Free The Weapon (The Hourglass Series Book 2) by Casey Donaldson Page B

doing
everything in his power to get the loser tag to stick.
    “Yeah
I’m about as happy about this as you are,” he replied. He did, Sarah noticed,
look genuinely upset. “But you will do every, god, damn, thing I say out there,
or you will get all of us killed. Understood?”
    “What
about Hutch?” asked Gillie. The others perked up at this. They would all rather
have Hutch as their leader than Dylan. They could trust Hutch. Dylan was likely
to leave them in a ditch as bait.
    Dylan
looked murderous but Hutch intervened. “I have the same amount of training as
you guys, Gillie,” he said. “Dylan’s, well, Dylan, but at least he’s been
trained.”
    “That’s
right,” said Dylan, straightening up a little. “So, understood?” he repeated
forcibly.
    They
nodded their heads dejectedly. Who were they kidding? Dylan was the best hope
they had. And if he was leading them, then he relied on them as much as they
relied on him to get out alive.
    “So,”
said Sarah, “do you know anything about what’s going on over there?”
    “Not
yet,” said Dylan. He stood up, gave them one more look, and then walked away to
join his friends in a different carriage.
    Well,
thought Sarah, this is just great.
     

Chapter Sixteen
     
    They
arrived at Desmark late in the evening. They were hustled off the transporter
to find older, more experienced soldiers lining the way and ushering them towards
a large hanger. It was like they were expecting people to run. Just inside the
entrance of the hanger were two men sitting at a fold-away table. Sarah watched
as the teams in front of them were marked off against a list and waved forward.
Dylan appeared out of nowhere and joined their team. Apparently he had been
told what to expect, because he appeared quite comfortable and competent when
he reported them as “Team 32 from Delta compound, present and accounted.” The
man at the desk, who looked like he hadn’t slept in days, simply grunted and
waved them through after a quick head count. The hanger was crammed full of
stretcher beds. Most of these had soldiers lounging on them, some grouped
around a particular bed where a card game was happening. Predictably, the
camp-beds against the walls, which had the most privacy, where all taken. This
left them with the beds smack-bam in the middle. Dylan dumped his bag down.
    “Find
a bed, go to sleep,” he said, looking wired.
    “What?”
asked Gillie, his voice raising an octave, “you’ve got to be-”
    He
was cut off when Dylan reached across and grabbed him by the front of his
shirt, pulling him forward viciously. They were now almost nose-to-nose.
“Don’t,” he snarled, “just don’t. I don’t like this any more than you losers
do, and I know only a bit more. You do what I friggin tell you to do, understand?”
    For
a half second Sarah thought that Gillie was going to fight back, but then he
lowered his gaze and nodded.
    “Good,”
said Dylan, letting go of Gillie’s shirt and thrusting him back in the same
movement.
    Sarah
slumped down onto her own bed, feeling defeated, like she was the one Dylan had
grabbed, and not Gillie. Finn collapsed onto the bed next to hers. Sarah didn’t
bother trying to say anything to him. He had been in a terrible mood all day
and she was sure he was still pissed off at her. It was up to him to bring
himself out of his own funk. Boulder was already sitting on a bed next to Finn,
his expression unreadable as he watched the people in the room. If it wasn’t
for the way he kept on nervously rubbing his hands against each other Sarah
would have almost thought that he was bored. Both Jaz and Hutch were doing
their best to remain stoic, although both their faces were drawn. Jaz kept on
scanning the room intermittently. Sarah thought she remembered something about
Jaz having an older brother in the army stationed somewhere around here, but
she couldn’t muster the effort to ask if that was who Jaz was searching for.
Gillie was repeatedly