Page 81 of Amethyst Flame
We made plans to meet up, and she was already yelling at her brother again as we disconnected. Then I headed off to my desert rendezvous.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
The city thinnedto suburbs then to mini estates then to creepy shacks set well back from the road then to nothing but empty desert, as if life itself were dissolving into the dust. The lackluster A/C in the Fiesta hadn’t improved, but my skin prickled with chills. I sent Swann an FYI text with the coordinates before I left, with the noteIf you don’t hear from me tell the boys to go here
Swann gave it a thumbs up.Stay safe
Out here there was nothing, no stately cactus, no creepy meth sheds, no traffic either; I hadn’t passed another car in miles. Maybe I was already dead and this was some Southwest-themed purgatory.
I lost the last cell tower, but the GPS still showed me closing on the coordinates Will had sent. I turned off at a gravel road, barely distinguishable from the rest of the pebbles and dirt, which turned off again to another even sketchier path. Rocks pinged off the car's undercarriage even though I’d slowed almost to a crawl.
Despite the featureless flatness around me, the gray SUV seemed to pop out of nowhere, disguised by a fold in the deserted land that had left this dry little gully.
X marks the spot.
With the fleeting thought that I might need to make a run for it, I parked with my nose facing the road and got out. Maybe I was doomed to die, but I wasn’t gonna die a dumbass.
With a secret flex of the [map] command, I sent my moths flying to get an aerial view of the dusty location. Using them might be a waste of precious energy, but it could also save my life. The information they returned told me that other than the gray SUV, there was no one else in the immediate vicinity.
So far so good.
Will got out from behind the SUV’s wheel and faced me. “I like your sunglasses,” he called out.
I wrinkled my nose under the Terminator shades. “Meeting like this is weird and murder-y,” I complained. “I don’t like it.”
“Sorry. We had to meet somewhere under everybody’s radar, literally and figuratively.”
I crossed my arms. My chills hadn’t faded, even in the bright sun. It wouldn’t take long to get a sunburn. “Just tell me what’s going on.”
He had his own sunglasses, nicer than my mall-bought ones, but even though I couldn’t see through the polarized lenses, I felt the weight of his focus. “Why do you trust me?”
“Who said I did?” In fact, I didn’t.
“You came when I called,” he pointed out.
I peered at him over the top of my shades. “Just because I believe what you said about our bugs doesn’t mean I trust you.”
After a moment, he nodded. “What are your symptoms?”
“Hunger, paranoia, and too many secretive assholes all around me.”
A faint smile flickered over his lips, and I had to admit he was a good-looking guy even though he was pissing me off. “Yeah, I guess those were my first symptoms too. But it gets worse. Fatigue, confusion, weird blackout rages.”
I blinked. “Uh, the first two, okay, but that last…”
“Apparently it has something to do with executive brain function like impulse control breaking down as the hive compensates for the degradation to keep the body alive. It’s why we’re so hungry. They are always working, which costs our bodies more energy, which makes them work harder, which breaks us down even more.”
I swallowed hard. “Can’t we just keep eating enough to support the bugs?”
“I’ve been doing IVs of pure glucose, even tried a feeding tube.” He shook his head. “Based on energy expenditure analysis, the hive will just keep demanding more power until it burns us up entirely.” He angled his face away from me, like I’d angled my car, as if he wished there was some path to escape. “The only solution is to get rid of the hive.”
I grimaced. “Tried that before. Pass.”
His mouth hardened, his attractive features leached by desperation and uncertainty. “Sorry if this cutting-edge technology has more questions than answers,” he said tightly. “Maybe if you weren’t so set on shopping for tacky shit, we could save our damn lives.”
I bristled. “Well, now that Iknowabout the problem… I’m working with Ruskin. I’m getting a whole team just for me. If I tell Adley what you’ve told me, she’s not going to let me die, not when I have the only synergized hive.”
“Uh, I have a hive too,” he snapped. “And if there’s two of us, there’s more. You know how tech works. There’s probably already an upgraded version out there somewhere, making us obsolete.”
