Rise: Populations Crumble, Book 2 by Gandy, A. (read book .txt) 📕

going to give you the nitty gritty.” She waggles her eyebrows at me, and hands me a bottle of water before sitting cross-legged on the blanket.

“Thanks.” I hand her a sandwich and a fruit cup.

We sit and munch, scanning the woods for our men. As the time goes on, my unease grows at the separation. What if something happens to them, or they get caught? We’d be stuck sitting here biding our time all afternoon, no idea when to expect them back. Next time, we’re all going. Waiting around like this is for the birds.

Finally, when the sun is directly overhead, we hear the sound of footsteps approaching from the direction they’d gone. Nell and I stay seated, but keep our eyes trained on that spot in the woods where they’d vanished. I let out a huge sigh when I see Patrick round a corner in the path, and a moment later Atlas appears behind him. Nell and I exchange relieved glances.

“Well, neither of them look like they got shot, so that’s a good sign,” Nell says, her light tone not in line with the seriousness of our worries.

It takes a few minutes, but the men tromp back through the thick brush and flop down on the picnic blanket with us.

“Well, what did you find?” I ask, unable to wait a second longer.

Patrick shakes his head. “Just a guard shack, I’m afraid.”

“Ugh, you guys were gone for at least two hours, and the only thing over there is a guard shack?” Nell complains, and my disappointment echoes hers.

“So it’s another dead end?” I ask.  Where the heck are these women?

“I wouldn’t call it a dead end. We were able to observe some of the guard patterns for a short span, and there is definitely activity on the other side of the guard shack,” Atlas says.

“Yeah, we saw them taking a trail on the other side, which doesn’t lead to anything on the map. We’re getting close, I can feel it. They have to be over there.” Patrick adds as he takes the sandwich I offer him.

“So, what now? Do we hike past the guard area and try to find the trail?” The idea is daunting, but I don’t see what other option we have.

“Can I request an option where we don’t spend all day freezing our butts off in the woods? It’s getting a lot colder, and I’m sick of all this hiking. Blah blah, nature—it all looks the same at this point,” Nell cuts in.

“Actually, I had an idea,” Patrick says with a smile. “We’re going to ask for some ATVs. The guards had a few, and we think we could make it through the brush with one. It’s going to be a lot faster and we’ll cover more ground.”

“I’m not complaining, because my blisters have blisters at this point. But how exactly does the guards having ATVs help us get them?” Nell points at the four of us.

“We’re just going to suggest a new activity to the program director,” Atlas says nonchalantly and takes a huge bite of his sandwich.

Monarch

Atlas and Patrick pulled some strings with the program director, which I suspect might have involved Atlas volunteering to donate the ATVs for the new activity. He approved it, no questions asked, but the ATVs are taking a few days to get shipped here. In the meantime, we’re trying to recoup from our nearly two solid weeks of hiking. The rest is nice, but worry for Josephine and all the other women on that list keeps niggling at the back of my mind, and I find myself more and more restless as the days pass.

The increasing cold combined with that restlessness is what’s driving us to loiter in the guest house today, waiting for Nell, Atlas, Emmett, and Carolina to play a card tournament with us. The staff have put out a nice spread of finger foods, which I'm enjoying heartily, much to Patrick’s amusement.

“I don’t know how you eat that stuff. It doesn’t have any resemblance to real meat,” he says, and wrinkles his nose at my selection of sausages stuffed into bacon, bread, and shaped into balls.

“You don’t have to understand it. You clearly have no appreciation for life’s delicacies,” I say with a smug smirk.

He chuckles and gives me a kiss on the head, and slides his hand into the back of my jeans pocket. “You’re kind of weird, but you’re my kind of weird,” he says.

Now it’s my turn to scrunch up my nose at him. “I’m not sure if I should be offended or happy about that,” I say before popping another sausage-wrapped-in-bacon into my mouth happily.

“What’s up, newlyweds!” Emmett sounds jazzed as he and Carolina make their way in. High fives are exchanged all around before they grab some snacks of their own.

Atlas and Nell arrive a moment later, and we all settle down to play some cards. Emmett is the most serious I’ve seen him, as he explains the rules to us. Most of it goes over my head, having never been much of a card player. But I’ve got snacks and friends, so I don’t mind losing for the cause.

After three rounds of being the first to lose, I make my way back to the buffet for seconds. Seeing that everyone else has started a fourth round, I ask one of the ever-present staff, Jerome, if he would set up a movie for us in the conference room. I give Patrick a quick wave, which he sort of acknowledges through his intense focus on his hand, and follow Jerome across the hall to see what our options are. I choose an action and adventure flick, and Jerome shows me how to turn on the movie with a built-in panel in the wall—when everyone is tired of their cards. While I’m waiting, I switch on a Christmas movie. I know it’s early, but who’s going to stop me?

I’m really invested in the plucky heroine’s quest for Christmas love ten minutes later