Nothing helped, but thankfully, time continued to pass despite my suffering.
In the morning, it was exactly the same story.
The soldiers rotated. Everyone was still alive, no one had been touched by the twelve other Bane they found that night. West and Vee came inside, and Avian went out.
Maybe I really would die before I could send out that kill code. It was bad enough worrying about West and Vee and all the other soldiers I cared about. Avian was a whole different cause of panic.
“Were they on foot?” I asked, following West and Vee as they headed for the kitchen. They were filthy, covered in sweat despite the cold temperatures outside. They both smelled of gunpowder. “Did they get any more trucks? How close to the perimeter did they get?”
“Yes, all on foot,” Vee answered without looking at me, but her voice was perfectly calm and even. “No more trucks. They were about seven blocks out.”
“There was a lot of gunfire last night, but everything went off without a hitch, Eve,” West said as we stepped into the kitchen. He grabbed a tray and handed it to Vee before getting another for himself. “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack before you can set off the Nova tomorrow if you don’t calm down.”
Tomorrow.
Finally. But still, so far away.
The woman working at the counter dishing out food looked at me expectantly, but I shook my head. I was too on edge to eat.
“The trucks were pretty bad,” I said, shaking my head. Vee and West, trays now loaded with food, went for a table. I followed them. “But I can guarantee that won’t be all the Bane will come at us with.”
“Eve, we’ve got tanks positioned on all sides of the hospital,” West said as he shoved half a roll in his mouth. “We have about twenty guards outside. We only have to survive another twenty-four hours and it will all be over. Any update on Jeb?” he abruptly changed the subject.
“Things are looking good so far,” I said absentmindedly. “It had only been a few minutes from when he was touched to when he started the extraction process.”
“Well that’s good,” West said, his voice still sounding slightly annoyed.
Seeing there was no use arguing with him anymore, I shut up. I looked up at Vee, and her expression told me she was as unsure about this working as I was.
I sat back and watched the others around us as West and Vee ate. Almost everyone in the dining room had been on security detail last night. Tristan, Graye, Raj. They all looked exhausted. But there was a frantic determination in their eyes.
Less than five months. That was how long the Pulse’s clearing had lasted. And even those five months of ease had been marred.
Suddenly I was exhausted too.
I looked back at West, only to find his eyes locked on my left hand. I glanced down and realized he was staring at my freshly placed ring.
“He proposed,” West stated simply. He didn’t look up at me.
“In a way,” I said, feeling my insides grate and slither at the same time. “But I said yes.”
West raised one eyebrow and then returned to his meal.
“The metal of the ring seems odd,” Vee observed.
“Avian had the ring forged from the bullets I pulled out of him,” I explained, straightening my fingers and looking down at the ring. “That night you both went to the transformer. The night you got infected. He kept them. He made the ring and then had them covered in white gold.”
“How romantic,” West said flatly.
“Knock it off,” I said, fixing him with a steely glare.
“Sorry,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “Habit I guess. I am happy for you.”
“Hmm,” I said, still glaring at him.
Vee shifted uncomfortably. And then I felt horrible.
Finished with their breakfast, Vee and West returned their trays.
“We’re going to be on night duty again tonight,” Vee said, standing next to West, her shoulder brushing against his. I saw his fingers twitch slightly, as if he debated taking her hand in his.
“I think we’d better go get some sleep while we’ve got the chance,” he said. He looked at me with genuine concern in his eyes. “Try to relax, Eve. There’s nothing you can do right now. Avian can take care of himself. He’s one of the best marksmen I’ve known.”
I nodded, my stomach turning sour as I did. West placed what he meant to be a comforting hand on my arm for a moment before he turned and walked back down the hall. Vee followed after him, looking back over her shoulder once.
Standing there with my shoulders slumped, it felt as if I were both hollow and filled with a million sharp rocks at the same time. The world was too loud inside the hospital and too quiet from the outside. Except for the occasional shot fired.
“You look like someone should put you out of your misery.”
I turned to see Tristan walking toward me, brushing crumbs off his hands.
“This is wrong,” I said, shaking my head. “It doesn’t feel right.”
Tristan took a breath as if to speak, and then seemed to think better of it. He fiddled there for a moment and then finally started walking forward. “Come on.”
Eager for something to do, I didn’t question him.
He led us straight for the armory. Opening a locked storage container, he brought out a wicked looking weapon.
It had three balancing legs, so this was not a weapon to be walking around with. A deadly accurate scope was attached to the top of it. Jutting out the front was a thin barrel.
I’d heard of one of these before, but never dreamed I’d get to handle one. A DSR 50 sniper rifle.
Tristan handed it over to me before picking up a bag of ammunition.
“Let’s go,” he said with a grin.
He carried the bag of ammo and I followed him silently to the elevator. We stepped out on the blue floor. Walking to the end of the hall, Tristan punched in the code to the door that led to the roof.
Tristan had really gained Royce’s trust if he knew this code.
“Not much need for a guard here,” Tristan said as we stepped out into the bright sunlight of mid-morning. We walked past the broken Pulse to the edge of the roof. “Everyone else is too busy on duty down there.” He nodded with his chin off the side of the building. Looking down, I could see one of the tanks. The firing turret swept from the east side of the building to the west.
“Royce doesn’t have time to babysit you and make sure you don’t get outside,” Tristan said, smiling. “He’s right in not letting you out there. But maybe you can still do some good.”
“It’s times like this that I remember why we got along so well from the first moment we met,” I said, smiling back as I grabbed a magazine from the bag. I snapped it into place.
“Hey,” he said, giving a shrug and a crooked smile. “The feeling’s mutual. Even then I knew you’d save my rear end sometime.”
I glanced over at him before looking back down the thin barrel of the sniper rifle. I could see over a mile out with the high powered scope. What surprised me was that the red targeting dot in the middle flashed.
“The scope is different,” Tristan said. “One of Royce’s creations. It’s designed to scan for cybernetics. If a Bane comes within your sights the flashing will stop.”
“Fantastic,” I said through a smile. I didn’t think I’d ever used that word before in my life.
Tristan lingered, shifting from one foot to the other.
“Are you supposed to be my babysitter today?” I asked. “Avian’s out on duty right now and West’s a dead man walking with how tired he is. Does that leave you?”
Tristan laughed out loud, a sharp barking sound. “Technically yes, but I’m feeling a bit delirious myself. I’m going to get some shut eye and hope you can behave yourself.”