“I don’t know. What are you thinking?”
“You want to pay this committee a visit?”
Jim looked at each person, his eyebrow raised in an unspoken question. Eva fidgeted on her chair, looked again at the papers, read the kill orders. She hated the fact that a small part of her empathised with Benedict. A celebrated and capable captain who was dedicated to his country and his job had been put in a difficult situation; they knew he would find it impossible to break his commitment. They had manipulated him, and all those crewmen and flotilla citizens had become victims of a broken man.
“I want to go,” Eva said, voicing what she could tell the others were thinking. “Whoever they are, and whatever the reasons, I want to hold them accountable. Hiding in their safe facility while the rest of us cling to life with the barest of grips. I say we go.”
“Aye, I’m with Eva,” Duncan said. “I’m sick of this place.”
“Count me in,” Marcus said. “I’m always up for expanding one’s possibilities.”
Annette and Danny also agreed.
“We taking the Excelsior?” Eva said.
“No, not enough fuel, unfortunately,” Thomas said. “It’s too far of a journey. But there’s a way we can do it. We won’t be able to take everyone, though, so Benedict was right in that this would split the flotilla.”
“The sub?” Jim said.
“If what you said was right about the tampered meter, it seems Benedict had set it up such that we would stay here, in his vision of his own world. If the core isn’t compromised, and if it were, you’d have known by now, then I can get it up and running.”
“When do we leave?” Eva said.
“We’ll need some time for Annette to identify any potential patient zeroes before we hand out the vaccine,” Jim said.
“And I’ll need to train some people in how to crew a submarine,” Tom said.
Annette added. “I can do the tests in a few days as Angelina and her team had developed an early detection solution. It’ll take a few more days to run the regular infection-identification tests, so I’d be ready within a week.”
“That would be perfect,” Tom said. “I only need five good men and women.”
“You’ll have me,” Duncan said. “I’m sure Patrice, Ellie and Ahmed would be suited to a role too.”
For the next hour, the group planned their departure below deck in the ops room. Duncan came up with another mug of tea. They were finishing up the last of Marcus’s personal supply. Eva had been reading comics with Danny, admiring how resolute he was. She could never truly know what effect all this trauma would have on him, but he seemed to be handling it well.
Duncan ruffled Danny’s hair as he placed the two mugs on the console.
“I just wanted to thank you,” Duncan said. “For everything, for being brave, investigating the case, and for stalling Stan, I mean Benedict. If you hadn’t, Dad might not have been able to get the jump on him.”
She reached out and gripped his hand. “I’m glad we survived. There was a time when I… well, let’s say I’m glad I didn’t get my wish.”
“When we find this place… deal with what we have to do, I wondered if… well I don’t know how to say this, but, it’s something I’ve thought about for a while but with—”
“He wants to ask you out,” Danny said, grinning from behind his comic. “He hasn’t stopped talking about you all the time I’ve been here.”
“Thanks, Dan,” Duncan said, blushing behind his beard.
Eva stood up and placed her arms on his shoulders. “Let’s see how things go, but in the meantime, I would like some company.”
“Hey, you two,” Jim said from below the hatch, “no time for slacking. Get your arses down here. We’ve got a mission to plan.” He flashed them a smile and ducked back into the ops room.
“I guess we’d better do as the skipper says,” Duncan said, his arms around Eva’s waist.
She shrugged. “He can wait a few minutes longer.”
Eva reached out her right arm and pulled Danny into the hug. She sighed with a sense of relief and anxiety at what the future might hold, but right there, she knew they’d be okay if they stuck together.
As a group.
Other Titles by Colin F. Barnes
The Techxorcist Series
(Sci-Fi/Cyberpunk/Post-Apocalypse)
Artificial Evil: Book 1 US | UK
Assembly Code: Book 2 US | UK
Annihilation Point: Book 3 US | UK
Apex Cypher: Prequel Novella US | UK
Novellas
The Daedalus Code US | UK
Dead Five’s Pass US | UK
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About The Author
Colin F. Barnes is a full-time writer of science fiction and thrillers. He’s a member of both the British Fantasy Society and the British Science Fiction Association. He honed his craft with the London School of Journalism and the Open University (BA, English).
Colin has run a number of tech-based businesses, worked in rat-infested workshops, and scoured the back streets of London looking for characters and stories—which he found in abundance. He has a number of publishing credits with stories alongside authors such as: Hugh Howey, Brian Lumley, Ramsey Campbell, and Graham Masterton. He lives alone with a black cat in Essex in the UK. Rumours that the cat is the one with the talent is a malicious slur.
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Acknowledgments
A big thanks to Krista Walsh, Jennifer Bender, Maureen Speller, Pauline Nolet, my grandad, and my mum for all their help in creating this book.
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SALT: A Post-Apocalyptic Thriller Page 28