Wolf Heart

Chapter 59

Planet: Eteran, First Insurgency Compound

First Insurgency War

RAYAN

He sat alone in the Insurgent bunker. He tossed a ball in the air, only to catch it on its way down.

Weeks passed and he heard nothing — not from Meryn, nor from Aelius. Seeto no longer invited him to meetings and kept him at arm's reach.

Gravity returned the ball to his palm after one bounce, and he glanced at the door when it opened to reveal Aaron.

"Thought you'd be in here," he said and headed for him. "I've got something you need to see."

"What is it? Information on the bioweapon?"

"Read and see for yourself." Aaron handed him the datapad. "I want your opinion."

Rayan flicked through the tabs of information. It detailed the quarantines and what they had in common. Eteran based. He switched to the next tab, hospitals connected to them with the number of infected patients and assumed routes of transmission. "I see Seeto does his homework."

Aaron shook his head. "We wouldn't have gotten most of the information without you."

"Sounds about right." Rayan put the ball to the side. "Why? Does Seeto need something else from me?"

Aaron sat beside him and pushed the datapad back into his hands when he tried to return it. "I just want your opinion."

He returned to the documents. Hm, I guess most of these hospitals connected to the quarantines are considered hospices. Ones not attached to quarantines don't have that many patients stricken with this virus... no, most of their patients are... He read through the information, then frowned. He rubbed his chin.

"Confused?" Aaron asked.

"Yeah," Rayan mumbled. "The spread of the bioweapon is going up by increments so... whatever the Strike Forces is doing with the quarantines it's starting to work."

"Barely working," Aaron corrected.

Rayan brought the attached map where red dots marked unconnected hospitals. Grey ones denoted quarantine hospices. Some of the red and grey intermingled, all except one.

"What's this?" Rayan pointed.

Aaron nodded. "It's a Sanctum hospital out on the border of Roxton," he explained. "They've been taking wounded from both sides."

"Any conflict?"

"None at all."

Rayan smiled. "Good to hear. Usually doctors wouldn't take that risk."

"All it takes is one." Odd words settled an eerie sense of deja vu within his boiling stomach when Aaron sighed with a shake of his head. "It was the hospital Seeto found that you couldn't. It's seclusion was on purpose, they have some sort of tech blocking the true coordinates."

His heart fell to join the writhing of his soul. "Are you saying—?"

"I am." Aaron gave him an expression of cold steel. "Seeto found Aelius Matthey."

"Is that why he isn't letting me in on meetings?" Rayan asked.

"It got boring without your energy," Aaron admitted. "I've tried talking him down but..." He rolled his wrist with a scoff. "Sometimes you reach the point of no return."

Rayan lost his grip on the datapad, and it fell into his lap. "He's not—" His breath caught in his chest. "I thought we agreed there were other ways. I was working on getting information!"