Before the Dawn Read Free

fit inside one of the huge shower rooms back at Manticore.
    The woman opened the door, but Max hesitated.
    Another reassuring smile. “Come on . . . it's all right. Really. You'll be safe here.”
    Max wanted to believe her apparent benefactor; but then she had always believed Lydecker, they
all
had . . . and now one of them was dead.
At least
one of them. . . .
    Still, Max followed the woman's generous gesture and stepped inside the cabin. Though she immediately understood its purpose, Max marveled at the fireplace set into the left wall. The heat it supplied gave the room a warm, cozy feeling she had only previously felt in her own bed, between the sheets, on exceptionally cold nights.
    To the right, a door led to a tiny bathroom—imagine that, a room with one toilet!—and farther down, a sink protruded from the wall next to a small stove. A refrigerator squatted on the opposite wall, with a small dining table and two chairs in front of it. In the living room area, a daybed doubled as a sofa, and a leather chair with wooden arms warmed itself in front of the fire, an Indian-print blanket folded neatly on top. The furniture, what there was of it, was all made of warm, hard, dark woods.
    To a child raised in a concrete bunker, so much warmth, so much wood, was dizzingly unfamiliar . . . and yet wonderful.
    The woman picked up the phone receiver and punched in numbers. A few seconds later, she said into the mouthpiece, “It's Hannah. . . . I need to see you.”
    Wondering if she was being betrayed, Max walked gingerly through the room, examining the homey touches (which to her were odd yet not off-putting) as she went.
    To her surprise, and with an air of confusion, Max found herself feeling more at home within the walls of the teeny cabin than she ever had at Manticore. It was an emotion she was having trouble understanding, surging through her like a sweet sickness, as she looked at the candlesticks, books, paintings, and other objects that were so foreign to her.
    “Naw,” Hannah was saying. “She's just a kid . . . but she's got problems at home and needs to find somewhere safe.”
    Max wondered if she would ever have a place as beautiful as this, a place of her own; thinking of the cabin that way, that a person could live by herself, made its smallness seem suddenly roomy. . . .
    “Look,” Hannah was saying, vaguely irritated. “I'll explain everything when I see you . . . Thanks. 'Bye.”
    Hannah hung up the phone as Max reached out and touched the soft hem of the Indian-print blanket, relishing the texture. None of the wool blankets at Manticore had ever been so soothingly soft. . . .
    Hannah stepped forward, picked up the huge blanket and wrapped it around Max's shoulders. The child immediately felt warm all over, down to her bare feet, and she sniffed deeply, taking in the woman's sweet scent, which still clung to the blanket.
    “I'll be back as soon as I can,” Hannah said, shrugging back into her heavy coat. “Make yourself at home.”
    Max said nothing, the phrase as foreign to her as if in a language she hadn't got 'round to learning yet. She and the woman locked eyes, then Hannah stepped outside into the cold night and pulled the door shut behind her.
    Standing in the window, the blanket still draped around her, Max waited. She stood there, staring out the window, for what might have been hours. This was, after all, still enemy territory. She was not certain what distance they had traveled in the civilian car, but Max knew nonetheless that Manticore wasn't that far away.
    She knew also that Lydecker and that vague yet specific entity called Manticore would never give up looking for her . . . for all of them.
    Finally, reluctantly, Max decided Hannah either wasn't coming back or had been captured. Either way, the cabin must now be considered unsafe. She liked this place . . . had she known the concept, she might even have loved it. Human feelings deep within her had stirred—the warmth, the wood; the