Evolution - The Oasis Project Book 3

Twenty - Ira

I sat in the office with Linkin, a laptop with video feed on standby in front of me while she typed away to my right. The desk wasn't big enough for me to lean my elbows on it, so I crossed my arms and leaned back against the wooden chair. The new gun that Stuart had given me as a Valentine's gift rested in my lap. It was a little heavier than what I was used to, but it wouldn't leave my side from now on.

"This doesn't interfere with the farm surveillance, does it?" I pointed to the screen as an afterthought.

"You can just do this." Linkin showed me how to switch between the feeds. "Anyway, we have alarms for if anyone comes remotely near."

I let out a whoosh of breath, tapping impatiently on the laptop. The headcams were sorted by everyone's original rank from before. Yulian first, then Four, Mato, and Anaba. Then it was the frames from the backup team, which I wasn't familiar with. I licked my lips and opened up my phone, texting to Nate, So ready for the livestream.

Who's more excited, you or Yulian? he replied.

I'm just fucking terrified but don't tell anyone that.

They'll be good.

Tell them that.

"Ira," Linkin interrupted the silence. "Anywhere they should avoid?"

"Four would know better than me," I admitted.

"She's the one asking. There's months of new things she could've missed. You're the only one who made it out of there."

I thought of my teammate from China, Keshav, and the smell of burning flesh the last time I was with him. I wondered if there was any way that he or Yulian's Russian friend would have survived Four's grenade. "No, I don't remember any blindspots, hidden dangers or anything. Sorry." It only made me more nervous.

"That's fine. That's a good thing."

"If you say so," I said, suddenly feeling cold. I ducked out of the room to fetch a light blanket, which earned me a strange look from Linkin when I returned. "Am I getting comms?"

"No."

"Why?" It ticked me off.

"Because you'll distract Yulian, and Yulian needs you to shut up right now," Linkin fired back. She paused and took a deep breath. "Sorry. We both need to calm down. It's not going to help anybody."

I pulled my legs into a lotus position. "Now you can't complain. I look a thousand percent zen."

This made her laugh, but our conversation ended abruptly when the video feed started to move. The team gave each other the thumbs up, and Yulian waved hello to Mato's video camera. His usual grin was missing, but understandably so. Linkin and I had our eyes glued to the laptop screen, watching as they checked their gear and headed outside. The cameras activated night vision in the dark as they climbed into a van.

"We see you," Linkin told the China team like a weather broadcaster. "Looking good, boys and girls. Happy Valentine's Day. Looking forward to the good news."

I found Linkin's tone of voice so funny that I gave her a light round of applause. "You know, these days you're just full of surprises-"

A shrill, whooping alarm rang through the farmhouse. Before I knew it, my new gun was raised at the door.

"Shit!" Linkin exclaimed, standing up and clicking furiously on her laptop. "Okay, tech team, I'm only with you right now. We got something on our end, maybe a technical difficulty. Don't let them freak out. I'll be here if you need me."

I heard people running across the house and up the stairs. Linkin hissed at me to go, and switched to the security camera feed. A black Toyota SUV was driving down the road that could only lead to our farm, its high-beam lights blinding the camera enough to obscure the identities of the intruders. I ran out into the hallway and grabbed a rifle and a radio from the wall, joining Trevor and Alessia at the second-floor windows. We set up our sniper positions as fast as we could and I squinted at the crosshairs, listening to the sound of my blood pumping.

"Ira, do you have a visual?" To my surprise, it was Stuart and not Thierry first asking for updates through radio.

"Not yet," I replied. "Linkin and I only caught them on Camera 1 a minute ago, so they'd be a few miles away. Single SUV, as far as I could tell."

"Haven't seen another one yet," Linkin confirmed.

"He is fucking crazy," Thierry muttered under his breath.

When I saw the headlights closing in from the distance, I gritted my teeth and followed every winding movement with my rifle. This had to be Asmar. After playing hard to get for a month, he somehow found us here and had the nerve to come in a single car.

A few yards from the farm's driveway, the SUV stopped and switched off its engine and lights. A tall man stepped out of the car and slammed the door shut. Trevor nudged me with his monkey tail and passed me some binoculars.

"He looks like an Asmar, everybody," I spoke into the radio, and Linkin quickly confirmed his identity. "Anybody want to talk to him?"

"He's alone?" Alessia asked in disbelief.

I squinted through the binoculars again and tried to peek behind the windshield of the car. There was not another head in sight. "Seems like it."

"Take out the garbage, Eagle," Thierry said, sounding annoyed. The others chimed in, saying that there was no point in questioning Asmar. I took aim, smiling as I watched him edge closer to the house with a shotgun in front of him. He wasn't like anyone I'd ever seen: he looked like a reckless maniac, trying to take down a group of militarized mutants on his own.

I squeezed the trigger and listened to the echo of the shot as the recoil shook my shoulder. Asmar fell in a heap, still a safe distance from the farm, with a dark hole in his forehead. Animals began screeching, and I sighed deeply.

"Done." I packed up my rifle and returned it to its corner. "I'm going to check the car."

"I'm going with you," Stuart said when I reached the bottom of the stairs, pulling on some night vision goggles. I nodded as he held the front door open, the desert night hitting us with a very cold blast of dry air. "There's something strange about this."

He was right. About a minute after we made our way into the open, I caught two figures walking towards us with their empty hands high in the air. One was blonde, the other was brunette and had unsteady feet.

"Oh no, no, no, no," Stuart muttered as we raised our guns. "Not today."

It only clicked for me when I heard one of them call out, "Please don't shoot us, Ira!" It was the voice that drilled me when I was back in Hainan. Of course she'd know that I'd be the one coming out in the night, with the sharp night vision and all. "We're not with Oasis anymore."

"Get on the ground!" I ordered. The shorter one pretty much collapsed.

"We ran away from them." Doctor Nita Strand was less confident now. "I broke us out. We have been looking for you for so long now. If you want us to go, we'll go, but please just give us some water. Celestia's unwell."