Gods Under The Dome

7.3

《Dark Places》

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"One-zero, taking up the rear as usual."

Della strides up to me with all the confidence being the leader of a terrorist outfit has afforded her. Her steps are slow, casual to an outsider observer, but thoughtful, each weighted by precision and purpose. She doesn't take any side steps to avoid discarded cigarette butts or crumpled papers. When there's a puddle of murky, questionable substances, she splashes through it, never wavering, never deterred from getting to me in the shortest and most direct way possible.

She sees the prize, or in my case, the enemy, and barrels toward them, obstacles be damned. She did have enough explosives hanging off her to implode a government Facility, so she could damn well annihilate a side street if she deemed it a necessary risk.

Sin's silhouette disappears with the others around a bend and I wish his words would disappear too. But they'll never leave me, not until I have my answers. If he knew anything about November, I owed it to her to find out. She'd been one of us. A cockroach.

"Taking in the sights?" Della's head cranes plateward, and then at the Twins who've stepped away from the V-cafe, faces as pink as the neons overhead. They scurry away like shamed children, tails tucked between their legs. Della shrugs. "I guess if you haven't seen it a million times it might look pretty interesting."

Remembering that I had working legs and was capable enough getting away from Della, I brush past her, but the Commander's reflexes are impressive, and her grip like that of tempered steel. Before I can take another step, her hand clamps around my forearm. "Hold up. I need to talk to you, leader to leader."

I snort and contort my arm, but there was no escaping the vice gripe she'd implemented to keep me in place. "Leader of what?" I tap my feet against the pavement, to make sure she's aware of my irritation.

Della nods toward the other Liars: the twins standing beside Quint and Mars; Sin, our group's flesh and blood bulwark, walks behind them, his looming form providing ample shade from the overheads; Nol's a good five feet ahead of everyone else gaze hinged on the ground in front of him and nothing else. "Them," Della says.

I shake my head. "I'm not their leader." I start to walk and make it a point to pick up the pace. My words follow suit. "This is a democracy, Dells," the Titav Commander flinches at the mention of Izzer's little nickname. "We never sat down and took a vote. The twins are too young to make such decisions so they wouldn't be allowed, and Ma- Miss Perez over there would definitely cast a vote against me," Della snorts as if that's a given. "Sin could go either way and I wouldn't vote for myself because that'd been in bad taste and--"

Della's grasp tightens around my arm. Part of my skin pinches between her nails. She tugs and forces me to meet her head-on. "Do you always spew this much shit?"

"Only when people make asinine assumptions."

Della frowns and releases me. Her brow creases as she takes a protracted sigh and rubs her temples. "They listen to you, which is more than what some leaders can rally from their troops. Regardless of what you may think, that band of cockroaches values your opinion."

"So?" I stamp my foot as, out of the corner of my eye, I see Keran directing the few Titav into a dumpster littered off-street. Nol and the others follow, getting engulfed by a darkness out of place in such a brightly lit place. My pulse quickens. Being pulled into a dark, underpopulated area never spoke of good news for anyone. "Even if that's the truth," I glance back at Della, then at her hand around my wrist, and wrench my arm free. "Which I'm not saying it is, what do you want--"