Chapters
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Elliot drove to the diner.He felt a lot better with a heroic dose of cold medicine in his system, reducing his temperature and banishing the sniffles and occasional coughs. He left a brief note to Ruby, explaining that she might have to wait until the end of his shift if she wanted the car.He felt better, but not so much better that he could endure the significant physical strain of a bike across town.Driving through Aurora felt... different, somehow. A strange dread followed him, like knowing he had left…-
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The next few hours passed about how Elliot expected. After heat-treatment in the sacrificial toaster-oven, he went out to make purchases of supplies around town, always getting the maximum possible change for each transaction. If he had to spend some of the money anyway, he went shopping as though he was about to go on a long camping trip. Plenty of cans and non-perishables, a new camp stove, some fuel.Incidentally, many of the same things he might need if they were about to disappear into the Rockies for…
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Tell Her Everything (56%)Elliot shook his head once. "Listen, I know you've got important studying to do. But I have something here I think you should see. Got a minute?""A minute," she repeated, holding the notebook up in one hand. She squinted down at the writing on the front page. "Dr. Zalenka, huh? Didn't know you by that name."Elliot snatched the notebook out of her fingers, twisting around her to lean against the wall. "Before you look, you need to know how I got it. Then maybe you can make more…
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Elliot glanced nervously in both directions, just to be sure there was no one watching. There were a handful of small cars on the road now, and there would be more with every minute. As Aurora woke, so too did its residents. Within the hour, there would be dozens of people moving in either direction, making anything even remotely like stealth completely impossible.The best place to read would be home, obviously. But if he didn't know what was inside, he couldn't bring it back to Ruby's apartment! His…
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It was another late shift.Many of Elliot's coworkers loathed the overnight, with its long stretches of nothing broken only rarely by the occasional trucker or weirdo. Far from avoiding it, Elliot often volunteered.There was something honest about only a few tables at a time, delivering bizarre orders to those customers who rolled in when honest folk were asleep. Overnights were the shift for long conversations, for wild tangents and getting on a first-name basis with the regulars.Ruby wasn't as fond of…
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Play it safe, take her time to learn the ropes and follow legal channels to get her friends released. (45%)Of course, Wayfinder wasn't going to reject any option given to her. She wanted to know what Hazel might be thinking, even if she was a half-starved adolescent who had spent most of the pandemic hiding in a trap house.She closed the laptop, then tucked it under the covers of her bed for good measure. "What plan do you have in mind?"The result was impressive—impressive enough that she swore,…
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Wayfinder emerged into the blinding light of full day, her body crushed briefly by the Colorado heat. She lingered in the doorway a second while she adjusted. My fur is getting a little long, maybe I should get a trimmer.Getting shoved in a basement might not be the most dignified place to be, but it did have its advantages: the underground stayed much cooler than the surface. Something touched lightly to her rear as she emerged from the doorway. Way didn't look back to see if she'd decided to wear the…
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"Wait for Peter to come back. She could search the book again for more on Cutie Marks." 70%Of course, Wayfinder didn't want to sit around in this mysterious place and wait for others to make her decisions for her. Since the first days of the outbreak, she'd been the one to decide where they ended up. Whether she'd done a good job making those decisions was a matter for debate—but she'd kept everyone alive. Apparently that couldn't be said for those who tried to walk down that tunnel before them.Security…
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"This is your room," Lance said, about six hours later. They passed in an absolute blur for Wayfinder, who could do little more than go along for the ride. She followed along with everything Lance said, even when that meant agreeing to things that were obviously false.Yes, she'd been studying at the police academy as a young man about her real age named "Ryan Winters" on vacation to see his family from the East Coast. Yes, Wayfinder had lost everything to verify that claim and was just going by "Way" now,…
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Retreat for now, come back with more help later (55%)Wayfinder wanted to go in after Sunburst. That “lunatic” was important in more ways than sharing a book. What more did he know that wasn’t in the pages of that basic volume?But charging into a place that this well-armed policeman said would be lethal to her, well—she didn’t have to be stupid about this. She’d made a connection here, one that might have other uses...She turned to scamper after Lance, waiting only long enough for Hazel to join…
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