Wings of the Walker - CoraLee June Page 0,321

the people living here recognized him, some even were previous citizens of Dormas and were eager to follow his lead. Soon, we had a central station set up in an abandoned building, and the tents set up down below were now scattered around above ground Lythe.

“I don’t remember. I think there were rations down below? It’s all a bit hazy. I know we ate, but…”

“One of the guys handed out food every morning,” a woman explained while cradling her head in her hand. She reached over to vomit in a nearby bucket then wiped her lips before turning back to Cyler. “It’s like he knew what was happening to us but didn’t care,” she whispered. “He just kept bringing in more Scavengers, and I was too...tired...to think anything of it.”

“Can you make him stop moaning?” Cyler growled at another man. Lenny was moaning in the corner. Alone. No one bothered to help him. We debated long and hard about bringing him back to the surface. When Huxley woke back up, he voted to leave him down there to starve to death, but Cyler vetoed that. He seemed convinced that Lenny had more information.

To keep Huxley from beating Lenny’s skull in, he and Patrick went to find Tallis, Jules, Thurst, and Bowden to explain everything that had happened. Mia wasn’t entirely out of the woods yet, and I knew that Tallis would want to see her.

I scraped my nails along my scalp while trying to make sense of the numbers Mia told me. I had left her bedside thirty minutes ago, determined to sit down and think about the mysterious code she spouted off at me when we had first found her. Was it a delirious musing? Or did it have merit? 88982.

“You okay?” Patrick asked as he settled beside me. Jacob hadn’t left my side since the moment we got here. And when Cyler told a few men to go scout food supplies, my broody leader looked like he was itching to go but stayed behind with me instead.

“I don’t understand what Mia was talking about. She said Mistress Stonewell wanted me to know this sequence of numbers. What does it even mean?” I cradled my head in my hand and felt a sob rise up my throat, threatening to make me feel helpless again. “Mistress Stonewell has Payne, but where?”

Patrick rubbed my back as Cyler yelled at a kid to clean out a makeshift pantry. He also ordered a coughing man to go to quarantine, and when he was informed that there was no quarantine, he let out an exasperated sigh. He was in his element.

“I’m sure she went into hiding when shit went down. Word got out that the cure was pumping in his veins. She might be a bitch, but she’s not an idiot. She left a code for you to find her. So think about it. We can figure it out,” Patrick replied.

Just as I let out another huff, Kemper plopped down at the bench across from me and handed me a piece of paper and a pencil. Sliding it across to me, he gave me a small smile before saying, “Sometimes it helps to write it out?”

I slowly dragged the lead of the pencil along the tan paper, digging so deep that it almost tore.

88982.

What could I possibly know about a code?

I kept tracing over the numbers while trying to rack my brain. “It's not coordinates,” Kemper said while staring at the page in front of me. Was it a cryptogram? That didn’t seem likely because what word started with two of the same letter? I felt helpless and angry. Nothing seemed right, and how could a sequence of numbers have so much damn power over me?

I stood up and marched over to a writhing Lenny, despite the low warnings from my men. “Does this mean anything to you?” I asked while thrusting the paper towards him. If he was so determined to find Payne, now was his chance. Maybe he overheard something else from Mia? He scrunched his bruised and battered face in confusion while studying the five numbers like they could somehow cure X and all of the empire’s problems. After a few moments of mindless staring, he directed his gaze back at Cyler, who was pacing the room with a scowl.

“Fuck off. Get me some water, and I’ll talk,” he mumbled.

I wanted to choke him to death on the spot, but instead, I settled on kicking him in the balls. “Answer me,”