Primal Saga Volume 1: The Queen of Silence

Chapter 15: A Moment's Respite

Battered and bruised, Miyabi and I made our way up the narrow switchbacks to the receiver tower. I checked the ammunition in the revolver. Only one round remained in the five-chambered cylinder. Better save it for an emergency. I spun the cylinder. So the hammer was resting on the empty chamber next to the loaded one. I put the revolver in my pocket. I inspected the knife which unfortunately didn't have a proper shieth. I tore off one of my sleeves at the shoulder; it was already falling off anyway. I was going to wrap the blade, but then I noticed a deep gash in Miyabi's side.

"Are you going to wrap that?" I asked her.

She glanced at the bloody hole in the side of her once white school uniform top. "It will be fine," she insisted.

"Are you sure? I can use thi-"

"It's fine." She said sternly.

"Ok." Sheesh what's wrong with her?

I wrapped the blade of the knife and then tied it to my belt. Not much of sheath but it will have to do.

We reached the top of the switchbacks and continued down a short trail till we reached the tower. The small complex was surrounded by a fence but the gate was swinging free on its hinges, creaking in the wind. The building's cracked windows were covered in vines. The place looked like it hadn't been used in years.

"Oh no," Miyabi said. "I was afraid this would be the case."

"W-what? What is it?"

We walked through the gate and approached the structure. The pterosaurs perched on the tower's struts gave us an unwelcoming screech. There were dozens more of them circling the tower looking for good places to land. "This tower was maintained by the town of Avalona which means Amber outpost shouldn't be too far from here," Miyabi.  "I used to live in Avalona. When the town collapsed everything the town maintained was abandoned. Countermeasure to prevent the spread of disease. Even though Avalona is on an island, the government assumed anything associated with it potentially could cause the disease to spread to the other towns."

"Are we at risk just being here?" Miyabi shook her head. "No, it was twelve years ago. They only took such dramatic measures back then because if the disease spread it could have easily wiped out the other towns. They didn't want to take the risk."

I looked at Miyabi with prying eyes. She simply looked away. She let out a long sigh. "Come on. We can still search the building for things we can use."

The door fell off its hinges with little to no resistance. We stepped inside the little shack and looked around. The whole place was a mess. Vines had already begun to creep in through every crack in the wall and the radio equipment was too overgrown to be of any use to us. The jungle wasted no time to begin erasing what man has left behind. We searched the cabinets, but the only things we found that we could use were an old pot, a rutsack, and a plasma battery cell from one of the broken panels.

I eyed the plasma battery. "I have an idea," I said.

Miyabi cocked her head.

"The tower receives signals from the dinosaur's tags and sends them to the tracking devices right?"

"Yes, but we don't have any way to send a signal all the equipment is destroyed."

"Oh yes we do," I said holding up my Ace's terminal. The bounty hunters seemed to have missed it when theyy searched me and at the time I don't blame them. It's useless now that Ace is gone or maybe not. "I can transmit a signal back to Laurensia. I don't know if it will work but it's worth a try."

Miyabi nodded. "Try to be quick though. I have a feeling that masked goon is no quitter and will be back again."

I began to work on the wires from one of the control boards. I used the fusion lighter to make tiny welds from my terminal's board to the output to the tower. Lastly, I attached the plasma cell to amplify the signal. On the small screen, I searched for Ace's frequency until-