𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐋𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐎𝐅 𝐔𝐒..
In which Dr. Wendy Larsen goes to spend her holiday in America with her long-distance boyfriend, Pete Russell, but her birthday celebration turns into a quest of survival with unexpectedly long-term commitmen...
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📻 — CHAPTER SEVEN .. ' humanity's bane '
UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO. NO FIREFLIES left to tell a tale of their incompetence, their mindless, desperate cruelty and their inability to accept just how in over their heads they truly were at the time. The walls try as they might to speak of the tragedies within them, but there is only so much recorders and journals can do.
"You do this often?" Joel inquired, tightening his grasp on the rope he tied for a lasso. Beside him, Pete positioned for sniping with one monkey already fixed for target. The yard between the science buildings of the university was filled with the quiet drag of several monkeys, overlooked upon by possible entire hoards of infected.
Looking through the scope, Pete observed his target. The primate has been an inadequate experimenting subject which the Fireflies picked with little to no consciousness or morality. Unnatural red eyes, little sense of the environment, most likely blind. Those idiots deliberately infected monkeys to study the CBI. It didn't shock Pete anymore the extent to which those desperate people would go in order to pretend they've got everything under control, but he was not spared the disgust, keeping his features scrunched in a grimace.
That expression only hardened hearing Joel's voice. "As often as necessary," Pete replied bluntly.
After Ellie was taken back by Joel and his brother, Tommy, whose presence had made Pete very uneasy on whether or not he had seen that face before, not even a day passed him and Winnie by quietly until the four of them were reunited and Joel himself presented them with a horse and an offer. It was a dangerous proposition, given that, at the time, they were sure, based on Tommy's tip, that this was a place where Fireflies still conducted their operations.
Wendy's input had been the only factor able to convince Pete to risk it: a university with science courses surely had labs which, if Fireflies conducted activity on the ground of, are still in decent working condition.
It was a good enough point. She needed new tools if she wanted to test out this new cure formula idea and it was unlikely to be able to get those tools from a corner shop on their way to the West coast, where, either way, they had no clear plan moving forward with their goal of reaching Europe. That goal had changed since to at least reaching Asia and doing the best they can from there.
Until a better plan was made, such delays were acceptable and great was Pete's relief to find out the Fireflies abandoned this base of operations a significantly long time ago. Though Joel was unaware of it yet, Pete knew him and Ellie just dodged a bullet.
