28. Journey

Lara.

Lara was hungry. Hungry and tired. She licked her dry lips and opened her eyes, the steady rumble of the car's engine caressed her into consciousness. She yawned, stretched, and rubbed her eyes. Her tightly buttoned shirt was uncomfortable – unnatural – on her slim frame. She'd put on weight ever since she'd stopped shooting, but putting on pounds wasn't her goal. Making sure the promise she made to Kira still stood was her goal.

Her goal was making her uncomfortable.

She missed the days she spent lounging on her brother's couch, smoking until the sun rolled by and the moon came up. She missed going into obscenely hidden Bot run bars, extremely illegal, to shoot up whatever was there with whoever was willing to share. She admitted that – she missed her old life. But her new life gave her substance. A purpose. She woke up in the morning in a plush apartment, all paid for with her own money, and smiled at herself in a mirror bigger than her old bedroom.

A forced smile. A smile nonetheless.

"Miss?" one of her armed bodyguards said. "Are you alright?"

She nodded her response, snapped open a bottle of water, and drained the small container. That was better, she could focus now. She could focus on the documents piled up in front of her, the absurdly slim laptops, all of them swaying with the car's turns.

She turned her eyes to the window instead. Work could wait. She hadn't been out of the Gray in years, and now was a better time than any other to look outside the window.

Broken down city after broken down city. Relics. Soon to be bulldozed and rebuilt, all led by her boss. She didn't really care either way. She could barely keep up in some meetings, but she pushed on. She hated the looks people like Kingston gave her. Turning their noses up at her, muttering under their breaths whenever she walked past. Being out of the Gray and away from the rest of the board was a nearly as good feeling as the pulse of a drug pumping through her body.

She rubbed her forearm and shook away the thought.

The occasional straggler would move between the shadows of buildings slowly collapsing into themselves. Skinny bodies draped in rags, sometimes with rickety and rusty bionic replacements in place of legs and arms. An old man with the side of his chest exposed to the elements stared at her with pale gray eyes, the mechanical lung pulsing.

A Skin would be spotted by one of her bodyguards lying out on the road. Long dead. Eaten away by rats and the homeless. By the biting sun and the harsh winds. Hastily stitched on faces hung limp off of bleached skulls, their thread loose and showing Lara the odd rat nibbling on an eye ball.

She hadn't done anything in the first war. She'd sat in her apartment with her brother and watched on – scared and glued to the shaky news station showing the chaos spreading through the city. The pictures of her friends risking their lives. Of Dan falling off of the bridge. That had pushed her here, it had pushed her to doing more than just going clean. She couldn't let Kira go through this alone. She couldn't be just another by stander whilst her friends made sure people like her lived comfortably. She'd worked hard and she deserved everything in front of her.

But now she wished otherwise. Work was hard, and it definitely wasn't for her. But she'd continue working hard to prove the board wrong. To prove that she's the right choice for the job. So hard that she'd trump all of them and make her brother and Kira proud.

"Holy shit," she muttered, shielding her eyes from the sun coming through her window. She peered through it and stared at an old building. A manor. Just like Hera's old one. "Stop."

"Ma'am, we need to get to the East Coa-"

"They can wait." Lara undid her belt and pressed against the window. The manor was an exact replica. Old fashioned with large windows and one large door. Her inquisitiveness got the better of her and she repeated, "I said stop the car. I'll explain that we got lost or whatever."

A light grumble from her driver and the convoy of cars came to a slow stop.

She stepped out of the car and into the searing heat. "Where are we?"

"On the outskirts of Jamestown," her bodyguard – she called him Samson because of his size – answered. "'Bout a few days from the East Coast," he shifted his rifle, "Practically the East Coast."

"This ain't a safe place for us to stop, ma'am," another body guard said, clambering out of the SUV behind hers. "People round these parts don't like us too much."

"You have guns for a reason," Lara said, "Use 'em if you have to."

She started forward, the complaints from the convoy were hushed and pressed, as constant as the hot breeze running through her shirt. She pulled at her collar to let air into it and stepped around a body. A large man's body with his head blown clean off. The smell was sour and stomach twisting, but nothing compared to the worst parts of the Gray two years ago.

Samson nudged the body with the tip of his boot. He shook his bald head and tsked. "Nomad. Mighty big one at that." He crouched and examined the remains of the head. "Expert shot." He lifted his dark eyes and searched the decrepit and worn down buildings around the pair, his eyes came to a stop when he spotted a short building. "'Bout there."

Lara didn't really care about the military mumbo jumbo. She wanted to see the manor. She'd never had the chance to see the real one in person, only from afar. If this was an exact replica, no, if this was the original judging by how worn down the stone work was, then she couldn't pass up the chance.

Samson put a hand out in front of her before she could step forward. "I'll go first."

She shrugged. "Suit yourself."

He shouldered his rifle and took a cautionary step forward, Lara waited and took two. It was agonizingly slow. So slow the bubble of anticipation in her stomach popped after a minute of Samson searching the empty manor's windows. She sidestepped him and started up the steps.

The doors swung open, creaking loudly on their hinges, and a woman stepped through. She raised her rifle and Samson tackled Lara, smacking her against the rough steps. The gun's bark was sharp. Sharper and more jarring than any other gun Kira had ever shown her.

"Take another step and it won't be just a warning shot that skims by your head," the woman growled. "Who are you? What're you doing here?" Demands, not questions.

