Then she stopped. 40 ft ahead of her just beside the forward landing gear assembly of the meridian. A man was lying on the concrete floor. He was on his back with one arm across his chest and the other extended slightly, fingers loosely curled around the handle of a wrench. His work boots were scuffed through years of use.
His sleeves were dark with hydraulic fluid. His mouth was open the way mouths open when a person has finally completely surrendered to exhaustion. He was asleep. Around him, and this was the part Sloan registered only as visual noise in that first moment, were scattered a constellation of small items. an inspection flashlight, a documentation clipboard with pages fanned open, a set of specialty sockets arranged in an order that suggested deliberate, methodical use, a sealed container that had held hydraulic fluid, now empty. Sloan did not register any of this.
She registered the man on the floor and the fact that she was paying him to be there. Behind her, two members of her morning staff had followed her through the doors. To her left, three mechanics from the early shift had stopped what they were doing and were watching. From the elevated walkway that ran along the east wall, another small cluster of employees had become still. Everybody was looking and something shifted in Sloan.
Something that she would later in private identify as the worst version of herself rising to the occasion. She laughed. It came out short and cold. the kind of sound that isn't actually amused, but performs amusement as a way of establishing hierarchy. She walked forward slowly, heels clicking against the polished concrete until she was standing close enough that her shadow fell across the sleeping man. "Comfortable down there," she said, her voice carried easily in the hangar's open space.
There was no microphone necessary. The man didn't move immediately. Then his eyes opened, not with the startled lurch of someone caught off guard, but slowly. the way a person surfaces from very deep water. His eyes were dark and took a moment to focus. He looked up at her without expression.
"Maybe we should get you a pillow," Sloan continued. Louder now, performing for the watching employees with a precision she didn't entirely recognize as performance. "We could set up a little cot, make it a whole thing. Aion aviation, where our maintenance staff gets paid to sleep beside the aircraft they're supposed to be maintaining." The man on the floor blinked once and pushed himself up to a sitting position. He moved carefully like something achd.
He put a hand to the back of his neck. His face was the color of old chalk. "Miss Witmore," he said. His voice came out rough from disuse, scraped at the edges. "That's my name," she agreed.
"And you are?" "Caleb Rowan. I'm on the hydraulics team. I've been here since I know what you are," Sloan said. "I'm asking why you're horizontal in my hanger at 7:00 in the morning." He opened his mouth. She didn't let him.