That was a soul. A life form. One that could feel fear and pain. One that seemed to beg for its life. The Monkey Cats didn’t care; they didn’t have the capacity. But the Off Formers…
And they’d killed a defenseless mother. Countless defenseless mothers.
Blake felt sick, he turned from the scene, feeling the bite of gravel in his palms as he heaved.
The lack of bodies. Blake had assumed the Off Formers took their dead back to the ship or something, but now he realized that the Monkey Cats had been digging through them, shredding them open so they could steal their innards, and the rest must have just rotted away.
Gabriel’s heavy hand landed on his back, rubbing. “Breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth.”
“But it—it?—”
“I know,” Gabriel said, his voice grim. Blake squinted up to see his eyebrows drawn and his lips pressed together. Victoria was looking over the wall, Polaroid camera raised so she could snap pictures.
“I don’t understand,” he said as Gabriel pulled him to his chest, hugging him tight.
“Empathy hurts.” He squeezed the back of Blake’s neck. “Hurts worse when you realize the enemy has it, too.”
Blake clung to Gabriel, fingers digging into his shirt. He smelled like sweat and skin, so familiar Blake found himself slowing his breathing just to get more of it into his lungs.
“It took something,” Victoria said as she put the camera back into her bag. “I didn’t get a good look.”
“I think it was a power cell. Or a heart. It didn’t look like technology.” Blake closed his eyes and tried to remember exactly what it looked like so he could tell them later.
Once his breathing evened out, Gabriel sat back. He tilted Blake’s head back with the helmet, looking at him long and hard before he let him go.
“Do you think that’s why they’re fighting? The Monkey Cats want their hearts?”
Victoria pursed her lips. “Would make sense, I guess.”
It was their old theories, given new and horrifying life. The Off Formers were either chased here and forced to make a final stand, or they needed something Earth had. Something for their tech, and the Monkey Cats wanted it. Blake scowled in frustration. How could they have more information with fewer answers?
“Heart or no heart, far as I’m concerned, they’re trespassers.” He squeezed Blake’s shoulders. “And I’m ready to serve them an eviction notice.”
CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
Judd had two whiteboards, and the power was going to his head.
In a time when they were scrounging to find necessities, how the man managed to find multiplewhiteboards with enough markers to color code, Gabriel couldn’t even begin to guess.
The first whiteboard had been dubbedTeam Chicken Flipping.Under the header, he had information regarding Monkey Cats, Methamphetamine, the location of the Queen, and a truly horrendous drawing of what Blake had described he’d seen in the alley. Judd swore it was as accurate as he could get, but Gabriel thought it looked more like a dead spider.
They’d writtenTeam Choo-Chooon the second whiteboard. By that point, Gabriel had given up on any kind of serious name. He was asking his team to go on a victory or death mission; if they wanted to goof off, he wasn’t going to stop them.
That, and the look on Irving’s face every time he had to read them out loud was hysterical.
“We can enter the rails here,” Tommy said, pointing to a stop located outside of the city. “Alvarez and Beaumont checked it out today, it looks clear. There’s some water damage, but nothing we can’t manage. From there, we can follow the line into the city.”
Beaumont nodded. Gabriel wondered what the slouchy beanie he was wearing was made of, for it to stay on his head with all the movement. “We ran it this morning. Couple of tight places where something blew through the wall, but it’ll work.”
“I like the idea of you guys having cover,” Gabriel admitted, crossing his arms as he looked over the board.
There was still so much up in the air. He couldn’t quite feel comfortable with the plan, but it was beginning to take shape.
After they reconned the street where they thought the Queen was, it felt more real. Like a clock had been set, and now they could see their time ticking away. The scope of the mission was insane. Gabriel had never been part of something this large, with so many moving parts.
Or so much at stake.