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Noah answered the door, looking rumpled and tired. He hadn't slept much last night, and had in fact finally resorted to going back to the labs and cataloging samples until he was swaying and blurry-eyed. "Melvin?" He blinked owlishly at the other man, and then the realization struck him that Melvin was here, when the last time he'd seen Al was when Al was headed off to join Melvin on the mission they were going away on, and if Melvin was here and Al wasn't, that did not bode well for why Melvin was here. That thought woke him up in a hurry. "What - did something happen?" he asked anxiously. Had Al landed himself in the infirmary?

Al's scarf, the one he cherished because it had been a gift and rarely took off. Noah took it and took a stumbling step back to let Melvin in, his mouth opening and then closing again wordlessly. His fingers twisted into the red fabric, and he stared at it as if it could tell him what had happened. It was stained with blood, but it had been stained with blood before. Was this stain, here, new? Noah didn't know.

"Is he ... " The sentence died in his throat, and he tried again, in a small and shaky voice. "What happened?"

Noah sat down slowly on his bed, keeping tight hold of the scarf, and listened to Melvin's explanation. The road had swallowed Al up, like a mouth. Had eaten him, invisible in the fog. Noah could imagine it, vivid and awful. He closed his eyes, then opened them again as his imagination insisted on painting him a horrible picture.

"You didn't ... find anything? Else?" he asked, after a long silence, looking down at the scarf in his hands. His bones felt like they were made of mud, heavy and dark but weak and fluid, rendering him unable to move for fear that he would just fall apart.

Noah nodded, a tiny motion. He knew that the risk was too high for the result, and that if the terrain was too dangerous they wouldn't have gone down and searched immediately. If the area was judged safe they'd probably send someone for ... for the tablet. Later. He swallowed hard. Maybe Al wasn't dead. The scarf wasn't proof, they hadn't brought back a body. Hunters were tough. But the odds were against it,he knew.

Laz stirred in his mind, a watchful presence, and said, GOOD DOG. Noah didn't answer, nor did he try to sort through all the implications of that statement, not now.

"Thanks for telling me," he said to Melvin, his voice small and choked. The practical, logical part of his mind told him that it would have been worse to get the news from someone he didn't know, from an impersonal source with no stake in the matter, and that he shouldn't be mad at Melvin for the news or the mission. He was anyway. He looked down and folded the scarf into careful halves, then quarters, until it was a small square that he held pressed between his palms.

Maybe I could go look. Even as he thought it, he knew he wouldn't be cleared for the job. He wasn't high enough rank and if someone had been ... lost ... in an area recently it would be deemed high risk.

Noah nodded, because there wasn't anything else he could do. It felt like everything was coming from a huge distance away. Even though Melvin was right there, it was like he was miles off, like his words were echoing across a canyon that separated Noah from everything else.

He didn't want to talk. He really didn't want to talk. He didn't want to talk to Melvin. It wasn't Melvin's fault, there was always the risk, it could have been any mission, but it had been this one and if Al hadn't gone he'd still be here and it felt like Melvin's fault. "No, I just, I just want to be alone, yeah," he said, and listened to the words trailing off into the impossible space between them. He'd said thank you already, and meant it and not meant it, and if Melvin didn't go away Noah was probably going to say something dumb and awful, he could just feel it bubbling up in him.

After the door closed, Noah stayed sitting, staring off into space, feeling utterly numb. He was pretty sure he was supposed to have some kind of outpouring of emotion after news like this, but he was numb, even his own feelings coming from some great and impassable distance. He could sense Laz listening to his thoughts, but the zombie said nothing, offering neither comfort nor criticism.

Eventually, Noah folded slowly forward, curling into himself and closing his eyes, holding the scarf to his chest. There was a chilled place under his ribs in the pit of his stomach. He could tell that when he started feeling something, it was going to be terrible, and he sat curled up and still, waiting for it to come.