He appeared at that moment. He’d changed into shorts and a T-shirt, his damp hair brushed back from his forehead. He hesitated in the doorway, his gaze finding her, and a slow smile curved his lips. His eyes darkened and heat flared in her core, radiating out until she thought she might burst into flames.
“Good, I reckon,” Josie said with a sigh.
Kane strolled over and took the seat on her other side, resting his arm along the back of her seat. For a moment, she wasn’t sure what to do, then she thought “what the fuck”, and shifted in her chair, so she leaned in, fitting against his body as though they were made to be together. It felt good. Right. She glanced up to find everyone watching her. Most were grinning broadly, and she snarled.
Beside her, Kane chuckled, then took the coffee from her hand and sipped. He released his breath, and she felt the tension ease from him.
She dipped into his mind. He hadn’t known how the others would react to them as a couple. He knew how protective they were of her. And strangely, he wanted their approval. All his life, he hadn’t worried what people thought of him or his actions. Now he had people he cared about. But there were only good vibes in the air; everyone was happy for them.
But beneath that, she could sense his underlying tension. They had to make some decisions about what their next move would be. And while they’d found some new information, it just wasn’t enough.
Jake moved to the front of the room—Christa now beside him—and silence fell, everyone focused on what was to come.
“We’re here today to decide what to do next. Maybe first we should list out what we see as our options right now. Then we’ll go over the information we have and work out the best way forward. I had a call this morning with Sadie and Ethan. The Australian facilities are just about complete. They will include a nuclear fallout shelter that will hold a thousand people. Inside, there will be stores for up to five years and equipment that should enable us to monitor what’s happening on the planet surface and allow us to communicate with any other groups of survivors. Which means there’s room for all of us, if we decide that’s the best course of action.”
“You mean hide?” Kaitlin asked.
“That’s one way of looking at it, but it will be a group decision. I’m not going to force anyone to do anything. You’ll all get a say, and you’ll all decide what’s right for yourselves. Sadie and Ethan will remain over there, though. They’ll be running the facility. Christa is going to talk to you next about the machine.”
Christa walked forward. “Morning everyone. As you all now know, we’ve gotten inside the machine and we have a date for something, though right now we don’t actually know what that something is. We’ve also downloaded information from themachine’s hard drive. It’s not in a language we can understand, but Stefan is working on an algorithm that will hopefully help us translate it.”
“Any idea at all what it is?” Rose asked.
“We think it’s the specs for the machine, and maybe some sort of user manual.”
“Yay,” Kaitlin put in. “I vote we all go visit the wild west and become cowboys.”
“Thanks, but no thanks,” Josie muttered.
“You can be a saloon girl,” Kaitlin offered. “But really, why not? We could all go and have some fun and still come back and save the world or whatever we plan to do.”
“Except it seems that the machine isn’t exactly one hundred percent reliable,” Jake added. “Last time it was sent to do a job, it went back an extra ten thousand years and then crashed.”
Kaitlin supposed he had a valid point. They’d have to wait another ten thousand years for a chance to save the world. She didn’t think she had that much patience. “Okay, but if we do thissaving the worldthing, then I get first dibs on where and when we go in the time machine after it’s all over.”
Jake grinned. “Okay, you choose, but you might be on your own.”
“Nah, Kane wants to be a cowboy.”
“No, I don’t. Been there, done that. Choose again.”
“Okay. There’s plenty to choose from.”
“Christ, did she just give in without an argument?” Rose said. “The sex must have been out of this world.”
“Hah.” Kaitlin scowled. “You mean you don’t know?”
She smirked. “We know. I was just being polite.”
Christa spoke again. “We’re also hoping there’s some sort of ship’s log. Some explanation of what they were doing and why, though that may be wishful thinking. Anyway, Stefan reckons another day, and he should have an initial translation. Theother thing is that the object on board is definitely a bomb. It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen, but we’ve estimated it has a power of around five hundred kilotons. Which is powerful, but not enough to do the sort of damage we’re expecting from the cataclysm.”
“So it’s unlikely that the bomb causes the cataclysm?” Kane said. She knew he wanted some sort of affirmation that the mission wasn’t to destroy the world.
“At this point, I think all we can say was that the intention was not to destroy the planet, but rather some specific target. But that’s not to say that the bomb doesn’t trigger something that ultimately results in the cataclysm.”
“Is it radioactive?” Kaitlin asked.
“We’re not sure yet. It’s a material we’ve never seen before.”
