“I just happened to find you. It’s not like I was looking for you to help you or anything.” He sounds annoyed that I’d think he’d be capable of helping me out.
I let out a short breath.So stubborn.
“Still. You didn’t have to, and I’m guessing since I’m not in a cellar or locked up, you were able to get me by Thomas and the lieutenant, so…thank you.”
He lifts his shoulder and drops it carelessly, motioning for me to keep following him. “It was pure luck, don’t look too far into it, okay?”
I smile behind him and tuck my hands into my pockets. “Okay.”
10
EMERY
Lieutenant Erik barksorders at us all morning. We’re flying out to the Under base today to properly gear up for the upcoming mission. It’s a five-hour flight and we left at ten a.m. so we arrive with plenty of the afternoon left to burn.
Gage talked my ear off the entire time. Apparently he was the one who helped me get cleaned up and evaded Thomas and Erik. It doesn’t sound like he found out the extent of what I had done.Mori is a godsend.Thanking Gage wasn’t enough, and now he wants my dessert for a week when we get back from the mission.
“Fine, just don’t bring it up again, okay?” I shove his shoulder and he laughs like it’s not my ass on the line if someone overhears us talking about it.
Kayden sits beside me and pushes his hair back as he stretches. I’m sure his legs are as restless as mine. “What did you end up getting for your tattoo, Emery? You went to bed so early yesterday none of us got to see it,” he says enthusiastically.Thomas glances over, but the others don’t seem at all that interested, including Mori.
“Just a line.” I pull my sweater up to my shoulders so they can see.
“You’re so fucking weird,” Gage says with a jovial tone, holding back his laugh. I shrug, smiling at the warmth I get from being around my squad.
Kayden shoots Gage a dirty look. “I think it looks really modern. Very elegant,” he praises.
If he knew what I told Kate, he would definitely not think that, I muse.
Mori watches our interactions before pointedly looking away. There has to be a way to get him to open up more like he did last night before I made a dumb comment that shut him down again.
I almost forgot how cold it was up here. We’re only outside for a brief moment, but the air stings my lungs the second the plane door opens. The familiarity of the woods and snow world hit me, raising the hairs on my arms with a feeling of dread.
“You all right? You look like you’re going to be sick.” Gage frets over me. His brown eyes are soft and filled with worry.
Mori casts a look over his shoulder and meets my eyes momentarily. I force a tight smile. “Yeah, I feel fine. The cold just took me by surprise is all,” I lie.
Kayden offers a sympathetic grin. “I think we all felt sick the first time we came back to this place. Don’t worry, you don’t remember much so it shouldn’t be so bad.”
They all felt this way? My expression must betray my thoughts because Gage nods and bumps my shoulder. “We’ve all been through hell just to be on a squad. Be grateful you don’t remember the worst of it.” His tone is low, gaze set on the back of Mori’s head. The way Kayden’s eyes lower with guilt make me uneasy.
Whatever they aren’t telling me definitely has something to do with Mori.
We spend the rest of the afternoon at the shooting range in the Under.
Apparently Dark Forces’s squads are allowed to use the downstairs facilities when they are in between recruitment cycles.
I don’t remember this place, but the second we step through the double steel doors and the arena, a sense of belonging and homesickness pits in my stomach. The impossibly high-beamed, domed ceiling and the vastness of this underworld strikes me. The lingering soldiers at the edges of the arena that should have cadets to keep in control have a nostalgic feel too. They stand idly and I overhear them going through new options for trials in the next term.
Knowing that there are people I once knew down here, and somehow miss, even though I don’t remember their faces, makes my skin rise with goose bumps. It’s almost like a feeling of ghosts calling me home, living in the walls of this hell—far more than six feet under and whispering for me to remember.
Remember.I try to let them flow, but all I get is the nostalgia, nothing solid.
We move down a series of hallways until we come to a room made of bulletproof glass.
The weapons room is unreal. It’s nothing like what the forces upstairs have, or even what we have in the arsenal back in Coronado. I was wondering where all the cool shit was. Half of this stuff probably isn’t even legal and is still in the testing stages. A thrum of excitement courses through my veins.
Gage and Thomas stick together since they’re a team. The sniper rifle looks light in Gage’s arms as he carries it to his firing position. Kayden and Erik work on strategies with Mikah. She showed up a few minutes later than we did, apparently she arrived sometime yesterday in preparation. She’s going to have to know the ins and outs of all the backup plans as well in case the shit hits the fan.
