Matthew Silver and the Monster Hunters, Book One: The Darkest Waters

Chapter Six

SilverCHAPTER SIX

I couldn’t find Jay anywhere. I had searched for her all over the campus (which takes forever, just so you know my frustration), asking everyone I met if they’d seen her. Everyone knew Jay, but no one knew where she was. She wasn’t in her dorm, she wasn’t in any classrooms, and she wasn’t in the lounges, or the parks, or the cafeteria, or any of the shops.

I wondered if she was avoiding me. I had a lot that I needed to talk to her about, but she wasn’t anywhere I could think of. I knew that she was like a ninja, but it was getting ridiculous. I wished I had a cellphone.

We weren’t allowed to have any phones on campus, but when we left for missions, we were allowed as much tech as we needed. Phones made us traceable. One conversation between a few Hunters would be enough to have the NSA ringing the alarm bells. And besides, it’s not like we’d be able to get any service so far underground. Phones were obviously nonessential, but I wished I could simply call her and ask her where she was hiding. I was sorely tempted to hack the communications systems just to send a message to Jay’s watch. And yes, I am aware of how strange that sounds.

I tried to think of places that she would go to if she didn’t want to be bothered, and I came up with several. The first was the back room in the enormous library, but someone else already occupied it, and unless Jay had suddenly grown a whole lot of facial hair in the last hour, she wasn’t there. The second didn’t disappoint.

The Virginia Sector’s botanical gardens had a bunch of trees and exotic plants from all over the world. It was so huge that you could get lost in there, if it wasn’t for the frequent maps and signs to guide you. To some recruits, it was their only connection to the above world. They would go out into the open world expecting a flourishing jungle, only to find the concrete jungle. It could be a little overwhelming for first-timers.

It was a pretty cool place. Maybe not to you, but to us recruits, who hardly ever got to see the above world, it was paradise. A lot of the plants were supposed to be pretty rare. Each section of the garden had its own little climate and environment, but I knew that Jade had always liked warmer climates, being partially Middle Eastern. We both hated the cold.

She wasn’t in the desert biome, but the tropical biome. I don’t mind telling you that it took a good twenty minutes to make it that deep into the gardens. I was hot, sweaty, and grumpy by the time I got to the tropical biome, and the humidity did not temper my mood. If it would’ve started raining, the water would’ve sizzled on my skin.

Each mini-environment had a couple of benches in the middle, and she was sitting on one with her knees up. She had her chin on her knees, and her arms wrapped around her legs. She didn’t make any indication that she had noticed me, but said, “I knew you’d find me here.”

So she was avoiding me! That made me mad and frustrated, and upset that I was mad, all at the same time. I sat down next to her and refused the temptation to glare.

“I’ve been looking for you for forever. Why’ve you been hiding from me?”I told her with light irritation. “The first thing we should’ve done was start planning with Sandy and Scott.”

“We shouldn‘t take this mission,”she snapped. “It’s not fair for them to ask us to go on another, and it’s just wrong to send us on one that they know we won’t come back from.”

“Jay, it doesn’t matter what we want. It doesn’t matter if it’s fair or not. It‘s just something we have to do.”I was a little miffed that she couldn’t take a crisis seriously.