Finn blinked and looked around, trying to remember why he was standing in a passageway somewhere in the middle of the ship.
He’d been up all night combing the decks, anchor room to fantail. Hadn’t slept. Had not even stepped foot in his broom closet.
He looked down at himself.
No, that wasn’t right. He was wearing a fresh set of cammies. He must have gone back to change. Had he slept?
He rubbed the back of his neck and in the hollows under his ears, trying to shake the sense of dislocation.
Now he remembered.
He was hunting.
When he first arrived on the Lincoln, walking his circuits was mostly a matter of reflex. Standard operating procedure. The key to mission success in any new AO, or area of operations, was to master the terrain. Though on the face of it there seemed no strategic point to detailed reconnaissance while aboard an American aircraft carrier, even one as poorly run as the Lincoln. No, up till now his explorations had been driven more by habit than by purpose.
Not anymore. Now he had a reason to look.
He was hunting.
He didn’t know precisely what he was looking for, but he’d recognize it when he found it. A stray moving branch, an unnatural stillness in the breeze-blown grass. A behavior out of place. A contradiction.
He circled back through the passageway outside the Kestrels’ ready room where he’d observed that confrontation the night before between Biker and Movie Star, then on to trace the paths each participant had followed as they entered and exited that nexus point.
He didn’t know exactly what he’d find, but he knew what he was hunting. The wriggling creature with the massive head and no arms or legs.
He was hunting death.
He couldn’t say how he knew it, but death was still stalking the Lincoln.
And death always left traces.
A single tone from the bosun’s pipe split the air.
“All availab—hands to—eck—OD walkdown.”
Finn immediately made for the flight deck, moving purely on instinct. He needed to take a look up there now, before this morning’s FOD walk had a chance to pollute the scene. He didn’t know why, but that didn’t matter. His instincts were in charge.
His brain’s job right now was just to watch.