Kael sat with that thought for a while, and Lidia let him. 

He mulled over what his life will be like going forward without the removal of the implant. But he realized, there would be no life if he didn’t do something. The Coil would find him. He would go to prison. He had no idea what could happen to him there.

He tried to recall what the Coil's disciplinary protocols said about a Strategist who abandoned their post. He couldn't remember. For the first time in his career, there was a regulation he didn't know, and that gap felt more dangerous than the implant itself.

His breathing began to speed up. The tightening in his chest returned along with the sharp pain in his spine.

He winced and put his hand on the spot where it hurt.

“Is this where it’s at?” He asked Lidia.

“It is,” she replied. “Does it hurt there?”

“Now it does. It never did before I went to the archives yesterday.”

“That would make sense,” she said. “The scan also showed that there was a small crack starting.”

This was frightening for Kael. He didn’t know what that meant, how it happened, or how to reverse it. But there was something about Lidia that relaxed him. Comforted him. He never knew his parents, but this was what he imagined it would have felt like having a mother give him bad news.

He sat with that thought, and feeling, for another moment before speaking again. “When do you think Orin will be back?”

“He shouldn’t be too much longer, dear,” Lidia replied. “Let’s go back upstairs and wait for him. I’ll make you a cup of tea while we wait for him.”

Kael nodded, welcoming the idea of a warm beverage again. He’d had tea before, but it was Coil tea. He wanted to know if it tasted any different when Lidia made it. Orin mentioned it was supposed to have sugar and honey.

He followed her up the stairs, one hand trailing along the wall. The music was still playing. He was glad.

Lidia showed him to a comfortable looking armchair made from flannel with a yarn blanket draped over the back of it. 

“Is this knitted?” Kael asked, touching the blanket as he sat down.

“It’s actually crocheted,” Lidia responded, raising an eyebrow. “I’m surprised you know what knitting might look like though.”

“I’ve seen pictures, and had to confiscate yarn items before,” he said, gently looking over the blanket and touching it like it was made of glass. He couldn’t believe that he would take things like this from people for the Coil to either keep boxed up at headquarters at the Still Axis or destroy.

“It won’t break, dear. My grandmother made it and it’s held up this long,” Lidia told him as she handed him a cup of tea.

“I feel terrible, Lidia.” He had always told himself those items were burdens, weight people carried unnecessarily. Sitting under one now, he couldn't locate that logic anywhere. “I’ve taken 82 blankets just like this from people without thinking twice about what they meant to people.”

“Ah, at least you’re feeling, dear,” she said with a smile. “There’s hope for you after all.”

He smiled back at her as he looked at his tea. It wasn’t clear like the tea he’d had before, and it smelled better. As he took a sip, he knew that it was more than the sugar and honey she put in it that made it taste so sweet.

“Much better than Coil tea, Lidia. Thank you very much,” he said, setting his cup down on the table.

They heard noise outside, and Kael’s panic began to creep back up. Lidia put her finger to her lips to tell him to stay quiet as she went to the window.

“It’s just Orin, dear,” she said, and Kael felt a rush of relief.

Orin walked in the house with two bags full of books.

“I grabbed everything I could while I had time,” Orin said, sounding winded like he’d been the one running and not the horse he was riding.

“Did you see Vesper?” Kael asked anxiously.

“No, but I felt her stronger than ever.” Orin started unloading books from his bags and putting them on the coffee table in front of Kael before sitting on the couch with one in his hands titled A Conductor’s Manual for Training and Maintaining Harmony Strategists and Unburdening Custodians. 

“Where’d you get that?” Kael had never seen that book, and knew Orin wasn’t supposed to have either.

“I, uh, collected it,” Orin answered, clearly not wanting to tell the full story. “Good thing too because there’s all sorts of information in here about your implant!”

Orin looked sternly at Kael before he could ask anything, and said, “Let me read it first, Renwick.”

Kael slouched back in the chair and looked at the spines of the books stacked on the table.

One stood out to him. It was a deep red leather with a golden cross embossed on it.

He reached out and slid it from its place in the stack, careful not to bring the whole thing down in the process.

“What is this one?” He asked, thumbing through the thin pages. The print was so small and had two columns of text on each page. “There’s so much written here!”

“Ah, you found the most precious of my entire collection,” Orin said, pausing his intense reading to flash a smile at Kael before turning back to the manual.

“That is the Holy Bible,” Lidia answered.

“The church book?” Kael asked, the twinge of guilt creeping back. 

“Exactly,” Lidia said, smiling. “Tell me what you know about the church book.”

“Not much. Just that it’s a Banned Book that was always at the churches we converted. The Coil's literature classified it as a primary source of variance and unauthorized community formation," he said, as if reciting a training module. The words sounded different out loud, here, in this room. “We had to remove them to be taken to the Still Axis,” he looked down. “Like we did with the blankets.”

If this was Orin’s most precious book of the hundreds he’d had in the basement library, he didn’t want to think about what the Coil did with them when he knew what happened to the blankets. He felt the salt water begin to break through again.

“There there, dear,” Lidia said, putting her hand on Kael’s knee. He wiped his eyes and looked into hers. They were gray like his, but with specks of green and brown that gave them a warmth that was unfamiliar to him. 

“Why is this book so precious?” Kael asked, bringing his eyes back to the thick text in his lap. The leather was worn, and he could almost make out a thumb print on the edge of the cover.

“It’s more than just a collection of words on pages,” Lidia answered. Orin still had his nose in the manual. “It’s the story of the world and humanity. Where we come from and where we’re going.”

“So it’s a history book?” Kael was utterly confused. How could a book tell the future?

“Partly. And it’s actually 73 books put together,” Lidia said warmly. 

Kael thumbed through it. The pages were broken up by what looked like headings, unfamiliar text he couldn't parse, and then further by numbers. The numbers, at least, he understood.

"You're looking at the book of Isaiah," Lidia said. "That big number, 53, is the chapter. The small numbers are the verses."

Kael felt his thumb meet Orin’s worn grove on the cover. Lidia leaned in.

“Have you ever heard the name Jesus?”