"You're starting the meeting without me?" Jules growls as he walks into the room.
My eyes widen as I take in the sheer look of animosity between him and Alto. The silence grows tense, charged with an electricity that I could almost taste.
"Why, yes. How observant of you! I'm glad you have arrived, now we can get started," Alto drawls mockingly, the southern twang annoyingly apparent. Jules' eyes narrow as he takes his seat. He glances towards me and gives Cass the once over before returning his attention back to Alto. Cracking his knuckles, he grins, "So let's begin."
"Arran?" She whispers in the dark. "If something bad were to ever happen to me, you'd protect me right?" I look into her deep blue eyes and smile. "Of course Princess," I say "I couldn't live without you."
"Arran, are you ok?" The others are looking at me as if I've sprouted a third head. Cass holds up her phone up and shows me my reflection. I've gone as pale as paper and the vein on my forehead is throbbing.
"Hmm? Yeah, umm..." I trail off.
"Oh shit Arran, I'm so sorry, you've had so much thrown at you tonight that you must be seriously freaking out!" Cass says. She takes my hand in hers and grips it hard, making me look at her and focus on the present. "You'll be ok, we're going to figure out a way of helping Anna. She's unaware at the moment of what's happened to her, but tonight, we're breaking her out."
A small smile creeps across my face and I grip her hand back as a way of showing my thanks; I'm speechless.
"Actually..." Jules starts before he coughs nervously. "I've actually just come from seeing Anna." He nervously looks up at us all. "She's not in a good place, and I don't think that tonight is the right time for us to bust her out. It's too risky!"
"Well then what, pray tell, do you propose we do?" Alto asks, exuding all the charisma of a cowboy.
"We should tell her what's happened and make her aware of her condition," Cass says. "It's the most straightforward action! We tell her why she was chosen, and what has hap-,"
"No!" I yelled, cutting her off. "If we tell her why she's here, then she'll find out about the true nature of James' death. That would destroy her." My head starts throbbing again, as I sit back in my chair, not realising I had jumped up.
"I agree with Sparky, it would send her spiralling and we can't have that happening right now. She would become far too vulnerable and we need all of her power as she is our only chance at completing our insurgency."
"Isn't that the name of a book?" Jules mumbles.
"Not helping," Cass whispers menacingly.
"Yeah ok, sorry. So I think we should go get her now and bring her here. Arran and her can hash it out, become cute little love birds again and then we go and steal the memory stick so that we can get the hell out of here in the morning and go and meet Charlie." Jules says.
"Eeeeerrr," I stammer. Lovebirds? Does he have to be so blunt!
"Julian!" Cass yells. "Arran doesn't know! He only just discovered that we work for the resistance and now you're freaking telling him our top secret mission! Are you dense!" she whispers. Alto just face palms, clearly amused by the whole episode.
"I don't know; what?" I say interrupting their argument.
"Well... you see..." Cass stammers before Alto jumps in.
"You see, remember that awfully named mission we did a couple weeks ago? Well, the memory stick you recovered is of the utmost importance. The information on it was stolen from the Minister of Defence himself, and it contains some of the most volatile knowledge to exist in our current time." His heavily dramatic drawl eclipses most of the words but I make out just enough to know that 'it ain't good'.
"So you're saying we stole from M15," I ask.
"Yessiree."
Well, that answers that then.
"Why does Jim want it?" I ask.
Alto opens his mouth but Jules cuts in. "As we all know, Alto loves to mouth off about everything. But if we could at least try to maintain some semblance of secrecy about this mission, that would be wonderful." Alto rolls his eyes and dramatically yawns.
"Well as interesting as this is; I feel we should be planning how to get Anna out of her bunk," Cass says.
"Agreed."
~~~~
Hello lovely readers!
Guess who's back, back again?
Tolly's back, tell your friends.
Sorry for being AWOL for so long and I've finally made up my mind how the rest of the plot is going to go!
Quite a short chapter but bear with me.
So stay tuned as you never know what could happen next! 😊
🔥🔥🔥
YOU ARE READING
The Burning Girl
Aksi"Where the bloody hell has she gone." I hear someone scream. "Tom!" That must be Jim, I thought. Getting closer to the edge, I can hear a scuffle, someone thrown to the floor and another pinned against the hood of the car. The tension in the air co...
