Rose Tinted (21 page)

“Normally it only fits five; two in front and three in the back. But I’m sure we could fit a third person in the front seat, it just might not be as comfortable.”

“That’s not too bad actually,” Ty said. “I thought it would be much more crowded than that.”

Brynn didn’t bother to mention the fact that if everything went according to plan, they’d actually have seven of them coming back instead of six. She knew that her ‘plan’ wasn’t exactly high on the agenda of the group who thought Jonah had betrayed them.

She had thought the facts over
, every free second since she’d left A1 and had come to a few decisions. Brynn could admit that Jonah was an A.I.. The evidence was just too monumental to deny. That, however, didn’t mean that Jonah had been working with Eris. The more she thought back on her conversations with him, the more she came to believe this.

No matter what, she knew no one else would believe her, but they hadn’t seen the way Jonah had looked when she’d almost fallen from that tree overhanging the ocean on Panurgic. He had looked as if his whole world had just ended when her foot slipped
, and that proved to her more than anything that he wasn’t working with Eris.

He actually cared about her.

Eris’s disdain for Brynn was so all-encompassing that she couldn’t hide it if she tried. Jonah had never so much as looked at Brynn sideways and she knew he couldn’t fake that kind of affection for her.

“Brynn?” Rusty said, her voice a little worried.

“Huh?”

“I asked you if you’re claustrophobic,” Rusty said, apparently not for the first time.

“Oh, no I’m not… why?”

“Air vents,” she said simply.

Apparently Brynn had missed a big chunk of Rusty’s speech and she felt her cheeks flush as the group looked at her.

“Are you going to be okay
to go with us?” Hadlock asked, looking at her apprehensively. “Because Rift isn’t really on board with bringing our information source into A1 anyway. He just figured we wouldn’t be able to stop you.”

“Yeah
, I’m fine I just didn’t get a lot of sleep last night,” she said quickly. Ty tensed next to her and she could have slapped her palm over her face in embarrassment as she realized how that had sounded. “Nightmares,” she mumbled by way of explanation.

“Nightmares?” Rusty repeated, sounding more excited than someone should when they hear
their friend is having bad dreams. “Did you learn anything new?”

“Actually I did!” Brynn exclaimed, suddenly understanding Rusty’s excitement.

She
had almost completely forgotten to tell The Alliance about the strange sketch Rachel had burned.

Her kiss with Ty
was clouding her thinking.

“Is it something that can help us with our mission?” Rift asked.

“I think it might be the third thing,” Brynn answered.

“What is it?” Hadlock and Amber said at the same time.

“I’m not quite sure what it is. It looked like blueprints for some kind of mechanical vehicle or something. I tried to memorize it so I could draw it for you guys,” she offered helpfully.

“Here,” Ty said instantly, handing over his tablet and letting his fingers linger on hers for a moment too long.

She very pointedly ignored the chills that went down her spine.

“Thanks,” she
muttered as she pulled up a blank screen to draw on.

She moved her fingers quickly over the smooth
surface, drawing almost mechanically as her memory took over. It was as if Rachel were inside of her mind, guiding her fingers around each curve of the sketch to make sure she got it just right. When she finished, the group was staring at her strangely.

“What?” she asked, suddenly self-conscious.

“You were drawing that with your eyes closed,” Amber answered, sounding like she wasn’t sure if she should be impressed or frightened.

Brynn didn’t say anything. S
he wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that. So instead she handed the tablet over to Rift for evaluation.

“Rusty
, have you seen this before?” he asked her.

“It looks like a ship,” Rusty said slowly, as if she were trying to remember the wo
rd for what she was looking at.

“Royter will you go through Hadlock’s files while they’re gone and see if you can find anything about ‘ships’?” Rift asked the mysterious and quiet girl with the short black hair who stood stoically behind him.

She didn’t say anything but nodded as she transferred the sketch from Ty’s tablet to the handmade one Hadlock and Rusty had built, before handing it back to Ty.

“I knew you’d remember something,” Rusty said happily, giving Brynn a quick wink.
“Now everyone get your stuff and we’ll head out.”

