Page 5 of Fated to the Hunter
She tittered. “How could I forget. Thanks for liberating those from private collections and stocking up our library.”
I grinned, glad that Dottie’s and my hard work of finding and retrieving that mega stash of romance novels had been worth it.
“But no relationships for me. Not after... Never mind.”
She looked chagrined. “I’m sorry. I know it still hurts.”
Crap! Now I felt like shit. Just becauseIcouldn’t get over the fact that I was never getting my friends and family back didn’t mean I should bring everyone else down with me. Everyone here had lost people. I wasn’t special.
“No,I’msorry. I know it’s been years, and I shouldn’t dwell on the past.”
A pair of men wearing combat pants, leather jackets,andcowboy hats—yes, all three together, and somehow it worked, don’t ask— approached the information booth, and I was glad I had an excuse out of that conversation. One of them had his attention on Holly’s stall, probably craving a cuppa joe, but the other one walked straight to me.
“Are you Kiera?”
“I am. And you are?”
“Jeff and Jordan Ainsley.” He motioned first to his brother, who gave me a curt nod before turning to eye Holly and the coffee, then to himself.
I brightened in recognition. “The Ainsley brothers!”
“Glad to make your acquaintance,” Jordan said with an exaggerated bow, a big grin on his face.
“Is that coffee?” Jeff asked.
I chuckled. “It sure is!”
The brothers and I had been messaging back and forth on the survivor forum for a few months now. They had something very special that I’d been itching to get my hands on.
For my day job, I spent my hours going through all the old web pages the Xarc’n warriors had saved from our old internet, categorizing them so it would be easier for us to find the critical information that we needed.
Four years in, and the work still wasn’t done. Some thought we should scrap all the social media archives, which was just ridiculous. I knew that buried in those billions of clips were insights we couldn’t afford to lose. Sure, most of it was junk, but some of it reshaped society. My job was to sort the wheat from the chaff.
But that was just my day job. After hours, I hunted down information on pre-collapse tech. I ran a site calledKiera’s Corner of Tech and Specs, where I posted everything I found, even the stuff I didn’t fully understand. The site had been voted Most Likely to Save Humanity two years straight, and I knew the Tech Wizards used it often. Hell, they were frequently the ones requesting or submitting new entries.
It started with me uploading useful bits from the hundreds of pages I scanned daily. Then people began bringing me physical blueprints and rare finds to digitize. Now there was even a section for fan-made creations built from the specs I shared.
Last year, I’d stumbled across some very interesting notes regarding some hard drives with highly classified information on them. Think international semiconductor secrets. An anonymous Taiwanese expat in the U.S. had posted on a dark web forum (yes, the Hunters archived that too), claiming the drives held manufacturing data that could make the right person insanely rich.
Some people called bullshit, especially since he wasn’t selling the hard drives themselves, but rather, a map showing where he’d hidden them.
The thread had ended suddenly around the time the scourge arrived on the planet, but it looked like someone had taken the bait, and money and a map had changed hands. Whether the buyer ever had the chance to look for the treasure? No clue. Especially with the unfortunate timing of the bugpocalypse.
Curious, I’d gone to the survivor forum with the story, not expecting anything to come of it. Imagine my surprise when I started getting real replies that weren’t just jokes. One woman remembered the pre-collapse thread. In fact, she’d even replied to it, and I confirmed her username.
CyberSiren, or Sara in real life, had assumed that the whole thing was a scam until the FBI showed up at her house. That was only a few days before the internet was shut down. Then there was the Ainsley Brothers, who claimed they might have the actual map.
The brothers were nomads. They visited New Franklin frequently. I just hadn’t met them.
Jordan Ainsley had dashing good looks and a friendly grin; he was probably the type who had a pretty girl in every settlement. His brother, Jeff, seemed like a quieter, more reserved version of him. He was currently ordering a double coffee with three sugars and extra creamers, which Holly was more than happy to mix up.
“So, which one of you have I been talking to?” I asked.
“Me,” Jordan said, looking at me appraisingly. “You know, you are not what I expected.”
I laughed. “In a good way, I hope?”
“Yup.”
