In Tessa’s leisure time, she explored her relationship with Finn. They became closer, and things progressively got more serious. Tessa had deep feelings and desires for Finn, and he seemed to echo the same sentiment. She had never been in a serious relationship, and although she understood the physical attraction, she wasn’t sure how to proceed. This relationship was all new territory for her, so she proceeded with caution.
Their relationship progressed physically, but Tessa wasn’t sure how far she was willing to let that go yet. Her primal desires wanted her to give in to her urges, but she restrained herself. She worried that physical attachment and emotions would cloud her judgment.
Tessa was a logical creature and realized that her head would always outweigh her heart on these matters. She wanted to let her heart soar but worried about maintaining her rational mind. She didn’t have time for childish fantasies or girlish notions. She was responsible for a whole group of people and needed a clear mind to make the right choices. It worried her that if she gave too much to Finn that he might be more influential in her decisions. She wanted to maintain independent, unbiased thought. She feared giving him too much of herself.
Tessa headed to the master control room, Finn’s base of operations. The airport computer room was a technical haven for Finn to perform his hacks into H.I.V.E. At one time, they had unrestricted access to the H.I.V.E databases, but after their escape, H.I.V.E wised up and closed Finn’s backdoor into the system. Ever since then, Finn tried to reopen a window into the H.I.V.E systems. There were moments where he would break through and access information, but shut him down within seconds. They were on the lookout for him now, and that made his job much more difficult.
Finn called Tessa to the control room, meaning he had new information. Tessa hoped it was about H.I.V.E’s secret secondary location. She instructed Finn that the second base was a top priority if he ever gained systems access again.
Tessa arrived to find a charming grin on Finn’s face as he spun in his swivel chair to face her. “Guess what I found?”
“I hope it’s intel on H.I.V. E’s New Mexico base.”
“Maybe,” he teased her.
“Well, if it’s nothing, I’ll just be back to business.” Tessa turned to leave the room.
Finn jumped up from his chair and positioned himself between her and the exit. “I know what they’re doing at Los Alamos.”
Tessa turned and smiled, “Show me.”
Finn used his mind to reroute the information to the big screen on the wall. He showed her schematics of the base. “They have expanded the labs at Los Alamos to include a larger than normal engineering division. When I looked deeper, I found designs similar to the arc we discovered at Cheyenne Mountain. But they’ve gotten smart. They aren’t keeping all the spec in the same location, and I’m assuming they pulled key details offline.”
“Looks like they don’t want you nosing around in their plans. You’ve got them rattled, and that’s good for us.”
Finn didn’t agree with her statements. “Yes, and no. It’s good to shake things up and hope they make mistakes, but taking specs offline means we don’t have access to the information we need. There is no way to get our hands on information to determine without a doubt they are building a second arc.”
Tessa thought for a moment, “How are they getting supplies to the base? Is it by the train like you suspected?”
“Yeah, but what does that have to do with the arc?”
“Cross-reference all material transported to the base since I destroyed the Cheyenne Mountain arc to the material on the original arc specs we stole.” Tessa knew there were some specific materials on the build list that might help them identify if H.I.V.E was building a new arc.
“Brilliant.” Finn tapped into his power and started running algorithms. “They delivered all items on the build list to Los Alamos.”
“They are building another arc.” Tessa wondered if they had another way to power the core or if they still needed her power to kick start the engine.
“What are you planning to do?”
“We have to destroy the other arc.” Tessa wasn’t willing to let H.I.V.E succeed.
“That’s a dangerous mission. They have twice the firepower at Los Alamos, and we don’t know how far underground the facility goes. It’s a risk.”
“It’s a risk I need to take.”
“Who cares if they have another arc. We have one too.”
Tessa sighed, “I’m not willing to let hate escape Earth. If we both escape to the stars, then this war between humans and Evos doesn’t stop, it just evolves. We have to face them later in space with more unknown variables. It’s best to end the fight here.”
Finn agreed to disagree with her logic. He was nervous about attacking H.I.V.E again. They barely survived their first escape from H.I.V.E, and he wasn’t willing to roll the dice and try their luck again. Finn was content with escaping to space and hoping that they wouldn’t run into H.I.V.E in the future. But he recognized Tessa was right and so he told her what else he found. “It’s too late.”
His revelation confused Tessa, “What do you mean we’re too late?”
Finn projected more images on the screen. Tessa poured over the engineering schematics, knowing full well what she was looking at. Finn explained it anyway, “They have already sent scouts to space.”
It filled Tessa with a sense of dread, “These are just specs. They
