Ty was silent for a long time and it was impossible for Brynn to tell if he had fallen back asleep before her proclamation, or if he was thinking it over, deciding how to respond just as Jonah always did.
“Ty?” Brynn finally whispered, unable to take his silence any longer.
“Well I love you too and that’s why I’ll follow you back into that death trap if you insist on throwing away our lives for someone who betrayed us.”
Though it wasn’t the most enthusiastic response he could have given her, Brynn decided in this instance, she would take what she could get.
“Rusty said they had to take a less direct route to get here so they’ll be arriving tomorrow instead,” Hadlock informed the group the next day. “She was afraid the A.I.s would know where to find her sub if she took the normal path so she’s switching things up a bit.”
“Are they bringing any recruits back with them?” Amber asked, being her new and efficient self with gusto.
“The only one who opted to come was Royter,” Hadlock said sadly.
“She’s coming back?” Tate asked from the other side of their cavern, his interest piqued by the mention of the girl Brynn wasn’t sure she trusted.
“She’s the only one,” Hadlock reminded him, apparently not as happy that only one person wanted to come save the world with them. “Rift salvaged what he could from our base and destroyed everything else, though it doesn’t really matter now. The A.I.s know what we’re capable of building.”
“They know who we are,” Bennett pointed out solemnly.
“They know every place we’ve ever hidden,” Dash added.
Though she knew she shouldn’t, Brynn couldn’t help but feel that the constant Jonah attacks were digs at her as well. Any time someone mentioned Jonah’s betrayal she had to quell the anger that bubbled up inside of her, knowing that they would never believe her when she told them he didn’t know he was an A.I..
Being the only person in the group who still believed in the boy she’d met in the library was beginning to take its toll on her and the longer this division of opinions persisted, the more ostracized from the group she felt.
“What did you find in the files about Eris?” Brynn asked, wanting to turn the topic of conversation away from Jonah and his supposed affiliation with A1.
“Nothing,” Hadlock said, looking over at Brynn sadly.
“What do you mean nothing?” Ty asked incredulously. “There has to be something in there that will help us take her down.”
“The files weren’t real,” Amber answered for Hadlock.
She hadn’t said it in a mean or hurtful way and yet, the words still felt like a slap in the face to Brynn.
“They weren’t real?”
“They were dummy files,” Hadlock explained calmly. “Somehow Eris knew when we were coming and what we were coming for so she replaced the normal files with fakes.”
“Why even bother replacing the files at all?” Ty asked, voicing Brynn’s thoughts exactly.
By now the rest of the group had gathered around to hear about their failure that had cost Cambria her life.
“To give us something to wait for?” Hadlock said with a shrug. “Your guess is as good as mine.”
“The more time we took to upload the fake files, the more time Eris had to come after as many of us as she could,” Amber answered, looking at Devey for a moment before quickly averting her gaze.
If the girl noticed, she didn’t show any signs of it. She simply continued to stare straight ahead with the same blank look she’d worn ever since leaving the facility.
“So we don’t have any information on how to shut Eris down?” Brynn asked heavily, massaging her temple against the headache that was beginning to form there as it always did.
“Not exactly,” Hadlock replied, now looking more hopeful than he had before. “We were able to get most of the real files pertaining to the sugar scented gas,” he said happily. “I don’t know how or why, but for some reason those files were completely legitimate and now we’ve got blueprints, instructions, and just about anything else we could need about how to shut down the gas.”
“We don’t have a way to stop her but we have a way to make her at least slightly less deadly,” Amber finished, looking just as proud as Hadlock.
“What do we need to do to destroy the gas?” Dash asked from the back of the group, his voice and physical presence so small that everyone had forgotten he was even there.
“We’re going to need to break into the facility again,” Hadlock said hesitantly, his eyes trained on Devey to gauge her reaction.
“I’m sure they’ve blocked off the train tunnel by now,” Brynn pointed out. “Or they’re at least monitoring it better. Now that they know about the weak spot in their security they aren’t going to let us go the same way twice.”
“While that may be true, it’s also true that they’re arrogant when it comes to their facility. They feel like it’s a fortress no one can get into,” Hadlock countered.
“Except for us,” Ty said simply.
“Twice,” Brynn added with a small smile in her friend’s direction.
The gesture was short lived but it still felt good to Brynn to be joking around with Ty once more.
“Eris feels like the only reason you were able to break in was because she knew you were coming and let you break in,” Hadlock said, stating a fact that Brynn couldn’t deny.
Eris was nothing if not overly confident in her ability to run things. She would never admit that Brynn could outsmart her.
“But if we don’t use the main door above ground and we don’t use the train tunnel below ground, how do we get in?” Brynn asked.
“Or better yet, how do we get there in the first place without a train?” Ty asked.
“That’s what we keep Rusty around for,” Hadlock said. “She built a car a while back that I think a small group of us could fit into. We got the plans from some of our stolen A1 files.”
“A car?” Brynn asked, confused by the term. “Like a train car?”
“Kind of. It’s like a train car with bigger wheels so that it doesn’t need a track. It can just drive right over the terrain.”
