The Gender Plan (The Gender Game #6)(73)

“Please. I’m so good you’d never know I spent the last two days learning.” I smiled nervously at him, accepting the joke for the olive branch that it was, and he quietly slipped into his seat, put on the headset I had been wearing, and then slipped his fingers into the hollow tubes that were the flight controls.

Once I was certain Owen did understand the controls and had picked up where I’d left off, I made my way up the stairs, down the hall, and right out the front door. The air outside was crisp and chilly, and I sucked in a deep breath, letting the subtle smells of winter wash over me. The temperature had been steadily dropping the last few days, which had not made tent living at our other location fun, even with Viggo’s furnace-like body next to me… but I still loved it. Loved the smell of winter and the pure promise of snow.

It helped to center me a little bit, and I tilted my head back, looking at the stars. The heavy clouds that had filled the sky over the mountains earlier in the day were clearing up, and the stars shone brightly above the wisps that remained. Everything else was silent, still. It was the opposite of how I felt, but something I deeply wanted to emulate.

“He’s going to be okay.” I breathed out the words, the resulting sound less of a whisper and more of an escaping of air. “We always get through these things.”

It wasn’t much of a pep talk. Even I wasn’t na?ve or arrogant enough to believe that just because we had come out on the other side of too many fires to name, this one would follow the same pattern. There was no guarantee of that. But rather than give in to more nihilistic impulses, I chose to believe in that miniscule sliver of hope that we would defy the odds once again.

“Violet?”

I turned and saw Morgan standing in the doorframe, Cody by her side, holding her hand. I turned more fully to face them and offered a wave. “Hey. What’s up?”

She gave me an odd look and then pointed her thumb over her shoulder. “You left the door open. The draft dumps right into Cody’s room, so I thought I better check it out and… You okay?”

I gave a shrug. “Honestly, I have no idea,” I admitted. “But I’ll get there.”

Morgan gave me a sympathetic look. “I get that. To be honest, I’m not so good with people. They make me feel… uncomfortable.” She fidgeted, and looked down at Cody. “Cody and I have that in common.”

Cody gave her a sleepy smile, and she reached down to tousle his hair. I had to admit it was weird seeing Morgan and Cody getting along so well, but somehow, miraculously, after the meeting with Desmond, Cody seemed to have taken to the dark-haired woman.

Cody shifted his smile to me and nodded. “We’re aliens,” he announced, before his mouth spread open wide in noisy yawn. Morgan gave him a smile and then looked back at me.

“I should really get him to bed, but… you sure you’re okay?”

“I’ll be fine,” I reassured her, a little surprised at how invested she seemed. To be honest, before the showdown with Desmond, we hadn’t spoken more than a handful of sentences with each other, and my first impression of her had been that of a person who went along with orders but sometimes seemed to be sullen or overly skeptical. But since then, she’d also surprised me with moments of sweetness. She never sugarcoated her judgments, but that meant that when she really cared, you knew it. And she clearly cared about Cody.

She shrugged and nodded, and then headed back down the hall toward Cody’s room. We were short on manpower tonight, having sent every available human into the city, so she and Lynne, from the only other group at our main hideout, were taking turns with Cody. We still didn’t want to leave him alone.

I watched her go, and then sighed, knowing my break—as short as it had been—was over. I maybe had time to relieve my bladder before I needed to get back down there. I headed back inside, regretfully closing the door behind me.

There were still many hours before dawn.





26





Viggo





“We could just charge it,” Alejandro said. “It’s what, a hundred feet to all those cars? We grab Tim as we go, stay low and behind the cars, and disappear behind the next building!”

We stood back twenty or thirty paces from the still burning ashes in the intersection, small bits of wood glowing with pulses of embers. A breeze through the buildings caught some of them, sifting them around in a circle before scattering them farther.

If anything, this was worse than before. The lighting on the street may have dimmed some, but the embers were still blowing hotly. Attempting to cross at anything other than a reckless run would be suicide, and even that seemed too risky.

I considered his question. The shots from the building were slowing down, and I felt certain the people inside were gearing up to bring the fight to us. They didn’t know how many of us there were—with Tim pinned down out there, they could even be planning to storm the intersection and take him prisoner, or worse. Clicking over to the main channel, I pressed my fingers together. “Thomas, I know you’re busy right now, but I have a question.”

“I just threw up my final firewall,” replied Thomas. “That’ll buy us at least twenty minutes, and then the cameras are gone. What’s up?”

“How long is the distance between neighboring manhole lids?”