Page 126 of Remnants
I plop back in my chair, checking the screen in a cursory glance before returning my gaze to Raegan. “I’ll see you when you’re back from training.” I wave her and the others off, then focus back on the computer. I pull my Board member research up on another screen, getting to work on that as I wait.
Royce finally goes downstairs, alerting me easily by the sharp creak of the wood, making himself a slice of toast with jelly. His face twists as he takes in the result of Holt’s cooking. “Clean this mess up. Now,” he snaps, his usually droll voice sharpened with outrage.The old man’s anal about keeping the beach house clean and tidy.
A portal appears in the kitchen, and the girl controlling it steps through.
“I told you no portals in the house,” Royce admonishes, stepping around it to leave the suddenly-tight kitchen.
The girl—Bea, Reid had called her—shrugs and smirks. “I forgot. I’m just here for a snack and then my portal and I will be gone.” She rummages through the pantry, piling junk food into her arm. “See ya.” She walks back through the portal, leaving the pantry door open wide with fallen goods on the floor, and it closes behind her.
“I’ll be grateful to be rid of you both after our next assignment,” Royce mutters drearily, walking slowly to his chair in the living space. “Clean up her mess as well.”
This isn’t the first time he’s mentioned a “next assignment” as if they’re all here waiting for Charles to give them the signal. They haven’t said anything aboutwhatthat assignment might be, though.
“I don’t know why we’re waiting. We should do it now,” Holt grumbles, sweeping his arm over the counter to push everything on it into the waiting trash can.
“All of you are so impatient. The President would not have us wait unnecessarily. Besides, I have to curate more puppets after that feral girl destroyed everything I had. Do you understand how long it took me to gather so many? Decades, boy.”
“I’m not waiting around here for decades, so hurry it up.”
Royce clicks his tongue and eats his toast, not bothering with a reply.
Another hour passes. Royce’s eyes are closed for most of that time, and I assume he’s taking a nap.
At this rate, we’ll just attack him when he’s asleep. Morning seems to be the best time after he comes back from wherever he goes at night. Even mid-morning could work out while he’s sleeping in the living room. Holt is the only obstacle we’d have to get through first, and somehow without waking Royce. As for Bea…she pops in and out at random times, but it almostseemslike she’s aware of the conversation that had been happening before she shows up as if on cue.
If she can see what’s happening at the beach house, that’ll be more difficult. She could send a swarm of GE agents at us if she finds us there.
While Royce is sleeping in his chair, Vera appears from a portal outside and stalks into the house.
“What’s that?” Holt asks, eyes narrowed.
I follow his stare to an item in her hand. My lungs constrict.
It can’t be.
“Are you an idiot? It’s a notebook.” She passes him to the basement door.
It’s a black and white composition notebook. Just like the one I’d given her, filled with some of our old coded messages and then the letters I’d written her after she died. The one she’d left behind at Old Red.
“Why would you carry one of those around?” he asks suspiciously, and she pauses with her hand on the knob to glare over her shoulder at him.
“Why does anyone have a notebook? To take notes. Fuck, you’re dumber than I gave you credit for.” She opens the door and slams it closed behind her, and he scowls.
“Cunt.” He whips out a cell phone and taps it a few times. A portal appears outside within a minute, and he storms from the beach house to leave through it.
I’m still reeling from the sight of my notebook in her hand. I know it’s mine. Mine was filled to the brim, little colored papers sticking out of it, and worn or dried pages making them wrinkle and puff the notebook out.
Didn’t Aiden say she was sneaking around Old Red the other day?
What if it was to get my notebook?
Why would she want it now? Because I’d saved her? She’d beensurprisedwhen I’d jumped in front of her.
As if I couldn’t possibly care about her and Raegan simultaneously.
I thought she was lost to me.
She’d been twisted too much by GE, her morals skewed and her hate for Raegan giving me no other choice but to fight her as an enemy.
