Page 113 of Agency

“Roger that!”

We were downstairs in less than five minutes, rucks thrown over shoulders. His own shoulders sagging, Jericho, now fully dressed, was wiping a hand down his face as we joined him in the living room. He was pacing, while Ambyr, also with all her clothes back on, remained seated on the couch.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth between them.

He gestured to the GPS device. “It’s dead.”

“No, it’s not.” I went and looked over Ambyr’s shoulder at the brightly lit screen. I peered closer. As I did, though, that familiar gut-gripping sensation came right back.

Because he was right.

Shit. Son of a bitch.

“For us, it is,” he said. All the blue dots had disappeared. He held up a hand to cut me off before I could speak, saying, “And, don’t even bother asking. I’ve gone through the filters and overlays. It’s just not getting fed information anymore. We’re not real time, anymore.” He was pacing now, sucking his teeth, and swearing under his breath. “I knew this would fucking happen. We should have gone down to Colorado, and had Logan work on it and figured a way to keep us from getting locked out, or maybe angled south so we could meet with Leona along the way. Staying here for so long was a stupid fucking mistake. Fuck!” He looked like he was about to kick some of the furniture, but he instead took a deep breath, seemed to steady himself.

“You remember anything?” I asked Ambyr as I blinked in surprise at his self-control, my eyes returning to the screen.

“I remember blue dots down in Missouri, but still a couple hour’s drive from St. Louis. But, no, I don’t remember anything else.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” she replied, dropping the device on the couch beside her. “This thing is useless as a scope on a derringer.”

I barked out laughter.

“What then?” I asked, looking to Andrew, then to Jericho. “What’s our next move?” I went around and sagged into the center of the couch, to Ambyr’s left. Andrew came around and joined me on my other side, so that the three of us were seated in front of a dead fire.

Looking back at us, my boss’s face twisted a little as he realized his options were limited. But, before Jericho could say anything, Andrew spoke up.

“We’ve always got Colorado, boss. It’s safe. They can bring us in from the cold, no problem.”

“But,” Ambyr said from my other side, “there’s still my aunt. She was the original objective, and I say we stick with her. She’s going to know Management, and she’s going to have intel.”

“But they’re going to figure we’re gunning for her,” Andrew replied. “It’s the most logical step for us. They might be able to secure her first, or she might even bolt to her own safe house.”

“Maybe she will, and maybe they already know. But we can beat them to her,” Ambyr said. “Drive hard and get the jump on them. It’s going to take time to line up charter flights, and the like.” Pausing, she swallowed hard. “But we need to go now. Right now. Otherwise, we might be here in Nebraska for nothing.”

Jericho was looking out through the cracks in the boarded-up front windows. Andrew was looking to me. Ambyr had retrieved the GPS device, and was back to looking at the unhelpful screen. No one had spoken aloud the exact words, but I implicitly understood that my opinion mattered.

And, God, did that suck. It was always so much easier to just follow orders, to be a fungi that was kept in the dark and told to eat shit. Here, deciding for myself on the best way to get killed?

What to do? Which way to go?

“I think we need to go for Ambyr’s aunt,” I said, finally. “Ambyr is right. She has intel, she might have other resources. Of course, Andrew’s right, too: Colorado can help us. But that’s hours out, Jericho. And those are hours we might need, hours that compound as we keep traipsing around. And I don’t think there’s anything Trinity can do to actually help us find Management.” I glanced to Ambyr. “How much farther to Billings?”

“A little less than seven-hundred miles.”

“A long fucking drive,” I said, nodding. “But, you’re right, maybe faster than them if we go straight through. And, like you said, they still need to worry about chartering a flight out of St. Louis. No puddle jumper out of the Ozarks is going to make that trip with a full compliment. I think we can do it. They can’t be everywhere at once.”

“I think we can, too,” Ambyr said, grabbing my hand and squeezing. Her fingers were like tiny vices as they wrapped around. “We can do it.” She was looking to Jericho, saying, “Well?”

Jericho was still standing with his back to the rest of us. Whether his eyes were fixated on some scene only he could see through the gaps in the boards covering the front windows, or if they were instead looking back through all our years of service, I couldn’t tell.

We’d been cut off from reinforcements before, sure. We’d had enemy units closing in from all sides, yeah. But those had been militia, barely worth considering next to the professional military we represented.

This was different. These operatives zeroing in on us weren’t militia. Far from it. If they had even half the chops Ambyr had, we were fucked.

Because, she was right. She was good. Real good.