If there were cameras in the room, which she prayed wasn’t true, they would know what she was going to do as she slid the blanket underneath one of the legs of the cot. After lining up the rectangular sheet the way she thought was correct, Tabby sat on the cot and yanked as hard as possible. The material ripped with a satisfying zerrrp.
“Gotchya!”
Cut shorter, she was able to wrap the two-foot by five-foot piece of material around her waist and tuck it in, creating a somewhat fashionable skirt for herself. There was no mirror in the office to see how she looked, but the covering made her feel a million times better than how she’d been dressed before. Satisfied at her act of rebellion, it was time to go for her meal.
A bowl of soggy Cheerios sat next to a banana. The drink was a small cardboard carton of milk, which could have come from her high school cafeteria. Still, it could have been worse, she reasoned, so she made like she was going to grab the tray and return to her bed. However, the man in the office directly across the hall caught her attention by his manner of speaking, though he wasn’t talking to her.
“Poppy, where’d they take you? Come back! I’m sorry!”
The guy didn’t seem very old, but his medium-length black hair almost stood up straight like he’d been electrocuted. His face and hands were dirtied with soot, and he wore a baggy white jumpsuit with huge orange stripes from head to toe, as if prison bars had been painted on him. He was locked in, like her, suggesting he was a fellow prisoner. “Excuse me, mister, are you all right?”
He glanced over to her but seemed more interested in looking up and down the hallway. She expected him to reply…
“Sir?”
A moment later, she figured out he’d been badly beaten. His face was bruised and bloody; one of his eyes was swollen shut. A dried river of blood coated one side of his neck. Yet, the man wasn’t tending to his wounds. He was looking for someone.
“Who’d you lose? Maybe I can help you find him.”
“Well, duh!” the man snapped back. “You couldn’t help me find him. My bird is a her, you stupid normal. Not that you would know the difference if you saw her. No one ever sees her.”
“Oh,” she deadpanned. You’re a nut, she didn’t add, though she wanted to.
He looked at her again, then shook the bars of his cage door. “Poppy! I need you to come back! Get me out of here! Don’t let this bitchy woman hurt you.”
“Hey,” she cried out, not willing to take abuse from some idiot who didn’t know a thing about her. “Watch what you say to me. My name isn’t bitchy woman. It’s Tabitha.”
The man harrumphed. “I’m Dwight. If you’re the one who hurt Poppy, I’m coming through both these cell doors and I’m going to burn you where you stand. I did it to Bernard and the other Bernards. I can do it to you, too.”
Without another word, she took the tray off the shelf and went back to her cot. She could still hear Dwight calling for his avian friend, but he no longer seemed interested in her. It was a minor thing, but she chalked it up to being the first victory of the day.
An hour later, she looked up and saw David and his gleaming golden jumpsuit at the cage door.
Time to escape.
CHAPTER 2
Westby, MT
While Uncle Ted sat at the kitchen table and chatted with Emily and Meechum, Kyla excused herself under the pretense of gathering her few belongings for the ride south. Since it was going to take all day to get to Colorado, and they’d be in the truck the whole time, she figured it was the last chance she’d have to be alone.
She closed and locked the door to the bedroom where she’d spent the night. The things she owned amounted to one pistol, which she kept stuffed in her waistband, the stolen uniform, and one computer tablet. She pulled the tablet from where she’d stashed it under the bed.
If any of the others found it, she’d be raked over the coals for sure, since her uncle had instructed her to destroy it back at the swamp. However, she knew how close she’d been to accessing the entire defense mainframe with the valuable piece of tech, so instead of tossing it in the water, she yanked out the little battery, rendering it useless.
Kyla wasn’t a fool. It was a dangerous tool to be used only by a trained professional. But she was also more than aware they were in the middle of a world war. There were no professionals. Only her.
“I’ll just pop on and call for help.” Uncle Ted had gone on and on about how NORAD was the target of their day—it contained the leader of the enemy forces and controlled the nuclear arsenal of the regular United States military. He’d also talked a lot about how difficult it had been to find a way to communicate with US forces overseas. They were the only ones with the power to swoop in and take care of business.
She slid in the thin battery pack and the tablet showed a boot screen. The colorful logo displayed the Southern Cross emblem, which was a globe tilted toward the continent of Australia and a fancy X in the water to the west of it. Finally, it brought her to a screen showing the hacked admin level login. Once inside, she started a command prompt, which let her interface with the code directly. It was how she’d fool the enemy about her identity.
“Excellent. Here we go.” She checked the door out of habit, though it was closed. She couldn’t get caught at that second, or she might not have time to complete the shadow executable to scrub her location.
