don't stand in the sun," she said. "Come here. I'm not doing this in the sun."
I stood in the two feet of shade with her.
"Your clear's on the app," she said.
"Colby sent it at six."
"Course he did." She had her phone out. "Okay. I'm going to read you something I'm not supposed to read you, and I'm going to do it badly because I'm tired and it's a hundred and eight, so just stand there and let me."
It was Vance's report. Two pages, she said. The first page was times and counts and the thermometer and the twenty-six against the county's thirty to fifty, which he'd flagged. The second page was people.
"'Guzmán. Lead. Methodical, calls clean, keeps a written count. Recommend.'" She scrolled. "'Choi. Disciplined. Range limited by trait. Would take.' 'Estrada.' Ha. 'Talks continuously. Useful in a way he does not appear to understand.' That's a compliment, from him. That's practically a hug."
"And me."
She didn't scroll. She'd already got it on the screen.
"'North. F-Class. High work capacity. Plateau risk inherent to trait class. Not recommended for contract.'"
A truck went past on the road with its windows down and music coming out.
"That's all of it?"
"That's all of it. He doesn't write long." She put the phone against her chest. "You want to know what plateau risk means."
"I can guess."
"Guess, then."
"He thinks I'm a kid who trained like a lunatic before I awakened, and I'm running on that. And it runs out."
"Yeah." She rubbed her eye with the heel of her hand. "That's what it means. We see it about twice a year. Some F who went to the gym four hours a day for five years, shows up level two looking like a D, and everybody gets excited, and then he's level five and he still looks like a D, because that's the body he came in with and he's not getting another one." She looked at me. "I'm guessing that's not you."
I didn't say anything.
"I'm guessing that from your face, not from anything you said. Somebody write that down."
* * *
He was wrong about why. I stood in the shade and tried to make that matter, and it didn't. Forty-seven minutes this morning. Forty-one on Thursday, thirty-six the Monday before that. Vance had got there by the wrong road, and he'd still got there, and I could have shown him my own numbers and they'd only have agreed with him.
* * *
"The money's net thirty," Sandoval said. "County pays us, we pay you. Thirty days from the clear. Tell Guzmán I said sorry, because nobody told him that either, and I'd bet his face doesn't like it."
Thirty days from Saturday. I worked it out without meaning to. Ren's background check and the fit test were due before her rotation, and her rotation was in about two weeks, and the three hundred and fifty would come in about two weeks after that.
"Okay."
"Okay." She got her keys out. Then she didn't open the car.
"There's one more thing. It's not in the report." She looked at the gym door instead of me. "My guildmaster read it Sunday. All of it, both pages, which she doesn't do for an F-job. And this morning she asked me for your number."
The asphalt was soft enough under my boots that I could feel it give.
"Did you give it to her?"
"I said I'd ask you first." She opened the car door and the heat came out of it like an oven. "Which is how you do it, by the way. You ask the person first. I hear that's a new idea round you."
"Did she ask for Tom's?"
Sandoval got in the car and started it and put the air on full before she answered.
"No," she said. "Just yours."