The Hydrogen Theory: A Novel

Chapter 10: Colours

Days later at the sense bar, Alan Murdoch and Mindy had been sitting on the other side of it. The side which Ryan Phoenix was walking along to, being allowed entry through the repaired glass door. He headed straight to join the two others of Billy Newfield's team, isolated from the rest of the patrons. Phoenix disinterestedly looked away while asking. "What's going on?"

"We have a job to do." She said.

"We?" asked Ryan.

"I was thinking the same thing. You don't do jobs, Mindy" Alan added to Ryan's question.

"None that you know about. And what does that have to do with anything?!" She quickly fired back. "I'm in on this one. So yes, we, have a job to do."

"Where's Billy?" Phoenix wondered.

"He's... Occupied." She answered.

"Too occupied for this?"

"Oh lord, Alan," Mindy threw her hands up in frustration. "he's busy, Okay?! So he asked me to brief you on this one. Will you allow me to do that, please?

"Absolutely." Alan said, laughing under his breath.

"Ryan?"

"Whatever. What's the job?" Ryan never seemed to be paying attention, but he was alert and aware, always.

"Just take this and read it. It will bring you up to speed." Mindy handed each of the boys a ten page file. Alan immediately began to run his eyes through the important bits inside. And Ryan? Not so much.

"Things are coming to a boil in the streets. Boss believes that this would be the perfect time to strike at the heart competition."

"Pretoria?" Asked Alan, with his finger on the twenty-fourth line of the seventh page. "We're going to Pretoria?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"We're leaving tomorrow night, by plane. We do the job quick and clean, and we should be back in Cape Town by sunrise. Do we have an agreement?" Murdoch didn't need time to consider it, he agreed.

"Good. What about you, Ryan?" No response. Alan helped Mindy out with the translation. "The file hasn't been burned to ash yet, Mindy. That means he's in."

4:23 pm at New Hope Orphanage, the next day, a Mclaren and Mercedes stood side by side outside the window of Tyler's room. The room which, which Mason himself now returned to, once again finding Emily strumming at his unused acoustic guitar, resting on his mattress in one corner of the room.

"So, I've been wondering," Mason started up a new conversation. Emily paused, raising her hand to receive a cup of tea from Mason's hands. Tyler was holding a cup for himself as well, now hooked on the hot beverage. "Uh huh?"

"What are your plans for after you graduate? You know, if you have any." Emily tilted her head up, trying to figure out how to answer that question. "I mean," Tyler decided to add on to the question, "What have you been planning to use that art degree on?"

"Well, Tyler, those power colonies out there in the world always seem to come to mind. I've been studying art, majoring in art history because a history of art is like a history of the world. It captures moods of the times, standards, practices, success, and failures." Tyler sat down hard on the mattress next to Emily as she continued. "The world is in more trouble now than it's ever been, Tyler. The land, the seas, the sky. It's people and animals."

"So uhm," he began, almost in a selfish disappointment, "You're planning on joining one of those colonies." Guessing what that could mean for the couple.