Brandon

Brandon An, level 6, a chubby man in a winter coat with a hammer as wide as a chopper tyre, tells how Meadow Lark came down the ramp (ch. 22); his group put up the spray-painted 'Stairs + People' signs (ch. 21, ch. 23). Not a nurse — a maintenance man, working overtime on an oven — which is why the Speedbump exists (ch. 26): he and Chris turn goblin tables and gym equipment into a bolt-together fortress and he has the idea for the shuriken spikes. He builds the residents' float (ch. 37) and the MOAB (ch. 40), insisting it be called Bomb Chicken and that the weight go at the back. He is the one who says 'You are a good man' and gets the line about staying human in reply, and the one who exchanges the look with Carl that means giving up (ch. 39). He hugs Carl goodbye at the ramp (ch. 41).

A long message hovering in Carl's vision on waking (ch. 8): selection is slow, the residents cannot stay human without staying frail, the Legendary Pacifist Boxes are ridiculous, Mistress Tiatha says they are far away. Carl passes on Odette's advice about the manager benefit and does not mention Agatha.

Dead on the third floor, holding a line against Shade Gremlins with Henry, twenty minutes from a stairwell. His message arrives in a folder Carl has never seen — Messages from deceased Crawlers — and asks one thing: find Chris and tell him 'I love him. That's the most important part' (ch. 3). Carl keeps it in his scratchpad and rereads it (ch. 20).

His last message lives in Carl's scratchpad and is read again on the way home from Ruckus (ch. 10). Carl says the words to a petrified rock body (ch. 14); once freed and healed, the man inside sits in a daze and then says his brother's name (ch. 34).

One of the names Carl says Donut will cry for one day (ch. 77).

Remembered with Chris and Yolanda and the rest of the Meadowlark staff (ch. 50); in Agatha's memory, the brother who shared his lunch with the woman in the alley behind the kitchens (epilogue).

Remembered: Pontiff's mallet is like the one 'the late Brandon' carried (ch. 19); 'Being human was what I’d said to Brandon' (ch. 60); a name in Donut's dream-speech to the giant shell of Imani — 'people named Yolanda and Brandon and Elle' (ch. 87); Elle, folded in a wrecked truck: 'I haven’t been folded like this since Brandon showed us how to use Tinder' (ch. 96).