Page 76 of Elas

“This is a highly trained fugitive I’m tracking, soldier, and while I’m not scared of him, I’m not careless. If things don’t go as planned, I’d rather not be trapped somewhere with no way to be found. Has the tracker on the vehicle been checked to make sure it’s fully charged and operational?”

“Yes, sir. Of course, sir.”

“You’repositive?” I demand, and she bites her lip and glances towards the SUV.

“Let me just…” She trails off and darts into the small office building before returning with a handheld machine. I pop a brow impatiently as she glances at me again, and she hurries over and opens the door to the gas tank.

Bingo.

She pulls a magnetic device from the door, no more than an inch in diameter, and pops it on top of the machine in her hand. After a few moments, there’s a quiet beep. “Charged and operational, sir.”

“Thank you for verifying,” I say as she replaces the tracker. “If I need anything further, I’ll be sure to let you know.” She bobs in another nervous nod before walking back to the office, and I lift the back hatch to check the supplies.

Three containers of fuel are bound to one side of the trunk, with a few folded blankets beside them. A bag of shelf-stable foods sits in the backseat—mostlyMREs with a few packs of jerky, nuts, and dried fruits, while a five-gallon container of potable water rests in the floorboard. Any supplies we need to travel are here. Once we collect our clothing and toiletries, we can hit the road.

A sharp realization hits me in that moment. My existence and everything important to me can be crammed into a bag in a few spare minutes.

My life has never been my own.

Almost a century of service, stripping away vital pieces of my identity to fit into this box they shoved me in all those years ago.

I never did push through those bars, did I?

All these years have passed, but I’m still stuck in the same place from a lifetime ago. Broken and terrified, sitting in the dark and waiting for someone to rescue me.

No more.

As I climb into the driver’s seat and crank the engine, a new sense of purpose maps a path in front of me. We’ll leave in the morning.

And we’ll never come back.

August

Everyoneisbeingweirdas hell.

Xeni pointedly refuses to meet my eyes, and a ripple of avoidance has spread through the other medics. I can understand him not wanting to talk to me right now, but the others are acting like I’m invisible, too. Even Chief Aeliphis is acting strange. She never misses an opportunity to fluff her feathers, but today she’s oddly quiet and has barely spared me a glance.

Paranoia has me in a headlock, wondering if Xeni talked. It’s not unreasonable to assume he decided it wasn’t worth the trouble of keeping my secret. He owes me nothing, after all, and my trust in him could’ve easily been misplaced.

Overly optimistic is kind of my shtick.

Anxiety is an affective form of torture, and one that’s becoming far too familiar. Halfway through the day, just after I eat a hurried lunch to escape the weirdness in the break room, voices ring out in the hallway.

The workers are back.

“I haven’t gotten any sleep because your shitty driving is knocking me all around,” the loud one grumbles, and the other’s grunt sounds annoyed. “Thought we’d get a break today and start in the morning, but they want the last of these files on the roadtonight.” He almost spits the word, and I realize that trove of information is about to disappear forever.

Elas will be furious if I sneak back into that room without a plan. It’s reckless, but with everything that could be at stake, it’s a risk worth taking. The afternoon treks along, and I’m poised as I wait for my chance, but the fates are working against me today. Their usual routine is disrupted by urgency, and they take boxes as they load them instead of walking together.

There’s no opportunity.

“We’re going to be here all night,” the worker laments as it nears the end of the workday, and Chief Aeliphis’s scoff is loaded with annoyance.

“Then you’ll be here all night,” she snaps, while his squeak tells me she snuck up on them. “Whatever you have to do, you’ll do it, because the commander is up my ass for this to be done.”

“Last time we were here late, we got locked out of the building. We had to wait for a patrol to let us in and missed dinner to make up for it.” The chief’s impatience practically vibrates down the hall. Either this guy is an idiot, or he has a death wish.

“Did it not occur to you to use the access cards I had createdspecificallyfor the two of you?”

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