The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(71)

Owen stood behind me, staring at the screen from over my shoulder. It would’ve been unnerving, but truth be told, I could use the extra eyes at this point—almost three hours of staring at the screen had left mine feeling dry and a little bleary.

The command line beeped, indicating someone was transmitting on the line, and I used my thumb to quickly change to the main channel, disappointment surging in my stomach when I heard Thomas’ voice instead of Viggo’s. It was silly, I knew, but I liked hearing him on the line. It was the only connection I had to him at the moment, now that my drone wasn’t watching over him.

A variety of voices checked in on the command line, and I added mine to the chorus; when it seemed we all were there, Ms. Dale’s voice announced, “Everyone switch to beta six. This channel has been compromised.”

Beta six was the code name for the next channel in the frequency list we had developed before sending everyone out. Even though we didn’t have enough comms for everyone, we still had more than enough to worry about our enemies getting their hands on one of them. So we had developed a protocol, at Ms. Dale’s insistence, that when we lost—or lost contact with—a team member with a communicator, we would switch to the next frequency in our list, one we’d all memorized to make sure that no physical copy fell into the hands of the enemies.

When we had all found our way to the new channel, Ms. Dale continued. “Logan’s advance team met with fire from a heavily armed group twelve blocks away from the objective. The hostile group retreated, but in the direction we need to go.”

“You need a new route?” asked Henrik, and I glanced over to see him sliding a big map of the city in front of him, standing up, and pulling out a red pencil.

“We weren’t expecting to have to come topside,” Ms. Dale said on the line, irritation sharpening her voice. “So yes, please, we need a new route. Again.”

I understood her frustration. It had been building over the last half hour as every move her team made seemed to be two steps forward, one step back. And since she and her team had started out farther away than Amber and Viggo’s teams, they had even less time to deal with delays.

“I’ve been trying to tell her that we need to just cut through the bigger buildings,” came a deep, masculine voice, similar enough to Viggo’s to make me start to smile, then shake the expression off when I realized it was just Logan Vox. I continued pushing the drone forward, scanning, then flying again, idly listening to the chatter.

“It’s too risky,” Henrik told Logan as he circled something on the map. “Too many scared and desperate people we can’t control. We would risk hurting them in order to keep them from hurting us. I’d like to keep the loss of civilian life to a minimum. We certainly won’t be earning any favors by showing up in their hiding places armed to the teeth and looking for a fight. So I’m going to have to side with Ms. Dale.”

There was a long pause. “Are you two dating or something?” Logan asked. His tone was flippant, like he was making an off-color comment out of spite, but also inadvertently stumbling into the truth. Still, it made me blink in surprise, wondering just how much longer Logan Vox had in this world. It depended on where he was standing in relation to Ms. Dale, I supposed, but then again, a bullet never traveled for too long before hitting something.

I could just picture Ms. Dale standing next to Logan, giving him that same look of unruffled disapproval that had so famously, and so continuously, painted her face during my martial arts classes with her. It was a chilling look, and I didn’t envy Logan for being on the receiving end of it, even if he had brought it on himself.

“I found a new route,” announced Henrik, ignoring Logan’s comment entirely, though I saw the side of his mouth twitch up across the command table. “You’ll need to check cameras…” He trailed off, flipping through some papers and scanning the rows of carefully handwritten print. It was the only hard copy we had of the streets and their corresponding camera numbers, and even that was mostly because Thomas hadn’t been able to transfer everything to the handhelds—there wasn’t enough space on the data chip. “178-21-D through H to confirm.”

“One second,” Ms. Dale replied. I busied myself by doubling back to Amber’s group and rescanning the building faces, in case someone had snuck back in after my last pass. It was so frustrating to be limited like this by the equipment’s size and range. Even going two hundred feet ahead of them made me feel clammy with nervousness. I didn’t want anyone to get the jump on Amber or her team if I could avoid it.

Owen shifted behind me, his arm reaching around to point at the screen. “There’s someone in that room,” he said, tapping on one of the multiple windows in the screen.

I bit back the urge to tell him to back off. He was bored, and guarding me wasn’t exactly the most glamorous job. I knew how he felt—even sitting here and being productive, I still felt pretty useless. “Thanks,” I said as I manipulated the drone again. “There’s a lot of small movements inside, but if you can’t make out a person, that’s generally because they’re hiding in their home. Or at least, that’s what I’ve seen so far.”

“Ah.” There was a long moment of silence, then, “Did you get Desmond all set up?”

I frowned and turned so that I could properly face him instead of trying to comment over my shoulder. “Owen, I know you don’t like it, but the place is secure and—”