Day 48
Shadow Mountain Base, Alaska
At eight am sharp, as directed by Wolf’s text, O’Neill entered the war room. He stopped long enough to fill a paper cup from the coffee dispenser station. Then, caffeine boost in hand, he rounded the operations table and took a seat across from Wolf. It didn’t occur to him until he sat down that he could have sat on the opposite side. He wasn’t the outcast anymore. Wolf wouldn’t run him off for daring to sit next to him.
He was running with the in-crowd now.
Whoop-de-doo.
He grimaced as he sipped from the paint thinner inside the cup. What served as coffee on base was enough to wake Rip Van Winkle while serving as a cleaning agent for floors and walls. Nobody ever claimed Shadow Mountain’s coffee was tasty. But it sure worked to wake one up and brighten their minds.
And they needed all minds on deck if they were going to extricate the world from the mess Clark Nantz had made.
News of this strategy meeting had been a relief. Finally...finally Wolf must have news to share. Except—he glanced around the almost empty room. These meetings usually included the top dozen warriors on base. Yet only he and Wolf were here.
“Just us?” he asked, and took another grimacing sip from the paper cup. The coffee burned off a couple of layers of skin on its way down his throat, before hitting his stomach like an acid bomb.
“Us, Aiden, and Cap.” Wolf glanced toward the door. “Cap has been investigating the D.C. Nantz Building. He wishes to go over the results with us, before bringing anyone else in.”
“We sure we’re looking at the right building?” O’Neill asked.
Wolf shrugged. “Cap is still looking.”
“Embray wasn’t invited to this meeting?” O’Neill swallowed his surprise. Fuck, Embray was their best, possibly only, hope of containing this bot plague. Why didn’t he have a seat at the big boys table?
“He declined. Says he needs to focus on containment strategies. Says he’ll attend the next meeting when we have a location.” Wolf paused before adding quietly, “The location will affect our containment options.”
O’Neill digested that. Disappointment crested. He’d hoped this meeting meant that Capland had pinned down the labs. “Embray must be right. It’s too coincidental that Nantz movedhis headquarters to a different building, leaving his flagship tower empty. The move must be zombie related.”
“Yes, but—” Before Wolf had a chance to continue, Winchester walked through the door.
The sight of the dude’s drawn, gray face stalled O’Neill’s thought process. Wolf’s too, judging by the way the dude’s voice quit working mid-sentence. Winchester swung by the coffee pot, poured himself a cup, and headed toward the table, his footsteps heavy and his shoulders bunched.
The squid did not look well. Not at all.
What’s up with your javaanee?O’Neill asked Wolf through the neural net as Winchester rolled back a chair and all but collapsed into it. Something was off with the dude. He sat like his legs had given out.
Unknown.Wolf caught O’Neill’s gaze, his eyes narrow and thoughtful.
Had Wolf seen his brother enter the room? He must have, as he’d stopped midsentence. Still, he was sitting on the same side of the table as Winchester. He only had a view of hisjavaanee’sprofile.
Without saying a word, Winchester buried his face in his coffee cup. Something was definitely wrong with the dude. His prickly attitude would normally be choking the air by now.
His gaze narrow, his eyebrows furrowed, O’Neill studied Winchester’s lined, gray face. “What the fuck happened to you?”
Winchester ignored the question.
You said he looks unwell. How so?Wolf’s mental question was one of comparison, rather than disbelief. As though he were questioning whether he and O’Neill had seen the same things.
Looks like someone chewed him up and spit him out.
Does he look sick, as he did before?
O’Neill studied Winchester’s vacant-eyed, hollow face. His skin looked taut and gray. But there was no flush to indicate afever. No rapid rise and fall of his chest to indicate increased respiration.
Not sick. More like exhausted. Like he hasn’t slept in days.
Perhaps Taounaha stalks his dreams again.Satisfaction rang through the neural link that stretched between them.