“That sounds made up,” Bennett stated simply. “Like something you’d read in a book.”
“When have you ever read a book?” Amber teased, sounding much more like her old self for a moment.
The self she was before facing Eris and seeing the woman stained with Cambria’s blood.
“Fine, it sounds like something you’d see in a movie,” she corrected, not denying for a second that she definitely wouldn’t read a book.
“Do you know where Rusty hid the car?” Brynn asked.
“I don’t, but Rusty will be back tomorrow. When she gets back we can decide who’s going back to A1 and we’ll start off again.”
“It feels like we just left A1. Oh wait. We did,” Tate joked dryly.
“Why wait until Rusty gets back?” Brynn wasn’t in much of a mood for sitting around and waiting for things to happen while Jonah got tortured because she had left him. “Why don’t we decide who’s going right now?”
“I’m in,” Bennett said enthusiastically, surprising everyone in the room that, despite the horrors they’d witnessed on their last trip in, she was still ready and willing to help her friends.
She was nothing if not a loyal friend.
“I’m definitely going,” Amber stated. “I can throw a wild guess out there and say Brynn and Ty are going?”
“Good guess,” Ty answered, glancing over at Brynn nervously. She hoped he wouldn’t voice the thoughts she knew were passing through his head.
If her friends knew she wanted to try to rescue Jonah, they wouldn’t let her go with them. They’d think it was a waste of manpower when they had more important things to take care of. It was for that reason that Brynn simply kept her mouth shut and smiled at being recruited to go back. She didn’t want to give her true intentions away.
“I have
to go to direct you guys,” Hadlock said, “And Rusty will need to go to operate the car. I think that’s more people than we can actually fit in the car but we’ll just be really comfy.”
“And we’re going to shut down the gas production?” Bennett asked.
“Not just shut it down. I want to destroy the gas she’s already made and stockpiled, shut down the gas production, and plant a bug in the facility that will disable the gas emitters all over the world. That way, when Eris realizes she can’t stop us and she’s desperate to prove she still has power, she won’t have anything to threaten us with.”
“Awesome,” Amber said eagerly.
She had definitely been transformed into someone who liked to take action. Brynn was glad that her friend had suddenly become so willing to help, but she worried that she was turning into someone as reckless as Brynn.
“All right. Those of you coming tomorrow go pack your bags and be ready to leave as soon as Rusty gets here in the morning,” Hadlock said, clapping his hands together happily.
As the group split up to complete their various tasks, Brynn pulled her tablet from its case. She had felt it vibrate during Hadlock’s little group meeting and wondered who could possibly be sending her a transmission.
Opening the message and hoping Rusty wasn’t in any trouble, Brynn’s heart stopped at the words on the screen.
The address the message had been sent from was a complicated string of letters and numbers that she didn’t understand. But despite the cryptic origins of the message, she knew exactly who it was from, and all she could do was hope that this message meant that he was still alive.
The words read: Please help me.
Chapter 24:Promises
Brynn stared straight ahead at the screen in front of her. She sat cross legged on the soft white floor of a small room in A1 though she didn’t feel particularly frightened right at that moment. She could hear an odd mechanical sound on the other side of the door but paid it no mind, knowing that in that moment, it wasn’t important.
The stark white facility didn’t seem as cold or harsh to her for some reason and she was almost relaxed as the screen informed her that her transmission had been sent successfully. Smiling to herself and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear, Brynn stood up calmly, taking the small handheld computer with her. She looked over at the door as another loud bang resonated through the room.
“Open the door, Rachel,” she could hear Eris screaming.
A terrifying sound to say the least.
But she didn’t shiver like she knew she would if she were actually Brynn in that moment and not Rachel. Instead she smiled at the wall, raised the computer above her head, and threw it at the door as hard as she could, watching it shatter into a million little pieces.
“Open it!” Eris yelled again, still pounding the wall, “Or I’ll scratch your pretty eyes out.”
Rachel sighed deeply, a little sadly Brynn thought if she was being honest. She couldn’t ignore how calm the girl seemed when she knew she was about to die. Instead of panicking the way Brynn would have, she pulled a sugar cube from her lab coat pocket and popped it into her mouth for the last time, the taste bringing a thousand memories flooding into Brynn’s mind instantly.
Rachel walked to a small receptacle on her wall, placed the glass tube that held her DNA inside, pressed a button, and watched her future generation disappear into the white folds of the facility.
She sat on the floor once more and rested her back against the soft wall, still calm. Looking around the small room that offered her no escape she pulled a folded up piece of paper from her pocket. Unfolding it gingerly, taking all the time in the world that Brynn was sure she didn’t have, she revealed some sort of sketch that made no sense to Brynn’s mind, though Rachel seemed to think it was an important thing to study right before dying.
The sketch appeared to be some sort of blueprint, though for what, Brynn wasn’t sure. It was a large disk-like structure with large spheres on the bottom that were labeled ‘engine’. An endless number of markings and numbers filled the blueprint and Brynn tried desperately to memorize it, knowing that it would be important for her to tell The Alliance when she woke up, but try as she might, she couldn’t make sense of the paper.
