Outbreak (25 page)

Celdon doesn’t respond, and his odd behavior gives me a bad feeling. I’m not sure why he would ignore Harper’s messages — especially since he knows she might not be coming back. But I can’t think about that right now.

I’m so distracted that I barely notice the trip down to the hangar. Harper and Jayden are nowhere in sight, but several ExCon guys are milling around with heavy tools and carts of solar panels. 

A man I don’t recognize is standing next to one of the rovers, and my heart speeds up.

I’ve never seen a rover up close before. Compared to pre–Death Storm SUVs, it’s a hideous, boxy thing that looks sort of like a toy robot. The tires are huge, and the aerodynamic nose is pulled forward so the rover seems to be tucking its chin and gritting its teeth.

“Hey!” says the man, coming around the vehicle toward me. He’s got on gray pants and a white-and-blue striped shirt that puckers around his midsection. He must be an independent mechanic from EnComm.

“You Lieutenant Parker?”

“That’s me.”

“I’d like to go over a few things with you before you head out, if that’s all right — just to make sure you have a good feel for her.” He gestures reverently toward the rover.

“Okay.”

I feel as though I shouldn’t be allowed near the thing, but I reach around him anyway and pop the cargo hatch. I slide the rucksacks inside, belatedly realizing that I left Owen’s picture and my mom’s necklace in my compartment. The thought gives me a pang of sadness, but there’s no time to get them now.

“Hop on in.”

The mechanic’s voice draws me back to reality, and I move around to the driver’s side and slide into the captain’s chair. 

Whoever designed the rovers clearly spent more time on the interior. The driver’s seat is insanely comfortable and hugs my body like a glove. There’s half a steering wheel directly in front of me and a bunch of toggles I wouldn’t even begin to know what to do with.

The dashboard is sleek and modern — a gentle sloping line that gives the driver an unobstructed view of the Fringe. An enormous screen cuts down to the center console, displaying a map with a highlighted route. The image flickers, and the rover’s computer hums loudly as it processes all the data about the nearby roads and landscape.

A second later, I hear a soft
ding
, and a robotic feminine voice comes through the speaker.

Good morning, Lieutenant. Please enter the coordinates of your desired destination.

“How does it know who I am?” I ask.

“It’s pulling data from your interface.”

Suddenly, my chair starts to move. The backrest squeezes me more tightly, and the whole unit settles farther into the floor. 

“What’s it doing?”

“Just adjusting to your specifications — height, weight, eye level.”

I glance behind me at the back seat and see that it’s just as luxurious as the front. It could comfortably seat six or eight more people, but the steering wheel is making me nervous.

“I thought this was supposed to be self-driving,” I say. I never had one driving lesson growing up, but most people in this compound have never even
sat
in a car.

“It is. This is just your backup wheel in case the rover veers off course.” 

The mechanic points to the floorboard, where two small pedals are tucked just out of reach. “Brake left, accelerator right. You shouldn’t need to use the manual driving feature at all, but if the GPS goes out, just use the steering wheel to keep from hitting anything.”

Hitting what?
I wonder. Clearly this guy has never ventured outside the compound. It’s just empty desert for miles.

“She does fine on all terrestrial surfaces, so don’t worry about going off road. Commander Pierce told me how far you’d be traveling, so you should be fine with the fuel that’s in the main tank. 

“If not, you’ve still got plenty in the auxiliary tank to get you there and back, and you can always fuel up at the Recon checkpoints. It’s an algae-based biofuel, and this baby is pretty efficient. But if you run into trouble out there, just hit your SOS button.”

He points to a red button on the dashboard encased in a tiny plastic cover. “Even if the comms are out of range, we should still receive this signal. That’ll flag someone in Recon to send out another rover to come get you.”

I want to laugh out loud. I doubt very much that Jayden would send out a rescue party if Harper and I got stranded out on the Fringe. Hell, that would probably make her week.

“That’s about it,” he says cheerfully. “You should be good to go.”

“Thanks,” I mutter, getting an odd surge of power as I palm the steering wheel.

