The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(67)

They drew closer to the glass, the red glow lighting up more and more of the parking lot in front of our position, and I gritted my teeth. “Don’t shoot unless you absolutely have to,” I whispered loudly to the team.

“We aren’t equipped to take people captive,” whispered Mags more softly, and I knew her comment was directed at me.

I didn’t answer—it was a moot point anyway. As the two explorers drew nearer to us, the man stopped and put his hand on the woman’s forearm, drawing her attention away from the building. The two exchanged a few words, and then, simple as that, they were leaving, hurrying back the way we had come. I let out a breath of relief and relaxed against the wall for a second.

As soon as the flicker from their torches had disappeared, I straightened. “All right, everyone,” I said to the room, keeping my voice low. “They’re gone. You can get up.”

“They joined up with the main group and are continuing down the street,” reported Violet, confirming that the explorers weren’t coming back. “I recommend waiting for them to clear out before proceeding.”

I considered her suggestion as I watched everyone slowly climb to their feet, reaching down to help Mags to hers. She straightened up, shaking her legs out a little, and looked up at me. “We’ve got a bit of time. You want to give our people a few minutes?” she asked.

I was about to answer when my command line beeped—a sign that someone wanted the attention of one of the leaders. I switched channels hurriedly in case it was me.

“Thomas?” It was Ms. Dale speaking, her voice carefully neutral. “Those signs you told us to look out for that the Matrians are tampering with the water supply. Wasn’t one of them that the tunnels in the sewer would be flooded?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Well, I’m looking into one, and they are. This is going to slow Logan and me down a bit. We were counting on the sewers to get through a rough neighborhood.”

“It’s much worse than that,” said Thomas softly. “Flooded sewers means our timeline is cut in half. We’re now down to five hours until water that’s been tampered with makes its way into the city… possibly even less, with how quickly the Matrians have been working. We need to move the rendezvous times up by at least half an hour.”

“How are we supposed to do this when our best route has just been blocked?” Ms. Dale’s voice over the radio was testy.

“I’m looking for alternate routes for you now,” Thomas said, seeming to barely register her annoyance.

Henrik’s voice came on next. “All teams, we need to move up our timeline. This means that if you can find a shorter route that has a slightly higher risk, now is the time to try it. But don’t do anything excessively reckless—clear with me first.”

I turned my eyes toward Mags, who had clearly been listening as well, meeting her blue eyes as they came up to me wearing an expression that I recognized. I guessed she felt the sinking in the pit of her stomach, too. This meant I’d been right to attack the water treatment plant. But this time, being right was making me feel worse.

“Well,” I said slowly, “I guess we don’t have time to take a minute.”

“Let’s take a look at the map,” she said in response, already pulling her copy from a back pocket.

The area we’d been sent into was closer to the south side of Patrus City, an area I wasn’t as familiar with. When I’d been a warden, this area had been full of nice neighborhoods and high-end institutions. I’d been patrolling the city center, where some of the best shopping, entertainment, and bars existed—and also much higher rates of crime and gang-related activity. Now this area was literally a warzone, and I couldn’t even begin to imagine what the city center looked like. I was glad to be on the team with Mags, who knew it better than I did.

“We’re here,” she said, tapping on a small dead-end road eight blocks from the warehouse district. “We were going to go around, use Drew’s territory to cover us and then come up an adjacent street. It’s safer, but it’ll take us two hours, an hour and a half at a minimum.”

I shook my head. “With the accelerated timeline, we can’t spare the time.”

She nodded, her face grim. “I know, but the fastest route skirts dangerously close to Porteque territory. If they’ve expanded their turf or claimed another apartment building… we might get bogged down.”

“How much time would we save?”

She sighed and crossed her arms over her chest. “An hour,” she said. “Maybe more. Unless we get pinned down, in which case we could lose hours. It’s a gamble.”

“Henrik, we can get there in an hour, maybe less, but it’s dangerous,” I transmitted, turning away from the table and the map and looking around the room. The team had relaxed somewhat, seeing the torches disappear, but all of them were watching me and Mags closely, knowing something was going down. “And we’d be going close to Porteque territory, but I think it’s worth it. We can still make our rendezvous.”

“You sure you want to go that route?” There was no judgment in Henrik’s voice; he just wanted to make sure I was confident in the decision.

I was, though not for a lack of doubts. But since they’d confirmed something was happening at the plant, I knew every second mattered. It wasn’t enough to arrive at the water treatment plant on time. We still had to fight our way inside, and then input Thomas’ ridiculously long string of commands into the system to purge all of the water from the plant into the channels reserved for waste water. That had been our final decision—even if we had no idea what the Matrians were doing to the water, we could reverse it all, just in case.