As the group scattered to gather up their things
, Brynn stopped Ty, grabbing him by the arm and pulling him away from everyone else.

“What was she saying about air ducts?” Brynn asked.

“You really were spacing out, weren’t you?” he asked with a laugh. “She said we’re going to go in through the air duct system since they already know about the front entrance and the underground tunnel. We definitely don’t want to try the same trick twice.”

“
We probably don’t want to try
any
trick,” Brynn said dryly. “And how are we destroying the gas when we get in?”

“Hadlock wrote some sort of computer virus to destroy whatever they already have stockpiled and he’s giving us a bug to plant in the facility so that he can manually override the gas emitters all over the planet.”

“Oh good, so just an easy job this time,” Brynn said sarcastically.

“Should be a piece of cake for you. This is old hat right?” Ty joked, bringing his hand up to her cheek for just a brief moment before walking away.

Brynn felt a jolt of nerves at the prospect of revisiting A1, but the secret she kept from her companions weighed more heavily on her than anything.

Though she would do what she could to help them plant the bug and destroy the gas, her main purpose for entering the terrifying facility once more was to rescue a friend she’d left behind.

She only hoped she wouldn’t be too late.

Chapter 25
: Car

Riding in the ‘car’ Rusty had built turned out to be one of the most terrifying experiences of Brynn’s life. And that was saying something coming from a girl who’d been in A1, the ocean, and faced the awful Eris on numerous occasions.

The car was a structure built from metal pipes that had been welded together. It was completely
open as compared to the closed-in train cars they were used to, and the large wheels were rubber rather than metal. The group had strapped themselves into the car with harnesses, though Amber, who sat in the front middle where there wasn’t actually a seat, had to use a makeshift harness.

Brynn suspected that the car wouldn’t be such an alarming device if Rusty hadn’t been driving. It was almost certain that ‘laying low’ wasn’t an easy task when driving across the desert landscape on the way to A1 in a car that kicked up so much dust the group was entirely covered from head to foot. But the fact that Rusty was screaming happily at the top of her lungs and trying to locate any bump in the road to drive over didn’t really help their predicament at all.

The engine alone was loud enough to give away their location at the drop of a hat. All you had to do was listen and you’d know exactly where they were. But the long trail of dust that spanned out behind them in an endless wall was like a giant sign, pointing the A.I.s to Brynn and her friends.

Needless to say, they felt very conspicuous driving through the desert.

“Rusty!” Brynn shouted from the backseat.

She gripped Ty’s hand tightly in
her own, trying to blink away the dust in her eyes and hoping Rusty could hear her over the din of the loud engine.

“Rusty!” she called again when the girl didn’t respond.

“What?” Rusty called back, taking a break from her manic screaming but still going just as fast through the bumpy desert.

She wore large brown goggles that blocked out the dust, allowing her to continue driving like a maniac unhindered.

“Maybe you should slow down!” Brynn yelled.

“Or stop screaming at least,” Ty suggested with a grin
, in an unusually good mood when he was on his way back to A1.

“You guys take the fun out of everything,” she
pouted, adjusting the goggles she wore and turning her attention back to the endless sandy landscape in front of them.

Apparently their advice didn’t make a dent in her intentions because she continued to make sharp turns and even got all four wheels of the car off the ground at on
e point as she sped over a hill, giggling like a crazy person all the while.

“If we’re going to die in there
, I want to make sure my last few hours are amazing,” she called back, causing Brynn to grip Ty’s hand even tighter.

They were clearly in the company of a psychopath.

By nightfall
they had reached A1. The facility stood ominously in the distance. Its lights glistening like thousands of stars in the night sky. Brynn swallowed hard at the sight, remembering the way she, Ty, and Jonah had stood out in the sandy darkness not too long ago.

So much had changed in such a short time
, but she was still as determined as ever to find answers and protect her friends, despite all of the horrible things she’d seen since that fateful night.

“Are we going in during the night or will we wait until it’s light out?” Amber asked, looking at the facility as if she could size it up right then and there.

