Vanguard | Post-Apocalyptic YA

Part 24: Here to Stay

Shit. "What do you plan to do with us?" I ask with rising anxiety as my heartbeat accelerates. I'm now standing behind the glass wall with Nelly beside me, watching Lamer close the door on us. Once it's locked, we're at his mercy. If he's gone to so much trouble to make sure that I—and now we—arrive undetected, who knows what he's willing to do to keep it that way.

He laughs. "I'm not going to off you, kid, if that's what you're worried about," he says, addressing me the most informally he ever has done. I guess I've lost the privilege of respect, too.

While I'm glad we got it cleared up that we won't be dying any time soon, it leaves few other options. Imagining myself locked in this twelve-by-twelve room for the next sixty years also isn't my idea of a wholesome future. "What then?" I ask, laying my palms on the glass.

Lamer points up. "Not what. Where."

"You're sending us back to the surface?" I ask, meeting his eyes. They're unblinking and deadly serious.

He nods.

"But we can all go," I say, circling back around to why I brought Nelly back with me in the first place. "There are people there. Healthy ones who've made a life among the ruin." I pull the girl from behind me to the front. "Like her, see?"

Nelly shakes off my hold. "Hey. I'm not a prop."

"Sorry," I mutter before turning my attention back to Lamer. He's staring at me with his arms crossed. "Anyway. Those people up there know about Vanguard. If you don't go to them, they might try to come here."

I wasn't planning on revealing that last part just yet, but at this point, I need to pull out every argument I can. Although I would have expected a gamut of reactions from the commander—surprise, worry, contemplation—his coy smile definitely isn't one of them.

"I'd like to see them try," he says from behind the self-satisfied smirk. "What are they going to do? Free dive down?"

"You're not surprised?" I ask, astonished at his response.

"By what?"

"By any of this." I shake my head. "That it's safe above ground. That there are survivors up there. That they know about us."

Uncrossing his arms, Lamer steps to the glass. "No," he says.

Before I can respond, a hand pushes against my shoulder and shoves me aside.

"You knew we were up there probably struggling to stay alive and you didn't send us help for over twenty years?" Nelly yells at Lamer and for a brief moment, I'm glad for the glass separating them. If it weren't there, she'd be strangling his throat by now.

The commander, however, is unfazed. "It wasn't my decision for the bulk of that time, but had it been, I wouldn't have acted any differently, no," he says.

Nelly turns toward me. "For the greater good, right?"

This recall to our argument back at the lighthouse is like a knife to my heart, but Lamer takes no such offense. "Exactly," he says before backing away. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to clean up your tracks and get things ready for your departure. Don't get too comfortable."

He's almost out the exterior door when I call after him. "You know that Ellen's still alive too, right? You're willing to keep lying to my dad and have him think he will never see either of us again?"

Lamer stops and turns. "I feel for you, Will, I really do. But we can't lose our best engineer. Darren has made sacrifices before. He'll get over his grief soon enough," he says before leaving.