“Why is it taking you so long to override her hack?” Eris spat just beyond the door. “She’s not exactly one of us; she couldn’t have been that brilliant.”
Rachel emitted a little laugh as she pulled a lighter from her pocket. Igniting the small device, she held the open flame to the paper that was pinched between her long fingers, letting it lick the white material and turning it instantly brown. As the flame grew bigger Brynn felt the need to pull her hand away, but Rachel just continued to hold it, letting the flames almost engulf her hand before allowing it flutter to the ground, reveling in the burning on her skin. Once the paper had been reduced to nothing more than a small pile of ash, she swept the remains into a small air vent on the floor.
Getting to her feet and facing the door that was now sliding open, Rachel smiled at the sight of Eris in her full rage. The Angel stormed over to her, shoving her fist into Rachel’s stomach and sending her crashing against the wall with a thud. She grabbed her face with her cold strong hands, squeezing her cheeks painfully and forcing Rachel to look into her purple eyes.
“What did you do?” she whispered, only inches from Rachel’s face.
Becoming quickly enraged by the girl’s silence she pushed her head agonizingly into the wall, bringing her face even close to Rachel’s.
“If you don’t tell me what you did, I’ll take the utmost pleasure in thinking of creative ways to extract the truth from you, Rachel,” Eris said venomously, her hand moving from Rachel’s cheeks and down to her thin throat.
Her purple eyes darted back and forth over Rachel’s face for a moment before she realized that the girl really wasn’t going to say any anything. For the first time since her nightmares had begun, Brynn hadn’t tried to speak to Eris.
For the first time, she completely agreed with Rachel’s vow of silence.
“Fine,” Eris said slowly, twisting Rachel’s arm painfully behind her back at an impossible angle and forcing her out of the room and into the hallway.
“If you refuse to talk to me, I’ll just show you how much damage your stupidity has already caused,” Eris told her, the walls shifting and fading away for a moment before coming back into focus. Brynn’s dream was starting to fall apart again.
After a moment Eris opened a door to a dimly lit room, shoved Rachel forcefully in, and shut the door, calling through the wall, “Enjoy the consequences of your actions.”
The smug smile Rachel had worn the entire time Eris had been pushing her through the facility instantly vanished as she looked around the dark room.
It was a room Brynn had seen before in her nightmares.
The tables that lined the space were eerie now that she knew what rested on them and she prayed silently that she’d wake up before reliving that experience again.
She saw her breath coming out in little puffs and knew she was in the freezer where Rachel had discovered Maxwell’s body.
Brynn twitched violently, waking herself up from her nightmare unintentionally. Ty had his strong arms wrapped securely around her though they had started the night sleeping an appropriate distance apart. Yet there he was, protecting her from her own nightmares like he always did. It didn’t seem to matter to Brynn that they were sleeping on the floor in the middle of all of her friends; without Ty’s presence, Brynn felt alone.
Reliving the experience of finding Maxwell once more hit too close to home for her and she moved closer to Ty’s sleeping form, hoping he never met the same fate because of her actions. She couldn’t bear to lose another friend.
Brynn thought about the way her life might have been if she hadn’t had so many questions. Maybe suppressed curiosity was a blessing.
If she had never decided to go looking for A1, would Jonah be trapped now?
Would they be torturing him to get to Brynn?
She replayed the night before she had left for A1 in her head. She remembered how desperately Ty tried to keep her there with him. Even if Jonah had been suspicious of Ty’s intentions from the beginning and thought his only motivation in this whole ordeal was to bring Brynn back home, would that have been such a bad thing? Ty had pleaded with her that night, saying that he couldn’t lose her.
Then he kissed her.
She had tried desperately to keep the memory from her mind but at that moment, scared for what the day ahead of them would bring and wrapped up in Ty’s arms, she let herself remember. Of course that meant she let herself remember the confusing feelings that accompanied Ty’s actions.
Between trying to save the world from a psychotic A.I. and trying to break her friend out of the top secret facility he was being held in, Brynn hardly thought it was appropriate to worry about her boy problems.
Ty versus Jonah didn’t exactly seem like an end of the world decision when compared to the actual end of the world decisions she’d have to make soon.
And yet she couldn’t help but feel guilty that as Jonah lay rotting in some stark white padded room, she was snuggled up in Ty’s safe arms, thinking about how he had looked at her the night before she’d started this whole mess.
His warm brown eyes always held so much love when they were turned towards her. Like everyone else in the room looked at her but only he really saw her. She often thought of him as overbearing and overprotective, but assessing her current situation, she was beginning to feel as if those traits were necessary when dealing with Brynn’s adventuring spirit.
“Brynn?” Ty asked, opening his sleepy brown eyes and looking down at her. “Did you have another nightmare?” he whispered in the darkness of the cave, surrounded by the deep breathing of the other members of The Alliance.
She nodded her head but didn’t say anything, embarrassed that her thoughts hadn’t actually been on the very serious task at hand.
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