Firehouse Oasis 118

45. Bobby

Taylor had wanted to take them all to meet the leader of their camp, the slip kid, basically as soon as they got there. Hen had pointed out that the majority of their party, mostly Albert and Buck, were already on the brink of collapse and needed somewhere to rest. It hadn't taken much convincing for her to lead them to one of the large tents after that, where they'd left Buck, Albert, and Chim to rest while he and Hen went to go meet the slip kid. Albert and Buck had put up token protests that had quickly fizzled out after they'd laid down on the cots and had blankets over them. Chim had put up more of a struggle, but had eventually acquiesced when Taylor said they'd have to take stairs up to the attic of the cabin, which probably wouldn't be great for his already swollen ankle.

So they set off for the cabin, just him and Hen with Taylor as their guide. He could t help the apprehension he felt as they approached. Not only did he not like the idea of leaving the three of them behind in any sense, but he was also remembering the rumors about the slip kid that the 118 had told him. Mainly that the kid was possibly orange.

Despite, or maybe because he was an Orange himself, he knew just how badly this could go if it was true.

"Hen," he whispered, as Taylor opened the door to the cabin and led them inside, "Don't let this kid touch you."

Hen nodded, looking at Bobby a bit curiously. Hen was smart, she really was, but she didn't have the painfully ingrained mistrust of oranges that he did. She didn't see and experience the kind of pain and destruction that they could cause first hand. In fact, he was the only Orange she'd ever met, and that meant she wasn't nearly as wary of his kind as he thought she ought to be.

She'd been on the road alone long enough to be generally distrustful of anyone and everyone though, and that mixed with his warning should be enough to keep her on edge.

Hopefully it would be enough to stop anything from happening too. He wasn't sure about that though, he couldn't be, not after what he'd done earlier that day. He hadn't even known he could enter people's mind like that from a distance, without touching them, but he'd done it and that meant that other oranges probably could too.

Taylor led them up the stairs, and Bobby made sure to go in first after her, to keep Hen behind him. They came out on the landing of the second floor to find what appeared to be a small makeshift office area and a curtain that must be hiding a living area. There was a desk with two computers set up on it that had screens lit up, one showing a news broadcast on mute and the other with what looked like some sort of schedule  planner.

None of that was what caught his attention really, no, what caught his attention was the figure sitting at the desk with his back to them.

"Taylor, what did I say about knocking." The boy said, without even turning around, "I could be changing or something."

His voice was familiar in a way that made a shiver run down his spine. It felt like, for a second, he was back within the walls of Thurmond, scrubbing blood from a floor or choking down the grey mush that was their food or shivering in the cold of winter while he dug out a trench for a new building or a million other things that he'd had to do in that hellhole.

"Whoops." Taylor's voice snapped him out of it as she shrugged, looking unapologetic, "Anyways, we picked up some kids on our supply run, so I brought them to meet you."

That got the boy to turn around, and when Bobby saw his face he felt his blood run cold.

"What the hell." He muttered, eyes wide in shock as he took in the sight of Jonah Gray, the president's son himself.

He felt confusion and rage mixing together in the pit of his stomach uncomfortably. What the hell was going on here? What was Jonah Gray doing here, and seemingly helping kids no less? After what he'd done, how he'd betrayed them all by being the face of the propaganda that kept all the camps going.