.
And it all goes back to Sarah again. Not just becauseI promised—and want —to protect her, but because we need her to get to the other Garde. She’s our connection. But I still have no idea how to find her. I need to step my search for her up to the next level. I think about posting a message to her on TWAU but realize that the dumbest thing I could do is get her face or name out there where some assclown might see her and try to tell me where she is, only to alert other authorities. I should discuss options with GUARD. Maybe he can pull some hacker moves and break into her email account or something. Maybe he can even track her face using security cameras.
We have to find her. Not for her sake or mine, but for the world’s. So we can create a united front with the Loric.
And it would be great to have someone helping me out. In person. Someone I knew and trusted and cared for. Someone to keep me from being lost and alone in all this.
At a little drugstore just across the Alabama border, I stop to buy butterfly bandages. I try to remember a time when I didn’t have problems like taking care of gunshot wounds or running from government agencies. It wasn’t that long ago. Just a few months. A weird thing happens as I think about Friday nights under stadium lights and hanging out with my buddies after games. Usually when I do this, I wish I could go backand enjoy not knowing what’s going on in the world. But now I’m glad I have a much bigger purpose. I can do great things.
Not that I wasn’t great before. I’m just in a position now where I can do some truly capital- A Awesome shit.
The address GUARD gave me takes me through Huntsville, which looks like a pretty good-sized town, and then out into nothingness and a series of back roads and dirt trails that lead me closer and closer to the edge of a national park. I start to worry that the GPS has completely failed at its job of getting me to the base until a structure finally comes into view. It’s almost completely hidden by hills and trees, set back from a dirt path. The GPS tells me that I’ve arrived at my destination just as I stop in front of a giant wrought-iron gate topped with the words “Yellowhammer Ranch.”
It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time.
There’s no lock on the gate, which is good for me right now but also means that the place probably has shit security. As I drive over a cattle guard and onto the property, my stomach starts to clench up a little bit. This whole thing feels really weird—as if I’m trespassing on someone else’s property.
The house is one story and looks like a big log cabin.
Great. I’m attending Fugitive Camp.
I stay alert. I’m not going to do what I did at the warehouse and just barge in—though, at this point, theFBI or Mogs would have to go pretty far out of their way in order to track me to this remote location. I knock on the front door since I have no idea if I’m actually in the right place or not. When no one answers, I circle the house just to make sure there’s not some rancher out herding sheep or whatever it is people do in places like this. But there’s only overgrown fields marked off by barbed-wire fences and a barn out back that’s missing almost all of one side and is obviously empty. A big patch of grass in front of it has been flattened and burned in places, like something really big was sitting on top of it that was only recently moved. I shrug and look around, guessing that there was a tractor or something there that got hauled off.
Back on the front porch, I try the doorknob. The house is unlocked.
“Hello?” I call, but there’s no sound or movement, so I head in and find a light switch. The place looks like I’d expect a country home to look. There’s a lot of oversized furniture, mostly made out of wood. A cow skull hangs over the fireplace. A leather couch sits in front of a projector-style big-screen TV that’s probably as old as I am and I’m
And it all goes back to Sarah again. Not just becauseI promised—and want —to protect her, but because we need her to get to the other Garde. She’s our connection. But I still have no idea how to find her. I need to step my search for her up to the next level. I think about posting a message to her on TWAU but realize that the dumbest thing I could do is get her face or name out there where some assclown might see her and try to tell me where she is, only to alert other authorities. I should discuss options with GUARD. Maybe he can pull some hacker moves and break into her email account or something. Maybe he can even track her face using security cameras.
We have to find her. Not for her sake or mine, but for the world’s. So we can create a united front with the Loric.
And it would be great to have someone helping me out. In person. Someone I knew and trusted and cared for. Someone to keep me from being lost and alone in all this.
At a little drugstore just across the Alabama border, I stop to buy butterfly bandages. I try to remember a time when I didn’t have problems like taking care of gunshot wounds or running from government agencies. It wasn’t that long ago. Just a few months. A weird thing happens as I think about Friday nights under stadium lights and hanging out with my buddies after games. Usually when I do this, I wish I could go backand enjoy not knowing what’s going on in the world. But now I’m glad I have a much bigger purpose. I can do great things.
Not that I wasn’t great before. I’m just in a position now where I can do some truly capital- A Awesome shit.
The address GUARD gave me takes me through Huntsville, which looks like a pretty good-sized town, and then out into nothingness and a series of back roads and dirt trails that lead me closer and closer to the edge of a national park. I start to worry that the GPS has completely failed at its job of getting me to the base until a structure finally comes into view. It’s almost completely hidden by hills and trees, set back from a dirt path. The GPS tells me that I’ve arrived at my destination just as I stop in front of a giant wrought-iron gate topped with the words “Yellowhammer Ranch.”
It doesn’t look like anyone’s been here in a long time.
There’s no lock on the gate, which is good for me right now but also means that the place probably has shit security. As I drive over a cattle guard and onto the property, my stomach starts to clench up a little bit. This whole thing feels really weird—as if I’m trespassing on someone else’s property.
The house is one story and looks like a big log cabin.
Great. I’m attending Fugitive Camp.
I stay alert. I’m not going to do what I did at the warehouse and just barge in—though, at this point, theFBI or Mogs would have to go pretty far out of their way in order to track me to this remote location. I knock on the front door since I have no idea if I’m actually in the right place or not. When no one answers, I circle the house just to make sure there’s not some rancher out herding sheep or whatever it is people do in places like this. But there’s only overgrown fields marked off by barbed-wire fences and a barn out back that’s missing almost all of one side and is obviously empty. A big patch of grass in front of it has been flattened and burned in places, like something really big was sitting on top of it that was only recently moved. I shrug and look around, guessing that there was a tractor or something there that got hauled off.
Back on the front porch, I try the doorknob. The house is unlocked.
“Hello?” I call, but there’s no sound or movement, so I head in and find a light switch. The place looks like I’d expect a country home to look. There’s a lot of oversized furniture, mostly made out of wood. A cow skull hangs over the fireplace. A leather couch sits in front of a projector-style big-screen TV that’s probably as old as I am and I’m
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