The reversing alarm continued ahead of us, though the road was empty.
Four pulses. Three. A pause that seemed to wait for my answer.
The car carried us east through fog. Its headlights illuminated hedges, milestones, and stretches of road that appeared only when we were already passing them. I watched the dashboard for any sign of a driver’s input. The wheel turned by itself. The accelerator held steady beneath no foot. The brake pedal remained depressed by a black metal clamp I had not seen before.
I reached toward it.
Rachel caught my wrist. “Don’t.”
“There may be a release.”
“There may be a reason it’s there.”
Declan sat hunched on the other side of her, his hands pressed between his knees. River water dripped from his coat onto the floor mats. He had stopped looking through the windows. Each time the car’s speakers clicked, his shoulders tightened.
The speakers clicked again.
“County depot,” my voice said.
A second voice repeated it from beneath the engine noise. Rachel’s voice. Then Declan’s.
The words passed between the three voices with exact timing. The car was sampling us, assembling a call-and-response from whatever it had retained. The cabin had become a crude playback system, though there was no visible radio display and no microphone grille I could identify.
I lifted the broken tone generator from my lap. Its display remained dark. When I pressed the power button, the casing vibrated against my palm.
Four pulses came through the speaker.
Three answered from the rear wheel well.
The route had placed the pattern inside the car’s structure. My generator was no longer producing it. It was receiving a reply.
“Can you stop it?” Rachel asked.
“I can interfere with it.”
“You said that at the bridge.”
“I know.”
“What did it cost us?”
I looked at her. The headlights washed her face pale, drawing attention to the small scar beside her eyebrow and the damp strands of hair stuck to her cheek. I knew those details. I knew her name. I knew she had come to Black Hallow because I had called her, though I could no longer reach the memory of making that call. The gap inside me had clean edges now. I had begun to understand that the Shepherd’s theft was not random. It left enough behind for me to continue toward the place where the missing pieces could be used.
Next
Mark has interrupted the depot’s receiving system, but the ringing telephone may offer the Shepherd a new carrier—and the map shows its route already extending toward another village.
Rachel stared at the dark road ahead. “That doesn’t sound like an answer anymore.”
The fog thinned. A chain-link fence appeared on either side of the road, its upper wires silver with moisture. Beyond it stood a row of low concrete buildings. Some windows were boarded. Others glowed with the greenish light of fluorescent tubes.
The county depot had been closed for years. I remembered that from the road signs near Black Hallow. A flood had damaged the maintenance yard, and the council had moved operations to a newer facility farther south.
Yet the gates stood open.
The car turned in.
A reversing alarm sounded from behind the nearest building.
Four pulses. Three.
Declan made a small noise in his throat. “This isn’t the depot.”
“It is,” I said.
He looked at me. “It was demolished.”
“Not all of it.”
I had no idea whether that was true. The place had the proportions of a working depot: loading bays, a fuel island, a workshop with broad roller doors. But the surfaces lacked wear. Rain stood undisturbed on the concrete. The fluorescent lights burned behind dirty panes without casting any illumination beyond them.
The car rolled to a stop beside a covered maintenance pit.
Its locks engaged.
I tried the rear door. The handle moved without opening. Declan shoved his shoulder against his door. The frame gave a dull, resonant knock, and the building answered with a matching knock from somewhere inside.
A loudspeaker mounted above the workshop doors crackled.
“Where should we take him?”
The question came in my voice.
Rachel leaned forward and examined the space between the front seats. “There’s a cable under the console.”
I followed her gaze. A bundle of black wires ran from beneath the dashboard into the floor. One was wrapped in red electrical tape. The tape had been marked with a block letter M.
My initials.
I pulled my multitool from my pocket and cut the wire.
Every light in the depot went out.
The car’s engine stopped. The locks released.
For several seconds, the darkness held. Then the reversing alarm began again, much closer than before.
Declan threw open his door and fell onto the concrete. Rachel climbed out after him. I took the tone generator and followed, keeping my back against the car.
The workshop doors were open now. Beyond them, a corridor extended through the building. Fluorescent lights came on one by one, leading inward.
At the far end stood a desk beneath a wall-mounted dispatch board.
Names had been typed onto white cards and pinned beneath columns marked ARRIVAL, ROUTE, RECEIVING, and RETURN.
The cards were too far away to read clearly, but I could identify the rhythm of the arrangement. Three cards in the first column. Two in the second. One in the third.
The fourth column was empty.
Declan stepped toward the corridor.
I grabbed his sleeve. “Stay outside.”
“This is my workplace.”
“It was.”
He looked at the lit corridor, and the stubbornness went out of him. “There could be someone inside.”
The loudspeaker clicked.
A woman’s voice said, “There is a man trapped under the loading ramp.”
Declan pulled against my hand.
Rachel moved in front of him. “You heard that in the van.”
“He might be alive.”
“It’s using the same recording.”
The speaker repeated the sentence. This time it used Declan’s voice.
There is a man trapped under the loading ramp.
He went still.
I raised the tone generator. The weak speaker emitted the four-three pattern. The depot lights flickered in response. Behind the workshop walls, machinery began to move: belts turning, a compressor starting, water passing through old pipes.
The sound filled the building and gave the corridor depth. I could hear the exact distance to the desk, the empty room on the left, the stairwell behind the wall. Beneath those ordinary reflections, a lower vibration spread through the concrete.
The Shepherd was making the depot remember itself.
I stepped into the corridor.
“Mark,” Rachel said.
“If I stay outside, it will keep calling Declan.”
“And if you go in?”
“It already knows my route.”
She caught my coat. Her fingers closed hard enough to wrinkle the fabric. “You don’t get to make that decision for us.”
The words struck deeper than they should have. They carried the shape of an argument we had already had, perhaps more than once, in the memories the Shepherd had taken. I looked at her hand, then at her face.
“I’m not deciding for you,” I said. “I’m choosing where it hears me.”
I entered the depot.
The dispatch board waited at the end of the corridor. Its cards came into focus as I approached.
SLOANE, DECLAN — ROUTE OPEN.
ALDER, RACHEL — RETURNED.
ALDER, MARK — RECEIVING.
The third card had been typed on fresh paper. Moisture beaded along its lower edge.
Beneath it, a blank card was already pinned in place.
No name. No date. Just a destination:
NEXT VISITOR.
The low vibration rose through my boots. The desk drawers opened together. Inside the top drawer lay a county map, folded and stained with river water. A red line ran from Black Hallow to the bridge, then east to the depot.
At the far edge of the map, beyond the depot, another red line continued toward a cluster of small squares.
A village.
I recognized the shape from one of Tadhg’s notebooks. A place outside the valley. A place that had never appeared on any sign.
The route did not end at the depot. The depot was a junction.
Behind me, Rachel shouted my name.
The loudspeaker answered in my voice.
I set the tone generator on the desk and turned its damaged dial until the four-three pulses broke into a dense, rising whine. The depot shuddered. The dispatch cards lifted from their pins and scattered across the floor.
For the first time, the low vibration faltered.
I took the blank card from the board.
The paper was warm.
Somewhere in the building, a telephone began to ring.
I folded the card into my fist and turned toward the sound.