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While hit pretty hard by storms, Sri Lanka reportedly handled the virus reasonably well. They’d been flooded with refugees from southern India, but none of the Sri Lankan cities had been specifically targeted via their water supplies, so they’d managed to maintain somewhat of a protected zone.

Anyway, we wouldn’t be there for long.

Because we needed to minimize stops, we’d be picking Loki and his team up at Sri Lanka, too. They’d already worked out a route that would allow them to hop and refuel the Chinook, stopping in Pakistan last before traveling to a small airstrip just north of Yala National Park. The park had been partially flooded, but still had a few open beach areas.

Once the carrier got within range, they would land the Chinook on the deck. At the very least, we’d know where to look for them if anything went wrong.

We didn’t intend to stay long, like I said.

Now that Balidor was cooperating with my demand that we minimize secrets within the core leadership team, I didn’t much care about the Children of the Bridge, to be honest. I figured they were a bunch of religious fanatics, which didn’t interest me.

I assumed I’d meet this person, she’d tell me her little story, we’d agree to some kind of loose alliance, I’d borrow some of her infiltrators… since Balidor claimed a few had recent knowledge of Dubai… and that would be that.

I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy.

* * *

We landed somewheresouth of Arugum Bay.

Jon told me it used to be a fairly big surfing spot back in the day.

Now, it looked pretty deserted.

Most of the coast looked like it had been devastated by tsunamis, or maybe just weird weather combined with rising sea levels. Balidor said they’d suffered a fair bit of “beach creep” over most of Sri Lanka anyway, as was true of just about every island and coastal area inhabited by humans that didn’t have a containment field.

The remnants of a resort hotel sat on a rise not far from where we landed.

The remaining buildings overlooked the bay and the Indian Ocean, but the structure already looked like it had been abandoned for years.

Balidor picked this place in part because the southeastern edge of Sri Lanka had mostly been evacuated. He claimed it wasn’t so much about the virus, but more due to erratic weather and a recent proliferation of human pirates.

Either way, it was pretty eerie standing there, on a worn concrete slab dotted with fallen trees. Clothes, blankets, and thick pieces of plastic wrapped into branches and tree trunks. An old advertisement sign stuck out of the sand, worn down to a muted gray color, with only the faint outline of a woman drinking some kind of soft drink showing on the metal.

The only sounds I heard came from seabirds and crashing surf.

I still hadn’t adjusted to how quiet the world was now.

With so many human-generated sounds gone, the Earth’s stillness seeped over everything, disorienting me, even beyond the ambient noises of animals and birds, running water and wind.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d heard a plane in the sky, at least that wasn’t one of ours. We almost never ran into other ships, apart from when we got too close to one of the Shadow cities.

The only time I ever saw strangers anymore was during field ops.

It felt eerie to be on land in a non-military capacity. I watched our motorboat bob in the waves with only Jorag in it, managing it against the currents to remain nearby, just in case we needed to leave in a hurry. Dark clouds clustered over the ocean’s horizon, and I hoped like hell an earthquake didn’t hit while we were out here.

Revik grunted from next to me.

I glanced at him, smiling.

Once I had, I found myself doing a double-take. I stared up at his face, puzzled.

He was nervous.

I could actuallyfeelhis nerves vibrating.

He’d been acting strange since we set up this meeting, and while I was trying really hard not to connect it to the whole Dalejem thing, it wasn’t easy. For one thing, Revik was trying a little too hard to pretend everything was fine. I caught myself shielding from him more than usual because of it, which didn’t exactly help.

I fought to focus on why we were here.