THE EPOCH CHRONICLES | ✔

thirty-five

"BUT THAT can't be a bad thing," a short black woman - Juliette Reeves, Tina thought her name was. A botanist; and she looked the type who would prefer to spend her time with plants instead of people - piped up, shattering the solemn silence.

Tina didn't know what to think. Ichabod shipping dinosaurs back to 2039? For what purpose? A dinosaur petting zoo?

Truth be told, she didn't care much for Ichabod in the first place; he was a bad guy, and what motives did they need to hate him even more than they already did? She was more concerned about Luca, and what the dank he was getting into.

"Think about it," Amelia said, her tone low. Tina internally winced for Juliette, recognizing her friend's defending-the-dinosaurs tone. "Things are bad enough for us, but at least we expected the dinosaurs. Our friends and family won't be expecting them, and whatever Ichabod'll doing with them, it won't be good."

Even in the morning shadows, the sky only just turning blue, Tina could see Amelia's eyes were even darker than usual. Something had happened, she was sure. Her heart clenched at the thought - while Amelia was risking her life to get the papers that revealed Ichabod's evil mastermind plans, she, Tina, had been sleeping. (And only just. She'd been having nightmares, staring into Luca's dead eyes before waking up and realizing it was a very real possibility.)

It made Tina feel useless. Just another person Lale was supposed to protect, and she could tell by the cords in his neck and leanness of his cheeks that being a leader wasn't a role he was accustomed to.

"Biological warfare, warfare in general," Shaunia added, speaking for the first time in what seemed like months. The chipper mean girl role had already worn out on the second paleontologist; she only seemed tired since the fiasco with betrayal had started. "Imagine if we'd fought wars with raptors and pterosaurs instead of horses and elephants. Creatures optimized to kill could easily replace nuclear weapons."

"And would produce the same fallout," Lale finished with a murmur. Tina rubbed her brow, biting back the slowly rising panic.

"This isn't about us anymore, is it?" Tina asked rhetorically. She knew the answer already. "This isn't about Ichabod and him killing Bradley -" Lale flinched. Amelia hung her head, and Tina remembered with a pang how Amelia had cried at hearing of Bradley's death, only an hour before. Already felt like a lifetime, "but rather the whole world."

The silence in itself was an answer. Tina felt the tension snap like a cord around them.

Botanist... psychologist ... one by one, Tina ran her eyes over the fourteen other people that stood beside her like prisoners of war. Amelia and Lale knew their place as fighters on the front line, but what about them? Tina wasn't sure she had a place fighting against a bunch of marines with volt-guns.

If only battle was as easy as designing a building. Some measurements and added dimensions could fix anything as long as it wasn't set in the foundation. Deaths weren't like that, though.

Shaunia spoke up again, when Tina was in those deep thoughts. She could only hope ... and pray, something she'd associated more with her mother than herself, that Luca was okay.

"So, what's the plan?" The raven-haired girl's eyes were fixed firmly on Amelia, and Tina felt a wave of annoyance flush through her cheeks. The same challenging glint from their training days was back in Shaunia's gaze, ready to pin down on she or Amelia.

Amelia lifted her head, her own gaze equally as cooling, even though it sparked something more hopeful in her bones.

Maybe they would all get out of the final confrontation alive ...