back. I love you, Ash. I've always fucking loved you!" Josiah barked with such malice that it contradicted his hauntingly sentimental statement.
"I want to go home, Kemp," I cried as he held me and guided me back to the lab. He knew it wasn't the Stonewell Manor or even Dormas. Home was my guys.
Chapter Nineteen
I knew that when Huxley saw my red eyes and face, he would struggle to keep calm. He was so incredibly attuned to me. He went into stoic protector mode, assessing the situation and trying to find out what hurt and how he could heal it.
"I'm fine," I assured him. "I just need a second."
I made my way over to the couch where Jules was sitting and sipping a brightly colored drink. Kemper kissed me on the forehead before resuming his position at his workstation where he was tearing apart a fetter and trying to rebuild it.
"You might as well stop all that, I found a way to fix our little fetter problem," Jules said with a lazy wave. She was completely leaned back now, sinking into the soft cushions and enjoying herself.
"You said that earlier," Kemper said while spinning around on his stool.
I felt two confident hands grasp my shoulders and begin massaging. Jacob. He was always massaging me. Relaxing me. I rolled my neck as he worked through the stress that gathered in knots around my tendons.
"What did you mean by that, exactly?" Kemper asked her .
"I'd prefer to wait and show you later." Jules yawned and sipped again. "Oh!" she exclaimed. "Tallis will be here in three days."
I slowly turned my head to her while cocking a brow in confusion. "Oh really?" I asked as Cyler walked closer, yanked the drink from her hands, then sniffed the contents.
"Do you honestly think now is the time to be drinking?" Cyler scoffed.
"I'm celebrating!" Jules laughed. "While you all have been literally fucking around instead of finding a solution, I not only got a message from Tallis but found a way to shut down this damn fetter problem!"
"Oh really?" Jacob asked with a chuckle. He didn't seem to not believe her, but there was amusement in his voice. Was this what it was like when they were kids?
"Really. You know Cavil has a garden full of indigenous plants from every province?" she asked. "Even some from the deadlands. And when burned, they glow green. I took some for myself, and every night I've been burning them on the edge of the beach close to their supply dock," Jules explained with a hiccup. She didn't seem intoxicated, but there was a rosy hue to her cheeks.
"What does that have to do with anything?" Huxley growled. He was still obviously distraught by my tear-stained face but working through it on his own. He was improving, I guessed.
"I burned it to let Tallis know where I was!" she explained as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.
"Makes sense. Fast forward to the part where Tallis is going to be here in three days," Maverick ordered. Allaire was next to him looking over a new code sequence on the computer. He'd spent the past two days dividing his time between working here and gathering blood samples from rejects at the clinic.
"Every night at eleven o'clock, a supply transport comes in. And every night a small new letter is written in green paint on the side of it." Jules stood up and made her way over to the screen and grabbed a digital pen, turned it on, and began writing.
A-G-A-P-I-M-E -
"He calls me Agapimenos . I'm wishing it wasn't such a damn long name," she added in a huff. "I think he will be here once the word is spelled out," she said excitedly.
"And you're sure?"
"Positive."
Cyler walked over to the digital screen and observed her work. "Great—so Tallis is coming, what about the fetter? I doubt you actually found a solution. Kemper's a mechanical engineer, for goodness sake."
"I didn't find anything out about the fetter. But I did find the computer that keeps up the perimeter," Jules said with a giggle before drawing a circle on the board around the letters she previously wrote.
"Now. I'm not sure, but I think a fetter has to be within range of the owner's tablet in order to work," Jules drew a smaller circle in the center and wrote "Holder's tablet."
"But one tablet can't cover the expanse of the island, so they—"
Kemper leaped off his stool excitedly and ran over to the