Oh God.My heart broke for him. A thought struck me and I leapt forward, pulling out my phone. “We’ll take a picture! We’ll take a picture of your desk and everything that’s on it. Then when we move, we can recreate it to match thepicture.”
Jeremy stopped his pounding and reached out for my phone. “I’ll take the picture. And we should have multiple copies in case the photo getsdeleted.”
“Of course.” Damien stepped forward, looking relieved. “You can text it to all of us, and then we’ll have eightcopies.”
Jeremy snapped a picture and nodded. “Eight copies should beokay.”
Damien’s hand slipped in mine and squeezed. I squeezedback.
Sometimes life was just hard, and there was nothing you could do but try your best to surviveit.
Three
After gettingJeremy on board with the move, we’d skyped Damien’s realtor. The five-bedroom loft in downtown Vancouver was perfect for us. It was a furnished one-year lease and Damien paid in full, putting the apartment in myname.
While he worked on placing thin tubing into all of our suits, I called the movers, and scheduled them to drive our packed cars to Vancouver for us. Wherever we wound up the next day, we weren’t coming back toBisbee.
Then I put in a call to Tatum, checking up on her and her family. She’d started at the academy and was getting her butt kicked as expected. She and Emilia had become fast friends and formed a group to go into the Dream Wars with. She was overall settling in well, but missed being my waker, and had asked advice on a few things. She had become like a little sister to me, so I was more than happy to give her somepointers.
I also spoke with her mom and told her I wanted to keep Annie on my staff, even if I wasn’t using her right now. I made a shitload of money, so the least I could do was help out a friend. She’d been overcome with gratitude, and said Annie was ready whenever Iwas.
Damien and Jeremy worked into the night, and nearly all of the next day until Brisk and Josephine arrived. Now we each had a universal plasma brick controller, and a prototype suit with tubing. I think we were all a little skeptical and scared of what experimenting could do to us, but I guess there had to be sacrifices in science. Hopefully, not ones that sliced my body into a hundredpieces.
Now, we all sat around the dinner table eating curry that Ronnie and Mr. Hansen had cookedup.
I took a bite of the spicy yellow broth and moaned. “This is amazing. What’s that sweet tangyflavor?”
Ronnie and Mr. Hansen shared a look. “Pineapple,” she saidproudly.
It was yummy. Jeremy was eating mac and cheese with french fries. He wasn’t a fan offlavor.
“So, what took you guys so long?” I asked Brisk and Josephine. She was supposed to have been back the day before but ran into some kind oftrouble.
The caramel-skinned beauty just shook her head, causing her curly hair to move about her shoulders. “Some thugs in Mexico tried to jump me on the plane. They were trying to catch a free flightout.”
I dropped my spoon. “Are you okay? Whathappened?”
She shrugged. “I killed one of them in the scuffle, so I had to stay back for paperwork. By the time I wrapped up with thefederales, I just told the pilot I would stay for the flight to Japan and meet up withBrisk.”
Holy hell, she was so badass. A former soldier, now in her forties, who was only bothered by all the paperwork after she killed aman.
“I’m glad you’re okay.” Mr. Hansen brushed his hand along herarm.
Ronnie and I met each other’s gaze across the table and grinned. There was totally something romantic betweenthem.
“I missed you. Damien doesn’t make my hot chocolate how I like it,” Jeremy told thetable.
Josephine beamed ear to ear. “That’s because I put extra love into it.” She reached across and patted his shoulder, but he shrugged away from hertouch.
“Did you miss me, Ronnie?” Brisk asked, giving her a sweetsmile.
She rolled her eyes. “As much as I missedJosephine.”
Brisk just smiled before shoveling more food into his mouth, undeterred by Ronnie’s put-down.
Reaching across the table for his water glass, Damien took a sip and then cleared his throat, getting right down to business. “All right, tonight when we go to sleep, we’ll be projected into the Dream Wars. When we get there, we’ll pair up and put each other’s blood into the tubing of our partner’ssuit.”
“Can we do it before?” Ronnieasked.
