Blame: Book 2- Tick Tock (The Sequel to Book 1)

Up in the Air

Will's POV

     "So...what exactly happened back in London?" Dan asked me, with his female friends leaning into the conversation.

     "Well, Orton exposed Samuel Smart, and Woody woke up from his coma, and Kyle and Morgan were bored as hell without Alicia at the morgue, I became friends with an inmate during my time at the prison, and the inmate happens to be a serial killer named Mark Crew and Awuoi is still with me, and apparently Hannah's the Nightmare and umm, yeah that's pretty much all I know to my extent." Jeez, that was a mouthful.

     "Um, you didn't hear?" the Asian woman beside Dan chimed in. "There was a young boy who was killed in a bombing."

     "In London?" I looked at Dan. "When?"

     "Erm...actually, like two days ago," Alicia bluntly said. "Alan Powell died."

"Fucking hell! Don't say it like that!" Dan gasped at the young coroner. "You're supposed to ease into these types of things! Have you learned nothing-"

"How?!" I kicked into my colleague's rant. "Who did it?!"

"Probably some douche who got paid to bomb that place," the other, more professionally dressed woman cut in.

     "Can you please tell me who everyone is?" I tapped my friend.

     "Huh? O-oh yeah, this is Detective Crystal Ling, and this is FBI Agent Riki Asada."

"Hello," I awkwardly wave to both, seeing them light up with warm smiles as they greeted me back.

"So, anyway, I forgot to tell you guys the names of the five lads who were murdered in that car," Riki said. "Aaron Maxwell, Gerald Pull, Oliver O'Reilly, Barry Alburn, and Calvin Kim."

"Calvin?" Alicia tilted her head as she shifted her position in the airport waiting area seat. "For the first letter of Chicago?"

"I suppose so," Riki nodded.

"Then four more people left," Crystal narrowed her eyes.

"With the first letters of their names being E, A, R, and S," Dan noted. "But we'll have to let them go if we want to catch Hannah."

"Very true," Alicia said.

"We are now allowing passengers to board the flight to Pennsylvania, flight NM381."

     "That's us," Dan got up from the stiff and stained airport seat, swinging his backpack over his shoulder and taking a luggage into his hand. "Let's go."

     The line of passengers had already formed by the time all of us had gotten to the queue, with the airport employees being slow as fuck as they scanned and took in tickets. I saw Dan impatiently look down at his calculator watch, muttering something about the flight being delayed or something about the Nightmare being able to have more time to create a plan to escape him. Finally, satisfaction and relief washed over our little group of five, as we were at the front of the line, waiting as our tickets were scanned and collected and placed into a neat pile of rectangular tickets. I rolled my eyes as Alicia tapped her foot softly against the airport carpet out of her lack of patience, watching her eyes become dull and emotionless from the boredom of standing there.

"You're all free to go," the woman painfully smiled as if she hated her job, gesturing for us to head into the terminal tunnel that led to the plane.

Once we were inside the plane, the cleanliness of the aircraft amazed me as we located our section to sit down for the flight. I hadn't travelled outside of the UK in years, and the flight I had came to the US on, was filthy from the previous passengers. Being on a back to back plane was a painful thing to do, knowing that a sick person could have sat in my seat. Nevertheless, I wasn't bothered by this plane's seemingly clean interior. We found our seats and placed our bags into the overhead compartments, taking our iPads and tablets to play with on the plane to feed our boredom. I looked all around at the American passengers who were beginning to settle down into their spots on the airplane. Alicia and I sat together on the side of the plan, while Dan and his new friends sat in the centre of the plane, in the three connecting seats.