We Make Mayhem [boyxboy]

Chapter Forty

I had a few hours' worth of bots left in my blood. There was no chance that I was going to take another dose.   

I asked the bots to rebuild Noah's treehouse and make up a banquet. I needed to start my escape attempt with as full a belly as I could. I gorged on roast beef, broccoli, and dense sourdough bread, all the while hoping that in twenty-four hours, I wouldn't be there doing the same thing after failing to get off this damn island.

The only plan I had was to build a massive fire and hope it attracted the attention of a plane or satellite or someone on the mainland. I didn't know how far the island was from land—my attempt to get the bots to create a map didn't work—but there were a lot of trees. Surely a good portion of them being on fire would make a blip on someone's radar.

When my dose ran out, everything dissolved into nothingness. The treehouse, the food, everything melted down until I was left standing on the grass in the meadow, alone. Helpless. Cold. Night was starting to fall. The fire would warm me up plenty, I reasoned.

There were matches in an emergency kit I found in the shack. I struck a match, lit the kindling I had gathered, and very soon, I had a sizeable fire that spread from my pile of branches to the nearest fir tree. Within ten minutes it had spread to the meadow's grass. I was running toward the beach, stumbling over rocks, a wall of heat behind me.

I stopped at the shack and swiped as many vials of nanobot liquid as I could carry—collateral.

As I stood on the rocky beach, watching as the flames reach for the sky, I realized I may have fucked myself over. Though the sky was black with smoke and the fire was so bright I had to shield my eyes, the chance anyone would see it was so small. My backup shelter, the shack, was already engulfed in flames. The roof caved in with a whoosh of burning gas. Any vegetation I could have eaten was also being destroyed.

If my plan didn't work, I'd be stranded on a desolate hunk of rock with nothing but literal scorched earth.

Near the water, where the fire's unbearable heat and the ocean's frigid wind mixed, it was just about the perfect temperature, so I sat on a rock and watched the world burn. Thinking about anything other than the fire's destructive beauty was too painful. All I let myself mourn was my lack of marshmallows.

I eventually closed my eyes. The fire still danced through my eyelids. The heat made my face itch. I wanted to sleep, but where? The beach's rocks, where a rising tide might soak me to the bone in the night? Nearer to the fire, where I might wake up with singed-off eyelashes as a best-case scenario? Maybe I could just pull my knees up to my chest and sleep sitting up on this rock...

There was suddenly a sound right in front of me, above the roaring and cracking of the fire—the sound of something heavy settling down on the rocky beach. I opened my eyes.

Noah's Edison was touching down on the beach.

I scrambled to my feet and ran over the rocks toward it. There was no one inside, but the driver's side door popped open as I approached. I got inside and the seat adjusted to my body.

"Welcome, Riley Axford," Simone purred.

"Did Noah send you to find me?"

"Objective issued by primary driver Noah Lord: locate and retrieve primary driver Riley Axford. Next objective: chart course to 2613 Solarii star system in pursuit of primary driver Noah Lord."

Holy shit—the Mass must be taking him to his home star system. This car was going to blast me into space to follow him. To rescue him.

I would do it. No question, I would do it. But I had to do something else, first.