"You made it further than she did," said Clancy as he poured hot water into my tea cup, "but she escaped, in her own way."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean what you think I mean."
I let my leaves steep and breathed in the peppermint vapors. I watched moon's million reflections on the swift river water float by as I sat wrapped in a Pendleton blanket on the old man's couch.
"I was the last one to talk to Gomez before she did it, Milo. She couldn't go home, not after changing so much."
"And Bermy?"
"I know about as much on that one as you do. My guess is that he wanted his own way out too."
"You work for the company, don't you?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes," Clancy sipped coffee from his mug and rolled his neck from side to side.
I saw blinking lights in my periphery, two sets -- bike lights.
"What are you going to do with me?"
"It's your choice Milo, we can't let this out."
"Is this how it always happens? Does anybody ever make it back home?
"Milo."
"Our heads are too hot. We've seen too much...all of us."
That night I slept tightly in the back of a van going forward to a new place with new faces and new names that would ultimately be the same.