38 BLIND
“They are leaving,” Stefani said over the coms line. “I don’t believe it.”
“I guess I was wrong,” Jeff said. “I said we were going to die if we went with Darwin, but . . .”
“Keep an eye on them,” Carlee said. “We’re going to do another pass before we land. I don’t want to take any chances with this.”
It was the most she had spoken on their long flight home. They had traveled slower than they had on their flight to Mexico. Without Darwin clearing the path for them, they had to circle around leeches. Stefani had tried to start a conversation with her several times, but Carlee was oddly unreceptive.
The vagrants circled around their fortress one more time, waiting for the three leeches that had stood guard to travel a safe distance away before landing. It also gave them a chance to scan their transport for modifications. But the floating vehicle was perfectly untouched.
“I’m going to touch down,” Stefani said. “Give me a minute to look around.”
“Right,” Jeff said when Carlee didn’t respond. Something had bothered her greatly, but he wasn’t sure what. When Jeff’s feet made contact with the fortress a moment later, he was so eager to take the flight armor off that he didn’t even congratulate himself on the flawless landing. He’d come a long way in his flying skills since his first time in the sky.
Carlee touched down next to him and deactivated her armor, revealing her matted hair and weary face. Jeff wanted to give her hug. He didn’t know why, but it looked like she needed one. He didn’t. He feared that she would think that he was still hopeful of a relationship with her. That was an idea he had deeply buried. He still found her attractive, but he continually forced himself to think of her professionally.
“It’s all clear,” Stefani said. “Couldn’t find anything out of place or tampered with. Even the code running the fortress has been untouched. Darwin was true to its word.”
“Good,” Carlee said. “Get us away from here—I don’t care where. I just want to get moving.”
“Done.” The fortress started forward at a humble pace as Jeff continued to shed pieces of his flight armor. He hadn’t removed it the entire time he was near Darwin, despite the discomfort; he wanted to be able to flee at a moment’s notice.
“I’m going to take a nap,” Carlee said. She tossed off the pieces of her force-field armor and started for the captain’s quarters beneath the massive forward guns.
“You promised we would talk when we landed,” Stefani said. “And now we’ve landed.”
“Not now.”
“Yes, now. You named me your advisor, and I can’t advise you if we don’t communicate!”
“You think we should have gone along with Darwin’s plan,” Carlee said. She turned around, giving in to Stefani’s demands, and Jeff stayed close to the conversation.
“I do. Of course I do! We’ve spent years patching people up and getting chased out of villages. Always on the run, hiding, scared, while slowly losing our own. This is the first chance, the first real chance, we have ever had to do something to not only help people but to change the course of history!”
“Now you’re the one trusting an Apostle?” Carlee’s face was full of disbelief and painful irony. “You were the one saying we shouldn’t go, but we did. You stormed off into the woods; you didn’t watch it like I did. Leeches came to it during the night, scanned its temurim, and then flew away. Several times. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what any of it means. But I know there is more going on than we know. I don’t trust it. And I don’t trust its promises.”
“I don’t trust Darwin. I’d be a fool to. But the enemy of my enemy is my friend. We don’t have to worship it or travel with it—heck, we don’t even have to like it—but without its help, the best we can hope for is to live scared the rest of our lives, giving guns to farmers.”
Carlee stepped in close to Stefani, pushing her face only a few inches away from Stefani’s.
“You might think we’ve been wasting our time, but we have made a difference to thousands of people, and now we have a plan to help thousands more.”
“Carl, you have to see—”
“And do you know what I heard from Darwin? Exactly what I heard from Bobby! Even some of the words were the same. It was almost as if he were back, in a giant robot body, preaching to us about freeing humanity and killing Apostles! Ready to die all over again!”
They locked eyes for a minute, both breathing deeply.
“You can’t make any difference if you’re dead,” Carlee whispered before turning away.
“You weren’t the only one who loved him,” Stefani said. The words caught Carlee’s feet like a pair of force-field shackles. “You lost a husband, but I lost an older brother. I lost the last of my family in that fight! But I don’t look back at it as worthless. Just because we didn’t win doesn’t mean it wasn’t a battle that shouldn’t have been fought! My brother died trying to create a better world, and that’s something I’m not ashamed of. That’s something I am proud of.”
“Being proud of him won’t bring him back. It won’t bring any of them back. Instead, there are three of us now. Three of us, Stefani! If we had listened to Jane, none of that would have happened. I’m not going to honor his death by following in his footsteps. He forced you to keep me from fighting with him then, and I’m sure he’d force you to keep me from fighting the Apostles now.”
“We didn’t have an Apostle on our side then,” Stefani said. “We had a hundred vagrants, most of whom were little more than priests with some prayers. This isn’t anything like that. The war is the same, but this is a battle we can win!”
“Our war is over,” Carlee said. “It’s been over for a long time.”
“Tell that to Petra.”
“If the Apostles want to fight, then so be it. All we can do is try to limit the human casualties. Getting involved in their fighting will only make things worse for us. I’m sure of it.”
Stefani shook her head and looked at the ground. The exchange had been heated and personal, and it had taken a toll on both of them. Jeff stood by, stopping himself from joining the conversation every time he felt like jumping in.
“We have a better future,” Carlee said before Stefani could find the right rebuttal. “We have a path where we can make things better for the next generation. What does it matter if the Apostles stop killing us if we keep killing one another? We can do so much without getting involved with Darwin. Jeff’s plan is a good one.”
“What do you think, Jeff?” Stefani asked. They both looked at him, and he felt caught between them. But luckily, his answer was a simple one. He had settled on it a while ago.
“I don’t know,” Jeff said. “I want to kill all the Apostles, but I don’t trust Darwin, and I don’t know as much about . . . what’s been tried before as you two do.”
Stefani sighed and looked at him as if he had betrayed her. But it was the truth, and he wasn’t ready to take sides.
“I promised Bobby that I would keep you safe,” Stefani said, defeated. “And I will continue to do that until my dying day, but this is a mistake, Carl.”
“I can protect myself. There is nothing I can or will do to stop you if you want to try,” Carlee said. “But I can’t. I can’t, and I won’t.”
With that, Carlee entered the small room toward the front of the transport and shut the door behind her. Stefani stood in place for a moment before she wearily started to remove her flight armor. Jeff didn’t know what to say, so he just watched her until she was finished. She then looked up at him, and they made eye contact.
“I didn’t know Bobby was your brother.” It was the only thing that came to mind.