Free CICADA: A Stone Age World Novel by ML Banner Page A

talked about. Then, tomorrow morning, I’ll send a guard to escort you both to my Observation Tower and I’ll show you what you probably won’t want to see, but you’ll need to see.
    “Thank you, Dr. Reid.”
    Westerling didn’t wait for an answer. He walked past Carrington toward the door they had come in.
    Before he left, Carrington looked back at the other room and wondered what it was. A security guard stationed in front of the room’s entrance looked up at him, a steady contact that seemed to say that he could read Carrington’s mind. The guard’s look was telling him, “Don’t even try it.”

    When Melanie opened the apartment door, she wasn’t exactly sure what she expected to find. She wanted to believe what Gufstafson told her, that she and Carr would be reunited. But she didn’t really expect it to happen, assuming the worst instead: it was all a mistake; they found out what she was planning and changed their minds; she was delusional and imagined the whole thing. She became sure that they wouldn’t allow Carr and her to be together.
    So when the door swung wide to reveal Carrington sitting casually on their sofa in their small living room, working on some project—he was always tinkering with something—it was almost a complete surprise. She dropped the remains of her sack lunch in the entry. “Carr! My God, is that really you?” In just a few long strides, she closed the gap and jumped on top of him.
    “You’re… crushing… me.” He smiled up at her and she backed off of him, sliding onto the couch. “Who did you think it would be in our home?” he asked.
    “Is that what this is, our home?”
    He dropped the two wires he was carefully holding and looked at her. “Melanie Sinclaire-Reid, our home is wherever we are together.”
    “Did you get told the same line I did?”
    “You mean if we behave ourselves, we are allowed to stay here, but if we don’t want to stay, we can leave of our own volition, and if we break the rules we’re out? Then yes, I was told pretty much the same thing.”
    “Do you believe it?” If he did, perhaps she could, too.
    “I figured we probably don’t have a choice. But, I guess we’ll find out a little more tomorrow.”
    “Yeah, we get to visit his palace in the sky and see for ourselves how bad it is out there.” Melanie looked down. She wasn’t sure what to believe anymore. The only things she was sure of were that she loved him and she’d do anything for him.
    She looked up and saw that he had scribbled a note and pushed it her way. It read “Bugged?”
    She lifted her shoulders as if to say, “I don’t know.” Then she grabbed the pencil and added “So we better be careful.”
    He nodded.
    “What’re you building?” she scribbled.
    He grabbed the note and scribbled on the back, pushing it back to her.
    She flipped it over. “A bomb!”

10.
Outside of Cicada
     
     
    Max and Tom were almost invisible, walking silently, holding close to the shadows; no easy task, as the shadows constantly danced, being coaxed away by their malicious collaborators, the fiery aurora-filled skies above.
    They had a name now and a general location. The Squatts called him Club because he carried a giant club with spikes on its end built to inflict maximum injury on its intended victims. Max pulled this information from an unwilling man who would probably never recover the use of his fingers after the interrogation. A well-placed gun butt to the middle of his hand and the fear of death was all it took before the fellow gave up Club’s name and tree of residence. It was a lean-to in the woods with a British flag tied to a tree above it.
    They entered the canopy of the thinning pine forest, leaving their shadows behind and finding easy cover in its darkness. The forest floor was thick with dead pine needles, a deep shag carpet of brittle spines crunching under their boots, making their progress less silent. Most of those who lived in the woods—hundreds of