“I don’t want to waste any time. We need to hide the car, get in there, plant the bug, and get right back out. I don’t need anyone else dying because we’re taking too long,” Rusty said, able to be as blunt as she wanted to be now that Devey wasn’t with them. “Besides, now that they don’t know we’re coming we should get right back in there. They’ll be expecting us to take a long time to recover from our last trip.”

“That’s all well and good
, but do we actually know what we need to do to navigate through the vents?” Brynn asked skeptically, ignoring the dig at Jonah.

“Of course,” Hadlock answered, sounding offended. “The main air duct is located on
the wall closest to us. We’ll pop the grate off and wriggle through there until we find the control room where we need to plant the bug.”

“Do you think it’s really good for all of us to go in when all we need to do is plant a bug? Isn’t that like asking for casualties?” Ty pointed out.

“I’ve got two bugs and we have two groups taking different routes in case…,” Hadlock let his words trail off.

“In case one of our groups doesn’t make it,” Brynn finished for him.

“It’s important that we get this bug planted. Even if we never stop Eris, we can still slow her down and prolong everyone’s lives.”

“Which I’m sure they’d appreciate if they knew we were doing it,” Bennett said with a
what can you do
shrug.

“I want Rusty and Ty to go together,” Hadlock said, handing them one small device. “And Amber, Bennett, and Brynn to go together.”

Ty looked over at Brynn with a worried look in his eye. He seemed like he might protest but thought better of it. As much as she hated to admit it, she was glad she wouldn’t be going with Ty, though it made absolutely no sense to her that Hadlock would group the two tech savvy people together. She definitely didn’t question his choice though, since it would be easier for her to slip away from Amber and Bennett to go find Jonah. If she was with Ty he’d insist on coming with her and probably end up getting himself hurt. She didn’t want that to be her fault so instead she shot him a reassuring smile and shrugged her shoulders.

“Where will you be
, Hadlock?” Amber asked, surveying their surroundings.

“I’ll be just a few feet from the air vent system, hiding in the bushes,” he said sullenly, as if hiding in bushes were very beneath him. “I’m a little worried that the comms units won’t work in the air vent system since you’ll be surrounded by metal, but luckily I brought a map for you guys to follow.”

“What about once we’re inside? How will we know if the Workers are coming?” Brynn asked, suddenly worried.

“The communication system should pick up again once you’re out of the vent,”
he said unconcernedly, as if their lives didn’t rely on this very important fact.

“On that very confidence inspiring note
, shall we go?” Rusty asked in a chipper voice.

Crawling through the air vents was a lot harder than Brynn thought it would be, and their white clothing was quickly becoming brown with the dust they were picking up.

For a spotless high-
tech facility, they had a lot of dust.

The cold metal box was so confined that they couldn’t actually crawl on their hands and knees. Instead the group had to
lie on their stomachs and use their elbows to drag the rest of their body across the slick metal surface.

They had all entered the vent together though they would soon be splitting up as they came to a fork in the tunnel.

“Ty and…,” Hadlock began to say, but his voice quickly cut out and melted into static, just as he said it would.

“Do you guys have the map?” Brynn called back in a hushed voice.

Despite the cold air blowing past them, she was sweating with the effort of dragging herself through the small confined space. Her arms burned and her breathing was heavy.

“I think Rusty and I are supposed to go right at this fork and you guys keep going straight,” Ty said from behind Brynn.
“Then you keep going straight past two more forks before turning right. You’ll need to backtrack to get to the room from the way you’re going.”

“Ty?” Brynn said.

“Yeah?”

“Be careful.”

He reached up and squeezed her ankle lightly before saying, “You too.”

And with that, the group split up, Brynn continuing forward with Amber and Bennett following behind her and Ty veering to the right with Rusty.
She got a sinking feeling in her stomach as she let her friend go, and she hoped it was just her nerves and not a bad omen for what was to come.

Brynn, Amber, and Bennett did as they were told, continuing straight on until the
y reached the third fork. They pulled themselves through the vent system as quietly as they could before coming to the grate they needed to exit through.

“Brynn?” Amber called up in a whisper just as Brynn was about to open the grate for them to leave.

