“Roger.”
Apollo monitored the other three members of their team as they left the offices and headed back toward the truck.Rocko blinked as his hand dropped away from the truck, and he looked up at Apollo gravely.
Apollo stepped closer and reached out to steady the other man, whose face was pale.His body shook.
“Are you okay?”Apollo asked.“I’ve got you.”
“No.This is bigger than we thought.”
“How bad?”
“All-out-war-on-mutants bad.”
“Shit.”
***
Rocko
Images flashed through his mind, snippets of conversations, and directions of sorts.Rocko felt physically and emotionally drained by what he’d seen and heard and was working to piece everything together.They’d conducted a drive-by of Gerald Levy’s home and found it dark and in much the same state as the business location, but they didn’t go in to investigate further.
“When you say war, do you mean war, war?”Hendrix asked.
“Against survivors of the Noah Project, yes.”
“Why?I thought they wanted to capture and use survivors’ abilities,” Griffin asked.
“Not this faction, they’re not the same as the ones we’ve already run into.These people view Noah Project survivors as abominations, threats to the natural order, that need to be exterminated.”
“Fuck, I’ve heard people use that word before,” Blade growled.“All we want to do is live in peace.”
“Persecuted people typically have that one fact in common,” Apollo stated.
“We never asked for this,” Blade added.
“They don’t care,” Rocko confirmed as Apollo pulled him closer.He’d felt cold since reading the truck and was having a hard time warming up.
They were in two separate vehicles headed back to the compound and communicating through Griffin’s cellphone, which was on speaker.
“Are you sure you’re okay?You still look pale,” Apollo said.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine.Just wiped out from receiving so much information at once and feeling so much hatred.I’m sorry I’m not able to articulate it all right away; it feels like I’m still downloading it.That’s never happened before,” Rocko admitted.
“Don’t worry about it,” Griffin said.
“You can get some rest when we get back home,” Apollo said.
Rocko didn’t miss the word he’d used,home, but it wasn’t Rocko’s home.Was it?
Apollo was watching him closely as if reading his mind, but he was way too exhausted to discuss it right now.
“I’d like to return to the owner’s house to get a reading on it when I’ve had a chance to reset.”
If he went in now, he’d likely pass out if he were bombarded with any more information.Rocko’s head was still spinning from his last encounter, even with Apollo’s presence.
“We’ll do a full debrief once I have a chance to put the pieces together in my mind.It’s behaving like a puzzle this time around, and I’m unsure why.”
“Maybe it’s because multiple people would have used the truck,” Griffin said.
