“That’s right,” Rae agrees. “I will leave you to your decision, you know where to find me, I would never hold you here against your will.” She then gets up and walks out of the room.
“I will take you somewhere to talk things over and rest for the night,” Levi offers.
“That’s kind of you,” Mar says.
Levi walks us out of the meeting room and up a flight of stairs to a small room with a table and chairs and a few cots in it.
“I will have some food sent up,” he says kindly, “but do me a favor though. When you make your decision, come to me first.”
Levi walks out of the room, closing the door behind him before any of us can reply.
“I say we blow this place and try to find our family,” Samantha says, calling us family for one of the first times since we have known her.
“How do you propose we do that?” I ask.
“With this,” she says with a devious grin on her face while she plops the file on the table with the war plans on it. Next, she grabs Jake’s bag, pulling out the portable computer from his bag that we got from The Elected vehicle. and opens it on the table. “Let’s hope this puppy has some battery left.”
“We don’t have the charger?” Eli asks.
“Why no, Eli. I didn’t quite have time to search a blazing van for technicalities, now did I?” she scoffs.
She hits the on button, and to our surprise, the thing lights up. The first screen that pops up is a password protected page. Samantha holds the computer up, looking at the bottom and sides of it. She holds her attention to a set of numbers on the bottom left hand corner. Samantha snaps into the air.
“What do you need?” I ask.
“Something to write with and on,” she answers.
I reach in my bag and pull out a pencil and the list of names and serial numbers from The Elected. The backs of the pages are blank, making them perfect to write on. Samantha writes twelve digits down on the paper in the same order as they appear.
She then types the series into the computer’s password port, hitting the ok button afterwards. Invalid password comes up on the screen. She curses under her breath a bit before trying the numbers in reverse order.
This time the disclaimer that pops up says… Verifying, loading, success. Just like that, we are in.
Silently, we sit and watch her work her magic as she inserts the file that she had taken from The Force only a day or so before we left. Immediately, files pop up from war plans, to maps of where traps are, and maps of The Elected and where things and people are being kept.
“Will you write this down please, Liz?” she asks.
She flips through file after file on the small computer while I take down what is on each one. It takes a while to do so, but by the time it dies, we have nearly everything we need to figure out how to beat these guys, down to when and where they plan on starting the war.
We discuss what we should do and what would be best for us and our family.
By the time we are done talking, the sun is down on another day and the moon is high in the sky. As for now, we feel like it is best that we try to get some rest for the night and make our final decision come morning.
In a place like this, we most likely will be safe enough to all sleep, but we feel it best to keep up the practice of having a guard awake always. Jake and I get the first watch, which allows he and I some alone time before anything else stands in our way. We both sit side by side at the table while Eli, Mar, Samantha, and Magi fall fast asleep.
“I can’t believe this is happening again,” I say.
“I know, but this time we have the upper hand.” Jake says.
“I know. We are lucky that Sam knows how to read these plans and that she was smart enough to take the file.”
“And no matter what we choose, I think Wonder Shield will always be here to help us.” He hugs me.
We sit in each other’s embrace, watching the moon through the one window in the room.
“I don’t know if I can handle all of this much longer,” I sigh. “I say we get them and get as far away from danger as possible.”
“The fight will only follow us,” Jake says, being the voice of reason.
“I know, it’s only a thought,” I laugh.
“I wish it were as simple as that, but we are in to deep.”
“Yeah, I know, you’re right.”
I turn to face him. He looks just as tired as I feel.
“I wish we were alone,” I whisper.
“Me too,” he sighs.
He touches my ribs ever so slightly as to not hurt me. I slide forward in my chair to get closer to him. He leans in, touching my cheek, sliding his hand from my face to the back of my neck. After a moment, our breaths become one and we kiss, soft at first, but harder as our hunger for each other grows.
We kiss hard and long, letting the emotion wash over us. His hand slips to the small of my back and slides up the inside of my shirt, up my spine. I hold the front of his shirt tightly in my fist, pulling him against me. I know this could not go any further with everyone in the room, and I’m not sure I am ready for that.
Someday, in the right time
