Road to Arcadia: the Path East

Chapter Eleven: New Faces

Kai followed the lead of his seniors, leaving his belongings in the bus and heading toward the dilapidated shed.

Three figures emerged from the second bus. He couldn't make them out from the angle as they approached. He figured introductions would be given soon enough anyway.

Alayna Baz approached the shed like it was a place worth approaching. The door had been taken off its hinges, laying off to the side while partially suspended from the bits of wood still clinging on to the structure. Instead, a half-disintegrated sheet, perhaps from the old farmer's bed long ago, hung in the doorway to obstruct the view of the inside.

Kai was half expecting the inside to be a complete 180 from the outside, a polished abode fit to house dozens like a hospitable clown car. The other half expected an interior even more pathetic than its exterior.

Somehow he was wrong on both points.

The inside of the shed was nicer than what a drive by would suggest. At the very least, it was structurally sound. Kai wasn't a stranger to exploring places held together only by frayed threads, but he could breathe a little easier knowing this one wouldn't cave in around them. The floor was little more than a paved rectangle of dirt. The walls were closer to cement. There wasn't any furniture, only a collection of overturned buckets and paint cans. The fading sunlight gave just a peek of some storage along the far edge. Shelves, mostly empty, but who knew what other secrets they were hiding.

Alayna took another step inside. With a closed fist, she banged the cement wall twice. A lone ceiling light clicked on, naked bulb throwing off enough light to fill the entire room.

The only decor in the room hung on the wall opposite Kai, caddy-cornered to the shelves. A sloppily painted "A" in a stylized script, engulfed by a sun with leaves for rays. The symbol for Arcadia. There was a rebellion to the brush strokes that excited Kai. Life in the face of desolation was a spite that ran through his veins just as much as his blood did.

"How many of these are there?" he asked, not bothering to weigh the social ramifications of speaking up as the newbie.

Carsten spoke up. "We have them everywhere," he boasted.

He made a face at that. While Kai hadn't been everywhere, he'd been many-a-where. He would have noticed a symbol like that even before he knew what Arcadia was.

"That's an exaggeration," Baz rectified. She explained while scoping out the space, no doubt checking to see if there were any unwelcome guests. "R&R is good at finding unassuming locations for checkpoints, but there's a very specific policy on how many and how close together they are. The goal is to be the needle in the haystack and paint the needle brown while we're at it."

"I was going to say," Kai muttered. "If they were everywhere, Arcadia would be talked about a lot different on the road."

"I think it's fun," Yulia offered. "It's like a scavenger hunt."

Alayna turned over some of the buckets while pushing others with her foot. "It's not meant for other people to find. These are for us. The downside of trying to keep a low profile is not risking any interference in communication. No traceable connections, do the most you can off the grid. Checkpoints allow us to establish points on the map to use as reference or as a place to regroup."

The blonde was trying hard to resist rolling her eyes. "I was making light of it Baz, we all learned this in training."

She stood up straight, preliminary check completed. "And yet, no one appreciates it." Her attention shifted to behind the three. "And that makes the team."

Kai followed her gaze.

The three remaining squad members had passed through the musty sheet and into the shed's light.