Page 129 of Reclaiming Adelaide

Jake and his friends would capture and interrogate Holeo, and hopefully, he’d be able to give them useful information.

His logic rattled around in my brain like dice in a cup, and I no longer felt the guilt eating at me as I had before.

There was a peace inside of me I couldn’t ignore. Did that make me sick in the head for feeling this way? For no longer accepting the responsibility of his demise?

I shrugged my shoulders to no one but myself, then set my fingers to the keyboard again, checking if anyone responded to the Emergency forms.

Not one.

I sighed, kicked my seat back, and interlaced my hands behind my head as I blew out a breath of air through my puffed cheeks.

This was impossible. How did he expect me to sit still and wait it out?

My stomach rumbled with hunger even though I’d eaten only an hour ago, and my tongue sat dry in my mouth like sandpaper despite the soda I’d consumed.

I wonder what…

Tears burned my eyes.

It’d happened again. The thought of my parents and wondering if they were sitting down to watch a TV show right about now. But reality hit me like a Mac truck.

They’d never finish their ‘programs’ again. The last time I’d seen my mother I was rushing out of my home with Crysis at my door.

He was older than I expected, but his behavior was that of a teenage boy—stunted by lack of interactions with his peers.

One could say I had stunted communication skills

“They are a lion on the hunt…”

Well, two can play at that game. I leaned into my computer and typed in the keywords ‘bombing’ and ‘Mexico students.’ An event I should’ve looked into long before now.

An unconscionable sum of articles popped up, making me wince. It’d take forever to sift through these to find the man Franklin said Holeo had recognized. Not that it mattered. According to Jake, it’ll all be over when he returned, as though he had a card up his sleeve he hadn’t cared to share with me.

I started on the first article dated back to twenty-sixteen. I was barely fourteen by then and hadn’t recalled hearing about this on the news or any other website. At that age, I’d already submerged myself in the hacking community, and it would’ve been a big deal to us.

But the story was just as Franklin said—teens attended a hack-a-thon only for it to be bombed by what the article said was ‘cartel retaliation.’ But thanks to Franklin, I know that to be inaccurate.

Photo after photo of rubble-torn buildings, debris tossed into the road, vehicles burning on the streets, but nothing with a man Franklin had described. I skipped to the next article, then the next, until finally, after sifting for what felt like hours, I landed on pay-dirt.

The photo showed a car, blown to smithereens and on fire, much like all the rest, only vastly different. A Mexican officer in a black uniform cleared the street full of debris and what looked to be the dead body of someone lying in the street.

I gulped down the burst of sickness, then studied the crowd behind him. Children ran across the street from the burning building, followed by what I assumed to be police escorts. Beyond them were four figures walking across the street a fair distance from the children, seemingly unfazed by the surrounding chaos. What news organization was allowed to take pictures like this?

“The man with the banded tattoo.”

I’d found him.

His blond hair hung down to his shoulders in waves, his black cargo pants and shirt now a creamy gray from the aftermath. This man was on the street the day I bought my father his tie. He was also in my hospital room, no doubt working on finishing the job he started.

A thick knot formed in my throat, causing an ache to form just below my chin. I rubbed at it, clearing my throat for relief, the tears from before burning with a vengeance.

All of this was so fucked.

Next to the tattooed man was another man, larger than the last. This one unnaturally darkened like those girls who sat in the tanning beds for far too long—their skin turning to burned leather.

I glanced at the man beside him wearing street clothes, only part of his face visible, but he didn’t look all that happy, almost upset.

The fourth and final man walked at the back of the group, his hand touching the third man as if he were ushering him along.

---