Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
—Maj. Gen. Margorie Garcia, Many-Worlds Recruiting Command, The Medians
CHAPTER TWENTY
Somewhere, something is buzzing.
I turn over in bed and shove my head under the pillow, ignoring the buzz until it stops. There is a moment here where I imagine what the buzzing might mean for me, but it’s quickly overtaken by the need for sleep, so I just drift off.
The next time the buzzing sounds, I reach over, grab the phone off the nightstand, and throw it against the wall.
This time I drift back to sleep chuckling.
Moments later, there is a pounding on my door.
I sit up, throw my pillow, get out of bed, and stumble over to the door. “Whoever you are, ya had better be ready for a fight because I’m gonna kick the livin’ shit outta ya.” I throw it open, growling into empty space. Then I look down. “Fuck.” A small child. Little girl, about seven. Big brown eyes and mismatched clothes. “Anneeta. What. The hell?”
She sniffles, drags a sleeve across her nose, and sighs as she holds out her hand, offering me a disposable phone. “Someone wants to talk to you.” Then she turns those giant brown eyes up to meet mine and smiles, revealing the space where her front teeth used to be just last week. “Would you like to come have tea with me today?”
“No.” I feel a little bit bad for being so blunt, but I fell for this once. Tea with Anneeta is a mud-like mixture of boiled weeds scavenged from the outside walls of the tower and the biscuits are made of paper.
I take the phone, then search my pockets for a coin to pay her. But I’m wearing boxers, so I hold up a finger. “Stay right there. Be right back.” I close the door on her and redirect my attention to the phone. “Whoever this is, it had better be good.”
Stayn’s voice comes back at me as a yell. “I’ve been calling you for five fucking hours, Tyse. And don’t try and tell me your phone was dead, because it wasn’t. You could’ve at least texted a reply.”
“Sorry. I was sleepin’.”
“It’s five-fifteen in the afternoon, you worthless bum. I’ve got a job for you. So get your ass up and get on it!”
“What job?”
“There was a disturbance—five fucking hours ago!—down in the tower’s lower levels. I need someone to go check it out.”
I rub a hand across my eyes, sighing. “You waited five hours for me to answer the phone so I can check out a couple of vandals in the basement? Why didn’t ya just send Anneeta to check it out?”
“Because that location is magnetically locked. No one has been down in that sector since the god left. It’s not a vandal. It’s somethin’ else—ya know what? You don’t need to know why I want you to go check it out! You just need to get your ass down there and then report back when you’re finished!”
I hold the phone away from my ear and look at it because he’s seriously pissed off. When he’s done, I yawn into the phone as I ask my next question, doin’ this just to make him angrier. “What’s my take in this?”
“Your take?” He’s growlin’ at me now.
Which was the whole point of me asking the question. I kinda love pissin’ Stayn off. He’s very excitable. “Yeah. What do I get if I go check out this disturbance for ya?”
He knows I’m just tryin’ to wind him up so he gets a hold of himself and blows out a long breath. “How about dinner? Come by tomorrow at seven?”
“Me? Dinner at the Kuiper residence? You’re not afraid I’ll corrupt your daughters?” I wince and smile at the same time. It’s a touch too far, even I know this.
“You so much as look at one of my girls, Tyse, and I’ll cut your fuckin’ balls off.”
“I’m kidding. I’ll check out your fuckin’ disturbance and report back. And your girls are sisters to me. I’d never.”
I hear a semblance of a chuckle on the other end of the line. Then another sigh. “Sorry. I know. I’m just wound up today. Weird shit’s been happening all over the city since last night. A power outage, a security hack at the Empire Building, communications are all messed up, and this fucking tower disturbance.” He huffs out a sigh. “I’m short men.”
“Obviously. That’s got to be the only reason you’re relying on me for anything.”
“Not quite. I can trust you to keep your mouth shut, that’s why I called you. And you live in that stupid tower, so you’re close anyway.”
“Well, now I’m intrigued. What do ya think I’m gonna find down there that you need me to keep my mouth shut?”
“Not sure. But I don’t want to talk about it on the phone.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Whhhhhyyyyyy?”