and deed committed, the data changed regarding when Loquan would finally snap and have to be killed. When they left the cabin, the odds were eight months before she became uncontrollable. After leaving the elite bunker, it was now at three months and two days.
Cindrac knew at the rate Loquan’s mind was unraveling, she would be dead by the end of the week. As much as he wanted someone to share this new world and the universe with him, Cin knew that Loquan was a homicidal maniac he would have to kill to protect humanity and the Earth itself.
Chapter Four
Cindrac stood on the deck of the cabin, sipping the first cup of coffee he’d ever had. It was one of the top twenty food items banned for slaves and had immediately become his favorite thing out of all the foodstuff they’d taken from the last elite bunker.
By the time Cin and Loquan finished at the final Atlanta bunker, they’d expended so much energy that they had to feed their bodies. It was Loquan’s idea to raid the home, and Cin was eternally grateful that they did.
Not only were the meats, cheeses, and uncontaminated fruits and vegetables more nutritious, they tasted better than anything he’d ever had before. Even the water was pure and free of the chemical-laden cocktail forced on the rest of humanity to keep them compliant.
After their first taste of the food and drinks available, Cin and Loquan packed up everything they hadn’t eaten and loaded it into their new aerial and land hybrid vehicle. They returned to the cabin just before dawn, and Cin landed the ship in the overgrown driveway close to the house.
Once they got inside, Loquan gathered up all the food items she wanted to eat and sat in front of the TV screen, flipping through all the news channels. Cindrac had already processed what was being said on the various propaganda outlets and set about making a pot of coffee.
Learning from the elite databases, Cin added the grounds to the strange pot on the counter, well water from the sink, and watched in fascination as it percolated. The moment enough was finished for a whole cup, Cindrac poured it, then spent a full minute just smelling the aromatic steam coming from it.
Feeling a little stupid and not wanting Loquan to see it as a weakness, Cin cradled the cup in his hands and went to the privacy of the deck to enjoy it. The first sip of the bold brew had perked him right up, and if that hadn’t done the trick, the beauty of the sunrise would have.
Cin had never seen anything more beautiful in his life than the sunrise at this moment in time. Even the incredible images of the universe, other worlds, and aliens he’d gotten from the hidden elite databases didn’t compare to this.
While Cin sipped his forbidden coffee and watched the sun finish moving high into the sky, the nanites and his brain were processing the information from the secret databases with lightning speed.
The things hidden from humanity for centuries were appalling and horrifying. There were cures for horrible diseases that weren’t available to the slaves, and terrible experiments were being done on people to find ways to extend and improve the elite's lives.
There were also programs where alien races were allowed to kidnap the slave class for horrors to be inflicted on them in other worlds they didn’t even know existed. The one bright spot that Cin saw was a group known as the League of Aligned Worlds.
From what Cin discovered, LAW had been saving his human brethren from the clutches of the Consortium for nearly half a millennia. His nanites estimated how long they believed it would take before Cin could break into the LAW computer systems at eighteen hours and knew he couldn’t stay up that long.
The massive amount of energy that it took for Cin to control the computer systems and chips during the raids had taken a toll on his body, and Cin knew he needed to sleep. The only thing stopping him was Loquan was still awake in the living room, and he couldn’t relax knowing she was there.
With every passing minute that Loquan was learning from the global systems she’d already accessed, her mental instability became more apparent. The expansion of her mind from the knowledge was only deepening the defects in her brain.
Moving back into the kitchen, Cin shook his head at the mess Loquan had around her from the