Daughter of Death

I

Hallez stood up and wiped the sweat off her forehead with the dirty sleeve of her T-shirt, growling in frustration. Her dark eyes searched the sandy digging site in front of her frantically.

Everyone was already sweating and panting, even those under the shades of the canopy tents. The dry, hot, blazing noon desert sun was merciless, beating down on the workers, which did not help in the slightest. Hallez could see the heatwaves radiating from the ground. It must've been about one hundred-and-ten degrees Fahrenheit.

A shadow appeared beside her's, and Hallez didn't need to look back to know who it was.

"Cade."

Cade took a deep breath, looking at his feet, and Hallez felt her frustration grow like a storm. "Hal, we've been searching since the break of dawn. We need to head back to camp; we can't continue on for much longer."

Hallez was quiet for a moment, surveying the site. When their vans had pulled up in the early pre-dawn light, she had been sure this was it. She had let her hopes lift as her device beeped and flashed red. Hours later, nothing.

She cursed herself for letting her get her hopes up, only to have them crash back down again like a weakened dam after holding the water back for hundreds of years. Usually, she had a code: If you don't show what you want, they will give you what you want.

She wasn't sure who they were, but she had been following her code for years and so far, it had worked.

"We'll come back tomorrow morning," Cade offered.

Hallez sighed, tucked her gardening shovel in her tool belt, and took off her gloves. "Alright, tomorrow morning." She raised her voice to be heard by everyone. "Code Red! Tomorrow morning, before dawn!"

Everyone seemed to let out a sigh of relief, as they all began packing. Cade exhaled.

"Thanks, Hal." Then, after a moment's hesitation, he put a gloved hand on Hallez's shoulder. She flinched internally, but something inside her stopped herself from slapping his hand away, like she usually did. "Don't worry, we'll find it eventually."

Then he went off to help pack.

Hallez glared at the site before her. She felt bad. Although she had wanted to be alone ever since the incident, Cade and the others never did. A part of her was glad, but mostly, she didn't want their pity. She could take care of herself! Just then, however, she regretted giving him the cold shoulder. She planned to apologize later, (Why should you apologize when they would immediately push you away anyways if they knew what you are? a part of her asked. Hallez hated that part of her, but she knew it was true) but right now, she was also angry. She felt an urge to kick something, or punch something, or scream into a pillow, or violently rip something apart.

Five years of searching. Five years of searching for something that, according to her parents, was here, but not supposed to be.

Her parents... She could see their faces, as clear as if she'd just seen them yesterday, and not three years ago. Their warm smiles lighting up their entire faces, eyes sparkling from the horrible joke Hallez had told them. Her last memory of them was in the desert, as usual, before the incident...

Hallez pushed that thought away. Sometimes, she really wished she could tell her brain to get out of her head, but unfortunately, such procedures would involve extreme pain and most definitely, death.

It hadn't occurred to her, when she started, that she had no idea what she was searching for. When she started going with her parents on their "business trips", at the age of ten, all her parents told her was that they were looking for something that would explain everything. Two years later, they both died in an accident. That was also around the time when she found out about her true parentage... How ironic...

And now, three years after that, she still had no leads except for the device her parents had made.

She decided to kick something.

Her leather boot connected with a rock the size of her palm, and it bounced away.

Hallez glared around the site one more time, then turned to pack her own things, when something made her stop in her tracks. She thought she might have seen something from the corner of her eye, or it was just a gut instinct, but if she'd learned anything in the past five years digging and operating and guiding the team, it was to trust your gut instincts.

She turned back, and looked down where the rock she had kicked was prior the kicking. Hallez frowned, stuffed her gloves in her pant pocket, and crouched down. It wasn't much, but it looked like something smooth was buried in the sand, reflecting the harsh sunlight and glinting like a buried star.

Quickly, she scrambled in her tool belt for a brush, and brushed away sand and dirt. A curved surface was uncovered, and she set down the brush, once again scrambling through her tool belt and took out her device, her last gift from her parents. It didn't look like much—for unsuspecting people, it would just be a walkie-talkie, with a USB drive on a keychain plugged in the bottom, though Hallez supposed that would be strange itself.

She touched the antenna to the polished surface. The light on the walkie-talkie turned bright red, and it let out a consistent beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee- sound, like how a heart monitor would sound if a patient flatlined.

That would usually mean something bad happened. But in this particular case, Hallez's heart leaped with emotion that wasn't quite happiness, but was the closest to that emotion since the death of her parents three years ago.

Five years of searching... Hallez thought. This is it. This has to be.

She pressed a button on the walkie talkie. The device was converted, sure, but it could still be used as a communication device.

"Cade?" She couldn't help a hint of excitement crawl into her voice.

A second later, a response.

"Hal? What happened? I haven't heard you this excited since three years ago."

Hal felt her mood dip a little, even though she knew he was just teasing. "Just shut up and come back. Bring a brush, preferably."

"Yeesh, alright, Captain. I'm coming."

---
Hi
Sooooooooooooo
Actually
I don't have anything to say—
Well, I was planing to publish this later—
Buuuut I'm full of energy today so here it is.
Anyways, before this author's note fills up more space than the actual chapter,
GOOD AFTERNOON, GOOD EVENING, GOOD NIGHT AND GOODBYE—
I think that's how it went.
BYE
-Lunya