Make Your Move

Chapter 4- Filling in the Blanks

“What do you care about privacy?” The woman broke out of her reverie to question. “You’re a hacker.”

“I’m a complicated person,” I start to pace lightly and look over to see Matt grinning wildly, liking my take charge attitude and I was liking it to. “Why do you want it?”

“The Reapers have been taking out our bases one by one,” The woman said shaking her head as if to shake off the horrors of the things she had seen. “We’re dwindling and we can’t seem to beat them.”

“That doesn’t answer my question,” Actually it answered a few more, like what the Reapers were doing, and who they were affecting.

“If we get EHID, we can find their bases, bug them, monitor them,” The woman rambled on.

“And what, see if they like CSI or NCIS better?” I was determined to never use EHID again unless it was under dire circumstances and this didn’t really seem that dire.

Yes the Reapers were a huge threat, yes they needed to be dealt with, yes they were probably incredibly dangerous from what I’ve seen and heard. However, that didn’t mean my little device was going to magically fix everything by finding old police reports and files that connected them to anything.

“We need help,” Her voice broke. “They’re almost done with us, then they’ll go after you and then who knows what they’ll do.”

I paused, took a few steps and let the ideas of what could be done roll over in my head carefully dissecting what we could do. It was a far cry from the impulsive me who had just decided to act on things whenever I cared to. Last time I used an impulse decision I woke up in a coffin a few months later in a different country.

“You’ll stay here,” I heard murmuring from my side and quickly went to quiet it. “We need to know more about the Reapers, how they attack, especially if they’re going to be coming after us next. We need to be ready.”

Thankfully my reasoning seemed to calm them and I was thankful that they would let me back into a leadership position after my time away.

“You either accept my offer or you leave,” I continued towards the other group who looked cautious as if wondering if this was a trap. “You will get nothing else.”

“We accept your offer,” The woman replied after a few moments of silence.

A group of the Guardians decided to lead them through the building to most likely house them in one of the monitored rooms. It wasn’t determined if we could trust them or not, but one wrong move and they would be toast.

“So,” I dragged the word out. “Anyone feel like filling me in?”

Most of them looked uncomfortable and wore the expressions that reminded me of a kid getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar. I wasn’t supposed to know about the Reapers, I wasn’t supposed to know the danger we were in, but I was tired of being out of the loop and they were just going to have to suck it up.

“Pay up,” I saw Maria hold out a hand and ten different people coming up to her and handing her money. She skipped over to me counting the bills in her hand and giving me a megawatt smile. Wasn’t she supposed to be the innocent one?

“Do I wanna know?” I ask as she leads me out of the room and down a hallway.

“We all made bets about when you were going to find out about the Reapers,” Maria pocketed the money. “Matt said you’d figure it out before Valentine’s day, I thought you might need a few more days to ease back in.”

I laughed and shook my head at her and briefly wondered what times the others bet I was going to find out about all of this. I can’t imagine my parents betting and L.J seemed the most determined to keep me in the dark about all of this. Iris, however, would probably be the biggest better out of all of them and wondered how long she thought it would take me to find everything out.