The mud war had been wild; I could even taste it in my mouth. I didn't imagine Michael would enter the game so quickly, which led me to think how much he needed to reconnect with the person he once was.
When we returned to town, people stared with wide eyes and wrinkled noses. Despite our attempts to clean up, we still looked like we had escaped from one of those holes that opened up in the ground when you least expected it.
Anika ran towards Michael. "I was worried about you. What the hell happened up there?"
Michael and I exchanged glances, each waiting for the other to come up with an answer that wouldn't make us look like five-year-olds. Anika turned her eyes to me, seeing that Michael was struggling with the question.
"I fell in the water, and Michael came to help me." I explained.
Okay, this didn't make me look like a five-year-old, but stupid and clumsy as hell. Great.
"Who's Michael?" She asked, confused.
"Oh, sorry. I mean, Commander Rowand."
Anika raised an eyebrow but didn't say anything else. I guess she just gave up on the mystery. Now I realized that Michael hadn't corrected me a single time when I called him by his original name while visiting The Hole. Interesting.
We ate at the common house of the Phoenix Group with Michael, Anika, Ryan, and a handful of other soldiers whose names I forgot the minute after they were introduced to me.
The last to arrive was Heather. She had gotten out of the cell, thank God. She sat next to me, and I noticed she had changed clothes and her hair was wet. I figured they had let her have a shower and borrowed clothes. Quite an improvement in treatment from the past weeks.
"All good?" I whispered to her.
She nodded.
"What about you?" She asked.
"Not too bad so far. A bit surreal, but nothing too out of the ordinary for my regular dose of surreal."
Heather smiled trying not to stand out too much.
"After this, I'd like to talk to you." She said with another whisper.
"Of course."
Michael, who was at the head of the table, stood up and quieted all the soldiers who were roaring like a rowdy battalion.
"Phoenixes. Please." Everyone turned to him.
"I would like to make a toast. We've been waiting for this moment for a long time. So I'd like to toast for the present and the future. A future without predictions, without data, and without walls." The soldiers raised their glasses enthusiastically.
"I would also like to thank Grace and Heather for helping us complete the mission. Soon we'll destroy The Orb. Soon walls will fall."
Heather and I exchanged a confused look. Destroying The Orb. So that's what the mission was about. I could have guessed, but it still sounded delusional. I had worked close to it and knew the kind of advanced tech we were talking about. Getting to the top of the Nexus Court where The Orb resided was hard enough. Destroying it was another level of impossible. You couldn't just blow it up or unplug it like a damned washing machine. The Orb was data, an algorithm, a ghost in the machine. How did they plan to "destroy" it? And the more intriguing question, what did Heather have to do with all of this?
Once lunch ended, we slipped away to the town center, far from the watchful eyes of Anika, Ryan, and Michael. We ended up in a market that smelled of baked bread, roasted grains, and fresh melon. Paradise, truly. We wandered around, savoring the strange feeling of having a normal life.
YOU ARE READING
SILVER EYES (GXG)
Romance[2024 WATTYS SHORTLIST] Grace had no idea what she would find on the other side of the wall when the gates opened. Even less so that they wouldn't let her brother cross. Why? A blue-eyed and fierce commander, named Heather, holds the answer. She clo...
