Earth Thirst (The Arcadian Conflict) - By Mark Teppo Page 0,62
leans tiredly against the rack. “This was just a waste of time,” she says quietly. “Such a fucking waste of time.”
“We're still alive,” I say. “We're not in immediate danger. We have freedom to move about. It's—”
She whirls on me. “‘It's not that bad.' Is that what you're going to say? This entire facility was burned because you took me out of that hospital. They burned Eden Park too! How many have died now? Secutores is covering their tracks, and they don't seem to care about collateral damage along the way. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go? Do you think they'll just let us wander off? We're loose ends. They're going to come after us. Shit, Silas, for all we know they're waiting upstairs for us, laughing at us as we stumble around down here in the dark.” She taps me on the chest, punctuating her remarks. “We don't know why. We don't know what or even where. We don't know anything.”
I grab her finger. “We're alive,” I repeat. “It's a start.”
“A start of what?”
“I don't know. That's why I found you. Intelligence gathering isn't my forte.”
“Me? That's your whole plan? Find Mere; she'll figure it out. That's it?”
“Sort of.”
“Oh, shit. That's not a plan, Silas. That's barely”—she searches for a nice way to say it—“that's like something on a grocery list. Get eggs. Meat. Maybe some cheese.”
“Short lists work well,” I say.
“Find Mere. Kill all the bad guys. Like that?”
“Sure. It's easy to remember.”
She stares at me. “You're a grunt,” she says. She pulls her finger out of my grip. “That's what you are—what you were. How long have you been following orders, Silas? Jesus Christ. Who put you up to this? Is this your idea? Have you ever thought for yourself?”
“Yes,” I say. “The night I saved your life, for one.”
She looks away. “That's not fair,” she says quietly.
“It's true.”
“Goddamnit, Silas, I don't need that on me. You saved my life once. You do it again, and this time how many people have died?”
“You can't connect those events like that. It doesn't work.”
“Why not?”
“Because it's not about you. It's—”
“What? It's about you?”
“No,” I say, struggling to grab on to that elusive thought that has been darting out of reach every time I try to reach for it. “Yes,” I change my mind. “It's about us. Arcadians.” And then the thought stops hiding from me.
“Secutores didn't do this,” I say.
“What? How do you know?”
“It was all a trap,” I say. “Right? Everything was set up to capture an Arcadian. Even after the Liberty. Those pop guns couldn't stop me; they were meant to drive me in a specific direction. They wanted me alive.”
“Secutores?”
I nod. “Yes. So if that video was made by Secutores, then they have Nigel. They already have an Arcadian. So why burn the lab? Why leave the laptop for us to find? There's no reason to leave that video other than to taunt us. To tell us we're too late. There's nothing we can do for Nigel. He's gone.”
“Which means this lab belongs to someone else.”
I nod. “And they didn't want Secutores finding anything useful here. Other than their message: We have him; you don't.”
“Wait. Were they expecting Secutores to show up?” she asks. “Or us? And if they weren't expecting us, then… oh shit, there was a plane coming in to the airport when we were coming here. Secutores might be coming here right now.”
TWENTY-TWO
We see lights among the trees when we leave the burned facility—three pairs of headlights—and we dash for the security of the tree line. The cars stick to the road, and it's easy to stay hidden among the trees as the trio drive up to the facility and fan out into the open ground around the building. As the engine noises stop, we hear voices—men shouting at one another—and a flurry of smaller lights bounce toward the building. They find the open door, and a number of men go inside, while teams of two start to sweep the perimeter.
I tug Mere away from the tree trunk we're hiding behind. “They'll find the laptop,” I whisper. “We don't need to be here.” Mere had wanted to keep it, but I had argued that it was better for us to be invisible than to hang on to the video file of Nigel's dismemberment. Especially if the video file was meant for Secutores.
She doesn't want to go, but she lets me pull her away, and we follow the