Dorian swept the next room. "There are no bodies, yet," he said gently. I nodded. That could be a good sign, or it could mean that the bodies had been dragged away by predators. The granola bar wrapper was still in my hand. I held it up to him as we moved along.
"Doesn't seem torn by small teeth, does it?"
"Not at all," Dorian replied. "You think someone is leaving a trail?"
I shrugged. It was unlikely, but the presence of human trash gave me hope that people had still been here, even after the meld.
We moved on to the barracks. Most of this part of the base had been destroyed by the meld. The barracks building seemed to have been sliced down the middle: on one side of a long corridor, the rooms were mostly intact, while on the other, sunlight spilled through missing walls and saplings had taken over the floor. In one of them, scattered photos splayed across the ground. Moisture ravaged many of them, but I crouched to look. What if someone had left them behind for a reason? With their disarray, however, I strongly suspected they’d just landed this way after being blown off someone's shelf.
I looked down at the first one and made a strangled sound of surprise. A familiar pair of brown eyes stared up at me. Zach. My brother, who had fallen in the battle to destroy the Immortal Council, shot down by our own uncle. I felt my heart squeezing into the familiar numbness of loss.
In the image, still visible behind moisture damage, Zach hugged me wildly while my parents beamed beside us, one either side, all of us in our Bureau dress fatigues. It was the day of my graduation from Bureau training.
My heartbeat sped up when I saw my mother's faint cursive handwriting on the other side, but it was merely a notation to mark the event and the day, and the hope faded, while the anxious heartrate remained. I pocketed the photo as Cam came up behind me, not wanting to get emotional in front of him. I didn’t want him to think of me as the kind of leader who teared up during a mission.
“Find anything good?” Bryce asked on the comm. “Front area is good.”
“Personal effects,” I replied. “We’ll keep looking.”
Cam surveyed the rest of the area with me. There was nothing but a few more photos, some from my family and a few that must've come from other Bureau officials. Maybe they’d had a bulletin board in this room to share. I tucked that sad thought away and pushed on.
"Lyra, you're going to want to see this," Dorian called. I joined him and Sike at the doorway of the next barracks room, Cam following behind.
Instead of a doorway, a barricade faced us. It was definitely human-made, a pile of objects stacked on top of one another, with old desks and a heavy bar resting on top to act as a weight.
Dorian eyed me, a look passing between us, and I nodded, telling the other two to stand back with weapons at the ready. Dorian and I worked together in silence, carefully sliding objects from the doorway. Once again, I was grateful for his vampire strength. No sound came from inside. After we’d cleared the way, I peeked in, hand on the gun at my hip.
Through the door, I spotted… a bed. My eyebrows shot up with interest. Dorian behind me, I stepped inside and my excitement soared.
This was a room largely untouched by the savagery of the plants. The walls still stood and the window had been boarded up; the small bed had been used recently, judging from the lack of dust on the sheets. I scouted the nearby effects, where someone had piled a few crates to serve as a shelving unit and a bedside table. On the table was a Bureau-issue laptop with an official-looking label. My heart soared as I spotted a nearby battery pack. Another barricade had been set up on the other side, allowing for a narrow exit from the building.
I spotted a pile of more granola bar wrappers and some old MREs, the kind of military meals given to soldiers to eat out in the field. An unlit lamp that had recently been burnt, judging from the wick, sat on a weathered desk. On the back of a rickety chair, a shirt faded by the light and time was freshly wrung and drying. I seized the laptop and the power cord. Jackpot. If only the internet had managed to stay online in this area, so the survivor could’ve shot us an e-mail.
Someone had been here recently, and they were from the Bureau from the looks of it.
"Come look at this," Cam’s voice shouted in the distance. Hadn’t he just been standing behind me and Dorian? I whipped around, towards the destroyed portion of the barracks on the other side of the hall, but I could no longer see him. A chorus of incensed squeaking rose louder and louder from the same direction. Dorian and I looked at each other, then headed for the sound.
Bryce will kill me if I’ve lost his nephew already.
2
Roxy
I was losing brain cells by the second.
Brushing my red hair out of my face, I concentrated on the sight below me. It was Valentine’s Day, and I was busy stalking a statuesque brunette. This ridge I hid behind was a perfect hideout with the tame brush providing camouflage. I hadn't been to Salt Lake City much, but it was nice enough despite the proximity of the nearby Leftovers. Nice enough, if I ignore this idiot.
How had it come to this? My scanner and my binoculars were