The man leaves, and I just sit there staring out the windshield, lost in thought. 

When I finally look up into the rearview mirror, Harper is striding through the hangar toward me. 

As soon as I see her face, my heart plummets. I jump out of the vehicle and wait for her to reach me.

“Everything okay?” I ask as soon as she’s within earshot. I already know it’s not, but I’m hoping she’s just worried about deployment.

She purses her lips and looks away — an expression I’ve only ever seen when Harper is trying to conceal her panic.

“What is it?”

She takes a deep breath, eyes darting around as though she’s trying not to cry. “I messaged Celdon that I wanted to meet up and say goodbye, but he never answered. I messaged him three times. Then I went to Systems to find him, but his supervisor said he didn’t show up for work today.”

“Relax,” I say, reaching out to squeeze her arm. “Celdon’s fine. I just saw him.” 

Glancing around to check that no one is watching us, I pull out the map and unfold it halfway. “He gave me this. It shows where all of Constance’s cameras are. He probably just didn’t have time to come find you.”

“Oh. Well . . . good.” Harper looks surprised, relieved, and then hurt. She nods slowly, swallowing down her tears. “But . . . why did he message
you
to meet him? He could have given that to me. I was planning on meeting him in Systems anyway.”

“I don’t know. Maybe he just wanted to give it to me directly since I was the one who asked him for it in the first place.”

Harper nods, but she doesn’t look convinced. “Still. He should have messaged me back. It’s not like him to ignore me — especially since I told him I was being deployed today . . .”

I stare at Harper for a moment and then shrug. I’m not sure what to say to make her feel better, so I just keep my mouth shut. I can’t afford to get sucked into their best-friend drama today; I have enough drama of my own.

But I can’t get Celdon’s strange behavior out of my head. Between his panicked expression, Harper’s ignored messages, and the dangerous work I had him doing, I can’t shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong.

twenty-one

Harper

“Let’s go!” barks a voice to my right.

Jayden is striding toward us, her overshirt buttoned all wrong and her hair still askew. She’s got a file tucked under her arm and heavy bags under her eyes.

I’m too keyed up about Celdon to engage in a power struggle right now, but luckily she’s interrupted by the mechanic in charge of the rovers. 

He pulls her off to the side to show her something on his tablet, which gives me a chance to take everything in.

The rover looks more like an animal than a machine, with enormous wide tires and a body style that makes the vehicle look as though it’s ready to pounce. But it’s the paint job that perplexes me. When I’d first spotted it under the florescent lights, it had looked burnt orange. Up close, though, it’s more of a rosy pink. Squinting at the pearly finish, I realize it has multiple hues embedded in the paint — probably to help the rover blend in with the desert terrain. 

I slide into the passenger seat, and the cushions instantly form to the shape of my hips and back. My brain is still running on overdrive, so I lean against the headrest and focus on the details of the interior to distract myself from Celdon, Owen, and our daunting mission.

Eli seems to notice my anxiety. He reaches over my lap to fasten my seat belt, brushing his other hand down my leg so fast I could have imagined it. But then I feel the telltale flutter low in my stomach and catch his brief smile that says, “Everything’s going to be okay.”

“All right,” says Jayden, crossing to the open driver’s side window and handing Eli a clunky plastic device. “I just entered the coordinates of your destination. The comms can’t pick up your interface out there, but if he’s gone by the time you arrive, call me immediately. If we spot him somewhere else, we’ll enter the new coordinates remotely.”

“It might take us a while to locate this guy,” says Eli in an irritated voice. “We don’t have much to go on other than this scar on his arm.”

Jayden nods as if she expected this and whips out the file she was carrying. She opens it up and shoves a still image from the surveillance footage under Eli’s nose.

“Look for a guy wearing a hat like that. It’s gray with some sort of emblem on the front.”

“It’s a Colorado Buffalos hat,” says Eli automatically.

Jayden gives him a blank look. I don’t know what he’s talking about either, but it must be some pre–Death Storm reference.

“Gray hat. Got it,” he sighs.

