Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 64044 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 320(@200wpm)___ 256(@250wpm)___ 213(@300wpm)
Seventy-two hours. Three days. If Serafina moves them before we can act, we lose the facility we've mapped, the guard schedule we've analyzed, and the inside asset we've verified. We'd be starting the entire intelligence-gathering process over from zero.
"Three days," I tell Render.
He processes this the way he processes everything. Silently. Completely. Without visible distortion.
"Then we have three days," he says. "Starting now."
We walk.
The forest begins to change around mile twelve. The pines thin and the underbrush gives way to the scraggly secondary growth that signals proximity to developed land. We start seeing signs of human presence: an old fence post leaning at a drunken angle, a coil of wire half-buried in leaves, the rusted skeleton of something that might’ve been a truck or might’ve been a tractor.
By mile fifteen the trees have opened up enough that I can see the sky properly for the first time since we entered the forest. Twilight. Purple and orange in layers that look like someone poured watercolors across the horizon. Under different circumstances it might be beautiful. Right now it's a clock. Darkness means we can approach the city without being seen. Darkness also means we can't see what's approaching us.
We hit the first paved road at mile seventeen. It's a two-lane state route with no shoulder and no traffic. Render stays just inside the tree line, paralleling the road rather than walking on it. I match his path. The pavement looks inviting after eight hours of forest floor but inviting is another word for exposed and exposed is something we can't afford.
The industrial district appears as a change in the skyline. Flat-roofed buildings. Water towers. The angular silhouettes of loading cranes at a freight depot that's gone dark for the night. Render navigates through the district the way I navigate code: with an intimate knowledge of the structure that comes from having been inside it many times before.
The storage unit complex sits behind a chain-link fence on a dead-end street that smells like diesel fuel and neglected concrete. Twenty units in two rows. Metal roll-up doors painted a gray that's turned to various shades of rust. A security light at the entrance that Render avoids by slipping through a gap in the fence on the north side.
Unit seventeen. He punches a code into the padlock, rolls the door up just enough for us to duck under, and pulls it closed behind us.
The interior is dark until he finds a switch. Industrial fluorescent tubes flicker on one by one, filling the space with the harsh, flat light of a place designed for storage, not habitation. The unit is the size of a single-car garage. Concrete floor. Metal walls. No windows.
But it's stocked.
Metal shelves line the left wall, loaded with cases and containers in the organized, labeled manner of someone who inventories his emergency supplies the way other people inventory their kitchens. I see ammunition boxes. A change of clothes, sealed in vacuum bags. Water in gallon jugs. MREs. A compact medical kit that's more comprehensive than the one we've been carrying. And at the back, resting on a low shelf beside a folded cot, a second laptop and a satellite uplink unit in a hardened case.
"You have a backup everything," I say.
"Backups have backups." He's already pulling the vacuum-sealed clothes from the shelf and tossing me a set. Dark pants. A thermal base layer. A hoodie three sizes too large that must be his. "Change. The wet clothes will drop your core temperature faster than the walk already has."
I don't argue. I take the clothes and turn my back to him and strip out of the soaked jeans and hoodie. The cold air hits my bare skin and I clench my teeth against the shiver that runs through me. The thermal base layer goes on first, tight and warm, the fabric wicking the residual moisture from my skin. Then the dry pants. Then the oversized hoodie that falls to mid-thigh and smells like laundry detergent and something else. Something I'm starting to associate with him, not soap, not cologne, just the ambient scent of a person whose clothes you've been near long enough to catalog.
When I turn around he's already changed. Black pants. A dark thermal shirt that fits closer than the one he was wearing before and shows the lean frame of his shoulders and arms in a way the previous layers obscured. He's organized the rest of the supplies on the table with the same efficiency he brings to everything: ammunition to the left, food and water in the center, electronics to the right.
The cot is small. Built for one person. The cold floor is exactly as unforgiving as the cabin's was.
"I'll take the floor," he says. Before I can open my mouth.
"Your left leg has been bothering you since mile six. You're sleeping on the cot."