Chapter 25 · The Name in the Margin

The wheel stopped turning.

Not slowed. Stopped. Dead center, like something on the other side had frozen with its hand still on the spokes.

"Calder." I didn't look away from it. "Why'd it stop."

He didn't answer. He was on his knees at the wall panel, the little steel door hanging open on its hinge, empty. His hand was still inside it, like his fingers hadn't gotten the message yet that there was nothing left to grab.

"Calder."

"I heard you." His voice came out flat, scraped clean of anything. "Give me a second."

"We don't have a second. The wheel—"

"I know what the wheel's doing."

I hugged the ledger to my chest — the one thing in this whole rusted tin can that was still mine, still made sense in my hands — and my thumb caught the edge of a page I hadn't meant to open. Water-stained. Curled at the corner from being wet once and drying wrong. I'd photographed half these pages a week ago and never actually read the margins, because the margins weren't numbers, they were handwriting, and handwriting wasn't my job.

It was somebody else's job.