Lara heaved her way out of Samson's protective arm. She wasn't a fighter. She wasn't much of a talker, but she'd talk if she had to. She just wanted to see the manor. Nothing else. Something to make this dreary trip better. Something to get her mind off of the drugs she missed oh-so-much.

"I'm Lara Harrington." She hated using her last name, but Kira forced her to. To get comfortable with herself or something along those lines.

"And?"

"And I'm here to see this place." She gestured towards the manor. "Nothing else."

"Then why do you have a convoy of soldiers?" The rifle stared at Lara. She doubted Samson's tense legs would push her out of the way fast enough this time.

"The same reason you have a gun."

"I use it to kill people, not just to wave around, kid."

"Well, they use theirs to kill sometimes. But all I'm here to see is the house."

The woman – with one blue eye – glanced at the convoy of black clad men and women. Then back to Lara. "Get on your merry way. I don't do count downs. Haul ass before I put a bullet in you."

She sounds just like Hera, Lara thought. "Look, man. I'm just here to see….no fucking way."

Two girls had walked up behind the woman. Two girls and a guy she didn't recognize. A girl with red hair and a worn leather eye patch over her right eye with a burn mark peaking just above it. A girl with blonde hair, shaved short on one side. No way. A few of her bodyguards had thought they had died out here. Starvation, skin farmers, or a stray gang would have been it. No communication for weeks. And here they were.

Runt tentatively walked down the steps, gingerly like the steps would shatter, and stopped in front of Lara.

Lara couldn't help but smile. "What're you guys doing out here? What happened to finding the Nomads? The fighting in the Gray must have picked up by now."

We got side tracked, Runt signed.

"That and we found the Nomads." Cleo stepped up next to Runt. She jerked her chin at the woman with the riddle, still glaring down at Lara. "She's their top dog."

"No shit," Lara muttered. She cleared her throat and looked up at the woman. "Looks like we got off to a bad start."

"You work for Hera." The shadows around the buildings seemed to shift. "What's going on in the Gray?" The gun was still pointed at Lara.

She shrugged, it wasn't private information. The entire country would know that there was fighting in the West Coast again. "Last I was there Hera and this guy were going to the Island to get Grace out of there. Last I heard was that the Island was on fire as well."

"Fire." Cleo whistled. "Crazy bitch really did it."

"Private," Samson barked. "Do not disrespect your LC."

Cleo rolled her eyes and muttered, "Yeah, yeah. I apologize."

"What guy?" the woman asked, rifle still pointed. "Sergeant Ryan? Major Anders?"

Lara shook her head and thought for a while. "Hamlin? Harrison?" Years of drug use had shattered a lot of her memory, it was getting better, but still not completely there. But a thought tugged and she snapped her fingers. "Hunter. Yeah, that was his name."

Now the gun in her hands wavered. "Hunter? Blonde? Green eyes?"

Lara shook her head and tried to remember again. It was giving her a headache doing this in the blazing sun. "I think they were gray."

"His contacts," the woman mumbled. She laughed to herself and the rifle finally lowered. A wide smile spread across her lips. She'd be beautiful, but her scowl a few minutes ago had shown Lara anything but. "How was he?"

That was too much of a reach for Lara to remember. She decided to lie, the ship had probably set sail on her seeing the manor. And she needed to get to the East Coast anyway. Work, so bland and on constantly her case. "He was fine."

"Fine," she repeated, smiling and shaking her head. "Fine. Perfect."

"We need to get to the Gray," Cleo cut in, slashing away the woman's coos. "Like, soon. Even if we're just the cleanup crew. How about it, sis?" She nudged Runt.

Runt's glassy wide eyed expression snapped off and she nodded. Yes, she signed. We need to.

Lara jerked her thumb back to her convoy. "You can take on of ours."

The bodyguards didn't like that suggestion, judging by their shallow roar of muttering disapproval.

"Oh calm down. Some of those cars are mostly empty. We can double up." She turned to Samson. "Right?"

He flexed his hard jaw. "Right."

"It's more than just three of us," Cleo said.

The small guy with glasses clipped up, "Four of us," he corrected.

"The Nomads can make their way on foot," the woman said. "Thank you for your generosity."

"No biggie." Lara checked her watch, forty minutes off schedule. If she was in the Gray Hera would have come down on her. "So I guess I gotta go. Good luck you guys." She started towards her SUV with Samson in wary toe, eyeing the shadows filled with Nomads. Skinny, jumpy, and blood thirsty Nomads.

Another thought tugged at her. From deep down and far away. Something Hunter had said. If he was telling the truth, then Runt would want to hear it. She would need to hear it. She'd seen how many times she'd cried in Kira's apartment in the night. Silently. Wheezing through those small wires on her lips. But she was a soldier now, if she found out that Dan was back it might throw her off.

No. Lara decided not to tell Runt. She opened her door and slid into the warm darkness of the SUV. She'd let Runt find out by herself if Hunter was telling the truth.

She rubbed the tense muscles in the back of her neck as the car started forward. She'd kill for something to smoke right now, but instead, she picked up another water bottle and downed it. Just a bit longer and Hera's name was going to be etched into the history books. And Lara would be included in that history book.

"The woman who united a country," she muttered to herself, smiling at her words. That line gave her a feeling she had longed for. A feeling of piece and elation. Of a racing heart and a smile on her face. Better than any drug could give her. She was going to help Hera build the country back into what it should be.

She'd prove everyone on the board wrong.