We The Forlorn (Book #2) (Completed)

13. Plans

With the airship, it only took them another hour to reach their destination. Bo looked over the handrail of the airship to see a dark building rise over the horizon in the otherwise barren dust fields. It was made of dark stone, something rare to see in this part of the world. Adding to its strangeness was the fact that it was massive, at least three stories, and stretching long across the dust fields. A massive wire fence made the perimeter around the building, and guard-towers marked the corners. It looked like a prison, locked down and solid. Bo could imagine the horrors inside those dark walls, and it made her shiver even to look at them.

Silver, despite his upbeat attitude for the entire hour it had taken them to fly there, suddenly fell silent at the sight of the building. He frowned and scratched his scalp as he stared where all the eyes on the ship were focused.

"The Judge is not someone people take on lightly," he said.

"We know," Khan replied. "But he's hurting too many people for Adam to avoid."

"You explained him briefly," Bo said. "But who is this Judge?"

Khan sighed and turned away from the building. "He's a demon clutching onto human skin. You may have heard of men in the cities with sick appetites, but this man's are straight from the bowels of the deepest hellhole."

Helga gripped the handrail until her knuckles went white. "He runs a cult. He kidnaps young girls and keeps them in his dungeons until he can brainwash them to follow everything he says."

"There's almost not a single settlement in this area that hasn't had a daughter or sister disappear into thin air one day," Khan said.

"Why has no one done anything about it earlier?" Bo asked.

"He has the militia in his pocket," Helga replied.

"Actually, he has pretty much anyone with any power under his thumb," Khan added.

"And Adam thinks the Forlorn can take him on?" Bo's eyes traveled to the fortified building, wondering how anyone without military training could break in and take it over. Especially now that she found out the Judge had the militia on his side. This most likely meant that inside would be filled with men from the militia, heavily armed. Bo had seen the supplies of the Forlorn, but she had no idea what their ranks looked like. They certainly did not have anywhere near the manpower of the militia, but they could also be just a handful of people. What hope did they have of breaking into such a building?

Yet... she couldn't say that she wouldn't do exactly the same thing as Adam. She'd once spent time kept captive, and she still remembered the weight of being trapped bearing down on her every day. She'd come close to losing her hope a few times, and that was in a place where her living conditions were even better than they had been at her home. She couldn't imagine the hopeless terror of girls kept in dungeons and forced to serve a depraved man.

Silver stretched his arms over his head and then looked toward the three Forlorn. "Well, I'm going to set the ship down before someone notices us," he said. "We'll hide in the dunes during the night."

Khan nodded, and Silver maneuvered the ship back a few hundred feet to the dust dunes that broke the horizon in large mounds. Silver selected one that was large enough to hide the airship, and then set them down and killed the engines. The ship groaned as it suddenly bore its own weight again, and Bo was glad that the building was still at least a mile away and couldn't hear the creaking metal.

Sunset came soon, and the gathering dark made Bo feel more at ease. The darkness hid them better than anything else could, and the guards were unlikely to make perimeter runs at night when it was cold and pitch black far away from the lights in the building's fence.

Silver led the way into the interior of the ship, where Bo saw that it was almost like a home. The rooms were small and cramped, but he had furnished them with seats, tables, and other homely touches. Everything had to be bolted to the ground, but otherwise it looked as if she was in a normal house.

They ate dinner at a table. The food was from Silver's stores, since they'd been forced to leave their own supplies behind with the hoppers.

"Mi is going to kill us," Helga said, rubbing her temples. She looked far more upset about losing a few hoppers than she should, and Bo had a feeling that it wasn't the hoppers she was worried about.

"I'm more concerned with losing our guns," Khan said. "You don't have any on the ship, do you?" He said this to Silver, who frowned and shook his head.

"I only have my personal pistols," he said. "Normally, I stay on the ship and don't need anything but the mounted guns."

Khan groaned and thunked his head down on the table top. "Great, I guess we'll just have to look for Adam so stealthily that no one even sees us. Perfect, totally doable." He grunted and banged his head against the table.

"It's not so bad," Helga said, though even she didn't sound convincing. "Adam is probably out here in the dunes as well, and if we can use the cover of the hottest part of the day, we can search for him without too much worry about guards spotting us."

Khan looked up and sighed. "It's too late to think about this now," he said. "We nearly died today like... five times. I just want to sleep."

Helga nodded. "We'll make more plans after we've rested."

"I'll take first watch," Silver offered.

"You're already worth your weight in gold, John Silver," Khan said, grinning and slapping the older man on the shoulder.

As Silver walked up the stairs to the upper deck, Bo and the other two Forlorn set up places to sleep on the floor in the main room. Silver had supplied them with blankets, and they settled in for the night.

No one said anything as they waited to fall asleep, and Bo was thankful. In the darkness, she could process all that had happened that day. Almost dying, being confronted with the sight of Aston again after so long... She'd secretly been hoping that Aston might have disappeared from existence altogether, though she also felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. He had once been her brother, but now she wished him dead. It was easier to want him dead then to remember what he had done to her and Adam.

She rolled over, squeezing her eyes tight. She refused to shed any tears over Aston. He didn't deserve them at all. So instead she thought of Adam being close by. Somewhere out there in the dark, he might be looking up at the stars and thinking about her. Would he remember her? Would he know that she'd looked for him as soon as she could? Her heart plummeted as she wondered if he might think she had forgotten him. It had been so long. She'd changed so much. She wasn't the girl he'd known. Would he be disappointed?

She shook her head. She needed to stop thinking before she drove herself insane. Instead, she snuggled closer into her blankets and tried to only feel the happiness she felt when thinking about being under the same sky as Adam.