The rusted pickup reeked of fast-food fries and diesel. The bench seat had a spring that pressed into Eugene’s left thigh every time Crow whipped around a bend at high speed. Ruby sat between them; her hands folded in her lap the way they got during dentist appointments and parent-teacher conferences. Nobody had spoken since they cleared the Dallas city limits.
Crow drove with one wrist draped over the wheel, the other hand resting on his knee. The silver device rested in the broken cup holder between them, its etched patterns catching the morning light through a windshield smeared with bug strikes. Eugene watched it the way you watch a rattlesnake that hasn’t coiled yet.
“You should take that,” Crow said, nodding toward the device. “It’s yours now.”
Eugene didn’t move. “I don’t even know what it is.”
“Short-term memory erasure. The agent in that room won’t remember you were ever there. Won’t remember the last twenty minutes before the freeze, either.” “The patterns on the casing aren’t decoration. They’re a circuit. The hum you heard is the field cycling.”
Ruby turned her head toward Crow, and Eugene saw her fingers tighten on each other. “Who do you think you are?”
“Ruby, I...”
“Don't.” She didn’t raise her voice but was painfully direct. “You show up at a government lab with a weapon. You walk my son out of an interrogation room like you’re picking him up from school. I don’t know what you have become."
Crow signaled and pulled off the highway onto a gravel frontage road. The truck bounced over a pothole, and the device rattled in the cup holder. Eugene caught it before it tipped, and the metal was warm against his palm, warmer than it should have been sitting in a cold truck.
Ahead, a truck stop stood vacant. Not shuttered. Abandoned. The gas pumps unattended, the convenience store windows dark, the parking lot asphalt fractured and weedy. A faded sign advertised diesel at a price from three years ago. Crow stopped the engine, and the silence that followed was the kind that came after a long drive, when the road noise was still ringing in your ears.
He turned on the bench seat to face them both. His chestnut eyes moved from Ruby to Eugene and back.
“I’m like Eugene,” he said. “Part of me is not from here.”
Ruby’s hands went still. “What does that mean?”
“It means I am not entirely human along with most of my tribe.” Crow paused, “The difference is, I’ve known my whole life but Eugene is just finding out.”
"Finding out what?" Eugene slowly asked.
Eugene set the silver device on his knee. His right hand had the tremor again, the fine vibration he couldn’t control when something was building. He pressed his palm flat against his thigh to hold it still.
"That we share the same blood, I am your father", Crow revealed softly.
“My father’s dead,” he said. “Grandpa told me. Tractor accident when I was two.”
“Wyatt told you what he believed was true.” Crow’s voice dropped, not softer but heavier. “I am your father; I had no choice, but to leave to protect you and your mother from agents who tracked me to Satin.
Ruby’s hand found Eugene’s wrist and held it. Her grip was warmly reassuring.
“The DNA test,” Eugene said. “That’s how they flagged me.”
“The moment your sample hit their system, it tripped an alert. You’re in a database now. Every camera, every checkpoint, every state and federal system that reads an ID knows your face.” Crow leaned back against the driver’s side door. “It wouldn't be wise to leave Texas. The moment we cross the state line, we will be hunted and with the Federal jurisdiction changes I fear I would not be able to protect you.”
Eugene looked out the windshield at the empty truck stop, the dead pumps, the highway beyond. Somewhere past that road places he’d been a dozen times for competitions. Places now out of his reach.
“So, it's really true, you are my father."
Crow didn’t answer but Ruby smiled with a yes. He reached for the ignition and turned the key. The engine coughed once and caught.
The pickup rolled forward, gravel popping under the tires. Crow swung back onto the highway, and Eugene watched the speedometer climb. Fifty-five. Sixty. The road stretched flat and straight toward the western edge of the state, and in the distance, a green sign rose against the pale morning sky.
STATE LINE 500 MILES.
Eugene’s hand closed around the silver device. The metal was still warm.