Page 11 of High Noon

Chapter Four

Yarrow

Oh, shoot. Shoot. Shoot. Shoot!Maru disappeared in an instant, but not before Enoch saw him. I rushed across the roof to the access point and wrenched the door open to find him already behind it.

“What was he thinking?” Enoch growled.

“He was thinking of saving Eve.”

“I will save Eve! I needed him here. If she lands, it may be near the Compound. He’s the only one who knows the way in.”

I scoffed and rolled my eyes, pushing my glasses up my nose. “Number one, he’s not the only one who knows how to break into the Compound. I can see that it happens, and that security won’t even see you coming. Number two,” I paused to add drama, “Victor announced that Maru is wanted for treason. If any of Victor’s soldiers sees Maru anywhere near the Compound, they’ll have to arrest him. If they don’t, they face the same sentence as the accused they allowed to roam free. No one wants to die for someone they barely know, even if they respect the person. They respect Maru, but there’s not a soldier in the army who wouldn’t turn him in to save their own neck. There’s even a ransom posted for him at this point, which screams desperation to me. Victor must really want or need him. Alive. The ‘wanted’ announcement specified that he wasn’t to be harmed when apprehended.”

“Yarrow, you should probably breathe,” Enoch said with a slight smile.

I let out a high-pitched giggle. “I’m a little nervous. You’re intimidating, to be honest.” Considering he could decide to kill or turn me into a monster, or just pick me up and throw me over the roof’s edge…

“Are you a technological genius?”

“Genius is a bit of a stretch, but I’ve got game. I prefer the word ‘wizard’. Tech wizard,” I answered honestly.

“Whatever your title, I need your help.”

He held my gaze and waited for me to respond, which actually took a minute because he was kind of beautiful. Not the same as how Maru is beautiful, but in his own, really weird way. I mean, he’s not human, and I can tell it. I didn’t expect to be able to tell it right away, and not only because he has fangs. It’s like he’s more. He just screams more. So much more than human.

“Yarrow?”

“Yes?” My mental soliloquy interrupted, I cleared my throat and looked away from him, collecting my scattered thoughts and glancing back. “How can I be of assistance?”

“For starters, you can tell me what you know about Maru’s jump.”

I let out a breath. I knew everything, because I was the one who implanted his device and programmed it. “Eve is his target, so according to Kael’s documentation, he’s designed it so that Maru will be pulled through time and space to her. Or at least close to her. He can actually set a precise coordinate, or just let it occur by chance.”

“He preset all the coordinates?”

I nodded. “Yeah. From the first jump to the last pull, Kael engineered it all.”

“Pull?”

“She’s scheduled to be pulled back to our time. She should arrive here at midnight, two days from now.”

“And she’ll be pulled to me because I’m her target?”

“No, the data is different for the pull. When she left, he entered a specific date, time, and coordinate. She wasn’t meant to land at your feet. Kael needed her to do what she does best.”

“Which is?”

“Haven’t you seen her in action?” I asked. Surely, he’d wondered about her and what she did here day to day.

He shook his head. “My current technical wizard has not been able to hack into Eve’s file.”

“Eve’s file,” I scoffed under my breath. What a joke. “I’ll show you what kind of weapon they’ve molded her to be. She’s a force of nature when unleashed. The girl is a hurricane, ten times stronger than the strongest you can imagine. I don’t even know if she knows what she’s capable of. She sort of blacks out sometimes.”

It was weird, to be honest. Maru said when she fought she was in a zone, but it was more than that. It was simultaneously feral and mechanical. She was ruthless precision in a world of chaos.

“I’d like to see it.”

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Back to the pull. So far, the Assets have been jumping through time. They’ve initiated their journeys through time and space, and to them it probably seems like they’re landing in random places and in random years, but they aren’t. Kael planned exactly where and when they would land. He established their route before they jumped, even if the Assets chose the time to move on. For every stop he wanted them to make, you have been her target. Until now. The pull will bring them home. Even if something happens and they have to jump early, they’ll arrive here at the same time. In any event, Eve’s target was changed. She’ll be drawn to Kael when she lands here. He is now her target.”

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