Aware

The wall came down and the gate is standing in open air. Hiro puts his hand on it the way the stranger did, and hears the thing he has heard since he was four. Then the Army arrives. Colonel Maxwell has one question, and he asks it of the wrong man. The marks on the gate turn out to be a tally, in fives, and somebody on the other side has been keeping it. By nightfall there is a list on a whiteboard with seven lines on it, and nobody asked any of them.