“Yeah?”

“I’m sorry I never believed you about all of this stuff before,” she said. “I guess I wasn’t a very good friend.”

“Honestly, if you had come to me insisting that there was some mad woman on the loose trying to kill everyone, I probably wouldn’t have believed you either,” she answered with a soft laugh. “You and Bennett are great friends.”

“Thanks for letting us come with you,” Bennett said from the back of the group. “I never thought I’d do something like this.” She
almost sounded excited rather than scared and the tone in her voice made Brynn smile. “Plus Amber wouldn’t have met Hadlock if you hadn’t let us come,” she added conspiratorially.

“Bennett!” Amber said a little too loudly. “First of all he’s on the comms unit,” she whispered back to her friend.

“That doesn’t work at the moment,” Bennett pointed out.

“Second,” Amber went on, not even acknowle
dging Bennett’s interruption, “We’re about to break into a top secret room in a top secret facility full of people who want to kill us. I hardly think this is the time to talk about boys,” Amber finished, making Brynn feel that ever present pang of guilt when she realized she’d be compromising her friend’s safety because she insisted on saving Jonah.

“Well let’s hurry up and get this over with then so we can have a nice little talk about Hadlock,” Brynn said with a smile, almost happy to be talking about something as normal as boys when the world as they knew it was falling apart.

“We can analyze your conversations,” Bennett said happily and Brynn knew she’d be clapping her hands if they weren’t in such a small space.

“Fine,” Amber relented, pushing Brynn’s foot with her hand in an attempt to get her to start moving again.

Brynn pushed open the grate below her and stuck her head through, looking at the hallway they were about to drop into upside down. Her hair flew up over her face in a dark curtain, so long that she knew it would be a dead giveaway if anyone actually were in the hallway at that moment. Luckily for them, there wasn’t a Worker in sight.

“We’re clear,” Brynn said, slowly lowering herself from the grate in the ceiling and dropping silently onto the soft white floor.
“I swear no one ever works around here,” she added, trying to keep the nagging feeling from her gut.

Every time she’d ‘broken into’ the facility, Eris had known where she was all along. Of course, that had been when Jonah was with her. Even though she knew he wasn’t working for Eris, the fact that he was an A.I. meant Eris had probably used him to monitor Brynn’s movement. Now, even though it was far too easy for her to break into the facility, she knew she had the element of surprise.

“How are we supposed to get back into the vent?” Amber asked as she dropped down next to Brynn, her cotton candy pink hair standing out quite obviously in the white space.

“Hopefully he’s got another vent in mind. We definitely can’t reach up there,” Bennett said as she flew through the air above them, landing with a soft thud on the ground.

“What took you guys so long?” Hadlock suddenly said in their ears, startling the three girls who had almost forgotten the ear pieces were even in.

“Nothing,” all three said guiltily at once.

“I don’t even want to know,” Hadlock said with a sigh. “Now go right, down the hallway and take your first right to backtrack to the control room. You guys should be clear as far as I can tell.”

“Rusty,” Ty’s voice said in exasperation over the comms unit.

“What’s happening, Ty?” Brynn asked, suddenly worried for her friend’s safety.

“Rusty won’t stop looking at the technology in the building. She’s stopping every few feet to examine some wall screen or elevator,” he complained as they heard Rusty “ooing” and “awing” in their ears.

“Rusty,” Hadlock snapped. “Focus!”

“Pretty big words for someone who’s trapped on the outside of this absolute gold mine of technology,” Rusty said, her voice sounding distant and happy.

“Rusty,” Ty warned.

“Fine,” she pouted, apparently relenting.

“Hadlock, we’re at the control room,” Ty said while Amber, Bennett, and Brynn continued to make their way through the facility.

“Perfect,” he
answered. “Rusty, go ahead and install the bug into the wires like I showed you. Make sure it’s hidden so the A.I.s won’t see it even if they’re looking for it.”

“Yes sir,” Rusty said with mock seriousness.

Hadlock could be heard sighing audibly, though he didn’t actually reprimand her for being so cavalier about their serious mission.