At first I think Jayden might let us leave without her usual power trip. But then she leans down and rests her forearms on the edge of the door, fixing Eli with a steely glare. 

“Don’t even
think
about trying to ride off into the sunset.” She taps the rover’s GPS screen. “I’ll know if you do. Once you complete the mission, hit the home button, and it will drive straight back to the compound.”

“Got it,” says Eli in a terse voice.

“I expect you to do the best with what you’ve got, Parker,” she adds. “I denied your request because I think being stuck out there with this one will be extra motivation to get the job done quickly.”

Jayden straightens up, signaling the mechanic that we’re ready to go. The driver’s side window retracts back into the top of the rover, and the engine roars to life. I can feel the vibrations through my seat and sense the sheer power humming beneath us.

I turn Jayden’s strange comment over in my mind, utterly lost.

What request would Eli have made? And what did she mean by being “stuck out there” with me?

Suddenly the rover starts moving toward the hangar doors. An EnComm man waves his arm to someone out of my line of sight, and the enormous doors start to open.

The rover slides smoothly into the staging area, and we’re left waiting in another large chamber. An ExCon man in orange streaks past us and unlocks the second set of hangar doors. I hear the first set clang shut behind us, and the chamber is flooded with light.

I squint automatically, but then the rover beeps, and a pattern of tiny dots blossoms on the inside of the glass. As I watch, the dots darken, spreading over the windshield to form a translucent layer that makes the light easier on our eyes.

“That’s cool,” murmurs Eli.

I glance over at him and suddenly get the feeling that there’s something he isn’t telling me. I’m about to ask him what it is when the rover jerks forward and thrusts me back against my seat. The engine groans as we pick up speed, and I feel my pulse start to race.

The wide tires navigate easily over the rough terrain, but the speed and bumpiness is still disconcerting.

When I look out the window, the desert is flashing by in a blur — all blue and orange and shell pink. I’m amazed by how much ground we’ve covered already.

Strangely enough, the Fringe doesn’t feel nearly as frightening when we’re encased in a metal monster and flying at a breakneck speed.  

I chance another glance at Eli and see that he’s wearing a nervous grin. “This is it.”

I nod, still turning Jayden’s words over in my mind. Why would Eli make a request to Jayden? He knows better than anyone that she’d never give him what he wanted.

In the distance, I see the winding black ribbon of highway swimming in and out of view. From far away, the heat haze looks like steam rising off the pavement, but as we draw closer, the blurry waves disappear.

As we approach the scrubby tufts of desert foliage lining the road, the rover decelerates to a crawl. It navigates easily over the uneven ground, and when it reaches smooth pavement, we start picking up speed again. 

“I can’t believe you’ve never ridden in a car,” Eli murmurs with a grin.

Despite all my worries, I can’t suppress a smile. “I never knew what I was missing.”

“I wish we could roll the windows down to give you the full experience.”

I look over at him, and his wistful expression gives me a little pang of tenderness. I’m not used to this side of Eli, and part of me still hasn’t processed the fact that I woke up in his bed this morning.

He seems to be thinking along the same lines. When our eyes meet, his lips part slightly, and he gets the look he had in his compartment when I was lying in bed beside him.

I’m not sure if he moves or if I do, but all of a sudden, we’re both leaning over the center console, and my lips are tasting his warm, inviting mouth.

I don’t think I could ever tire of kissing Eli. The hungry way his lips move over mine sends an electric current through my entire body. And when his rough hands find my neck, my heart automatically speeds up. His fingers tangle in my hair, and I tilt my head to the side so he can kiss the spot just over my racing pulse.

As his lips work their magic, I briefly open my eyes and get my first good look at the rover’s cargo area. I notice there are five rucksacks back there — not two — but in my heady state, it takes my brain a few seconds to catch up.

“What are those for?” I ask breathlessly.

Eli pulls away, looking a little flustered. “Just some extra supplies.”

“I thought we were only going to be out here for a few days . . . a week at most.”

He opens his mouth to reply, but the words seem to get stuck in his throat.