Page 64

“No, but it will be.” Cleo wished she didn’t want to cry whenever anyone asked her that.

She headed to the docking ramp, where Ash and Georgia were waiting with the equipment.

A few minutes later, the ramp opened, and Cleo sucked in a breath of the cold night air. She glanced around, using night vision goggles to get a layout of the land. Everything looked dead. Barren rocks, stunted trees, and no wildlife.

They’d deliberately landed away from any settlements to avoid being noticed, but this time of night, anyone with any sense would be locked away and wouldn’t re-emerge until the morning.

Cleo calibrated her scanner, checked the signal was still active, and then nodded at Georgia and Ash. “The signal is strong. Let’s go see what the Siblet are playing at.”

The trio headed into the gloom.

“Don’t step in any of these strange colored puddles.” Cleo dodged around a murky pool of water. “It’ll most likely burn through your boots.”

“You got it, boss,” Ash said. “No drinking the funky stuff unless we want hallucinations.”

“This place is just plain nasty,” Georgia muttered. “And it stinks. What is that smell?”

“It’s the mines. The ore they extract smells like rotting fish,” Ash said.

“We won’t get too close to the mining areas. That’s where the worst of the fighting is concentrated,” Cleo said.

Even though they were miles from the nearest conflict zone, everywhere they went, there were signs of the ongoing battle, lumps of shrapnel, deep gouges out of the earth, and discarded shells of vehicles.

“We should be coming up on water. If we head along the bank, it’ll lead us to the Siblet signal.”

“It makes sense to be near a water source,” Georgia said. “Although it’s probably as polluted as the rest of this place.”

They kept walking, Ash monitoring the surroundings along with Georgia, while Cleo adjusted their position to keep in line with the signal.

She wished Hunter was with them to help lighten the mood. He always did that, no matter how boring the job, or how difficult things got.

Stars! She’d been such an idiot for not trusting him and fighting her feelings. All this time, they could have been together. And this was her mistake. She should never have hidden behind him. It wasn’t Hunter’s job to cover her screw ups.

“I can hear running water,” Ash said.

“It sounds like a waterfall,” Georgia said.

They continued along the riverbank, going slow because of the debris underfoot.

“Here it is,” Ash said.

Cleo studied the scanner for a few seconds. “Unless this thing is malfunctioning, the signal is coming from the middle of the waterfall.” She handed the scanner to Georgia.

“You’re right. What are the Siblet hiding behind there?”

“Let’s go take a look and see what we can find,” Cleo said.