The Final Push

Chapter 15: The Outside

~Sera~

The Outside

We had been trekking through the dying forest for over two hours and I was ready to explode. Breccan would not shut up. He clearly didn't get the message that I did not want to talk. He didn't seem to mind my lack of conversation because he kept talking. I wasn't even sure if he was talking to me or to himself. Either way, his mindless drone was driving me crazy. Before the attack, I might have talked with him but now, I didn't want anything to do with him.

We reached the top of a large hill and I stopped for a moment. Breccan didn't notice and ran right into me.

"Hey, watch it!" I snapped.

He looked at me with wide eyes, "She speaks!" I gave him a lethal look and he held up his hands. "Okay, sorry," he attempted a smile. I rolled my eyes and pulled the map out of my jacket pocket. I unfolded it carefully and opened it all the way. We were a few miles outside of the Wings settlement and pretty soon we would come to a cross road. Each path led to a key so it didn't really matter which way we went.

"Alright, we're going left," I announced.

"Mmm you don't want to do that," Breccan was re-lacing his shoe.

"Oh yeah? And why's that?" I taunted.

"Because The Speed already have the key from that path," he shrugged. "They don't have the key from the path on the right."

"Exactly how many keys do The Speed have?" I asked.

He rubbed his chin, "Well, with the one from your settlement it would be three."

"Well, that's great. All we need to do is get to the other two keys, steal the last three from The Speed and then get to Paradise," I folded the map back up and put it in my coat pocket.

Breccan snorted, "You say it like it's going to be easy."

"It will be," I started walking again.

"Oh? What makes you so sure?" he followed me.

I turned around and glanced at him, "It's going to be easy because the man who killed my brother is there."

"Oh... Well, Tristen really isn't that bad," Breccan was walking beside me now.

"You knew him?" my voice was shrill.

"Yeah I did, he was commander of the military," he explained.

"Makes sense that such a heartless guy would command The Speed's military."

"He's not heartless, he's just doing his job," he said.

"Are you defending him?" I fisted my hands.

"I'm not defending his actions, Sera; I think what he did to Caiden was cruel and uncalled for," Breccan sighed. "But I am defending the man he is. He's a nice guy that just made some bad decisions."

"You have no idea how stupid that sounds," I cracked my knuckles. "A person is decided by the choices that they make. He made very bad decisions so he is a very bad person."

"Perhaps he is in your mind, but in the minds of The Speed he is their hero for leading them to the next key," he stepped off of the hill and stepped up to where the road diverged.

"Well, my mind is all that I care about," I pushed past him and onto the path on the right.

After that, we fell into silence. For the first time in the whole trip, he wasn't talking. It was refreshing to have some peace and quiet. The only sound around us was the soft crackling of our feet on gravel. I was enjoying the peace, but pretty soon questions started swirling around in my head.