RYKE POV
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His father was in the east building corridor.
Not waiting in any performance of waiting — just there, leaning against the wall the way Silo leaned against walls, the posture of someone who'd decided a place was where they needed to be and was simply being in it.
Ryke had learned, recently, to read his father's silences. They were different from the silences he'd grown up with — those had been sealed, contained, the kind that told you nothing had room for you inside them. These new ones were unfinished. Working toward something rather than away from it.
He stopped in front of him.
Neither of them said anything for a moment.
His father looked at him the way he'd looked at the diner through the window — the way of someone learning the shape of something they should have un
