A Second Chance

Part 79 - Storytime

After that encounter, it was all silent as we finally left the capital's outer districts. 

We were supposed to make it to Aden, so that we'd catch the flight back home. We were already running late as hell, and man, mom and Dylan are already worried as hell. I might actually get kicked out once I get back. 

The road south was clear for long enough that I'd started to believe it was going to stay that way, which in my experience was exactly when things stopped being clear. 

Three vehicles came out of nowhere from a side road, moving fast and already fanned out across the road before we had room to react.

Rami hit the brakes and I was already reaching for the door when I looked at the numbers and did the math and man, it wasn't good. Eight of them were visible, with more in the vehicles. We now completely boxed in with nowhere to go.

"I don't think we can do anything," Rami said quietly.

I sat back.

They took the truck and everything in it and moved all eight of us without particular roughness but without any interest in our opinions about i. At least the facility they brought us to was a significant step up from the concrete room in Sana'a. 

A bigger, slightly more modern building, more people moving around it, meaning a more stabilized operation. 

They put all eight of us in one room and locked the door.

The room was large enough that it wasn't immediately claustrophobic, which was something. Bare walls, a few basic cots, one high window that let in a strip of late afternoon light. Rami went immediately to the walls and the door and the window, analyzing it with the same systematic focus he applied to every room we'd been locked in so far.

The four students sat down on the cots and looked at the floor and said nothing.

I thought about Libber in the corridor outside her office, the way she'd launched into the history of the elemental alliance the second she sat down next to me, the ease with which she could fill an entire room with words without appearing to try.

Three generations of the same instinct.

I smiled without meaning to.

Charlotte caught it. "Why are you smiling right now, this is not a smiling situation-"

"I know, I know," I said. "Just thought of someone,"

"Who."

"Mom,"

"Yeah... me too. I wish she was here right now,"

"I know," I said. "But we're gonna get back." 

I looked around the room properly, at the walls and the door and the window and the cots, and then at Rami who was crouched by the far wall examining something near the floor. "Yo, Rami. What do you have."

"The construction here is somehow older than the Sana'a building," Rami said, without looking up. "The foundation walls are solid but the interior partition on the east side isn't load bearing. It's been modified at some point, more recently than the rest of the building."

"So, what does that mean?"

"It means someone changed something on the other side of it and didn't do a thorough job," he said. "Give me time with it."

"How much we talking about?"

"I can't give an estimate, but it's less than you'd think."

"So, we're going to get out of here, right?" Oliver asked.