Ninety Seconds Blind

The night of, everything ran clean until the gallery. Renna went into the dark section on schedule and my screens lost her and my comms lost her and the van went very quiet. Ninety seconds. i had counted it out a hundred times in the planning and it had always been a number. now it was a thing happening to me. i could see the rest of the board, Castle by the south door, Mholi on the roof, the guard patrol i was steering away from them with little timed distractions, and in the middle of the board was a hole shaped like my friend and i could not see into it. i did the only thing the van lets you do. i kept the rest of them alive. i steered the patrol. i watched Castle's exit. i counted. and at sixty seconds, with thirty still to run, a silent alarm i had never seen in any of my Halvers schematics lit up my board, and it was not near Renna, it was near Castle, and i had two friends in danger and one voice and the clock did not care which of them i loved more.