Two days of surveillance had gone remarkably well and there were no incidents to compromise the crew members. It was nice to know that Olivia had a team she could trust, if they were divided properly. Gunnar managed to let it go that they weren't able to get the young boy out. The boy didn't trust them enough anyway, and children only got in the way. To him, a known evil was more reassuring than an unknown. She'd believed that lie for far too long herself too.

In addition to the spoils that the officers seemed to enjoy, Amelia and Matt had managed to pick up on the squalor facing the young workers. Young and old it seemed were bearing the brunt of the work. Their food appeared to be long lasting, quick energy bites like instant noodles, rice, or slop. Few of the hunting spoils crossed the line from elite to blue collar. At least back at the colony, Olivia wasn't living wildly above any of the other members. Her apartment didn't mirror the barrenness of Edward's, but post-disaster recruits weren't afforded the same opportunity that the others had had.

"Last bag is packed," Gunnar reported.

Olivia surveyed her team. Quinton was wrapping up his ankle with a tensor that the men around the intruding community had offered. Nate had only been able to relay information on the daughter's condition: alive and working in the mines. They wouldn't be the most willing allies, but Olivia's group at least had a few steps in the right direction.

Without any major interruptions, their group pushed through to Las Vegas. Olivia had been keeping tabs on a former comrade who'd joined up with a similar setup to the one in Colorado. After the storms, it became challenging to communicate and she kept an ear open for anything useful. Edward had unknowingly done a few searches for her back in the mountains. If Marcel had been right about Yuri's motives, then he'd be mighty useful. If not, they could be in hot shit sooner than anticipated.

They set up camp in a well sheltered area and the teens set off hunting. She pulled Nate off to the side and handed him her old cell phone. As the cool device left her palm, she felt transported to another time when it would light up on the corner table, a text from Marcel telling her he was running late or Paul and Jean inviting them out for drinks. Presently, they'd manage to scrape up a temporary power grid and charge the device just in case the battery she'd conserved didn't stick.

"Yuri, if you can connect to anything, ask Yuri for coordinates," she muttered.

"Can do," and Nate's fingers already went to work. She paced, waiting for any kind of results. He paused for a moment and turned back to her. "You alright?"

"I'm fine," she snapped instinctually.

The way he studied her face made her wish she was anywhere else. "You look anxious."

"Of course I'm anxious. If this doesn't work, we have nothing."

His demeanour softened. "Relax, Edward just asked me to-"

Her pacing stopped and her eyes narrowed. "You aren't Edward."

His gaze lingered. "No, and I don't think I'd want to be."

She gritted her teeth and wandered off. She wondered if choosing Nate over Edward was a bad call. There was something to be said for having a person that you could actually speak with. Nate was an arse masquerading as Edward's little helper. She didn't need and certainly didn't want anything from him other than to pacify Edward last week.

Within ten minutes, Nate had an answer for her. Edward would have spent those ten minutes consoling her which was wasted time. Her choice had been the best one for the team.

"I'm in a network, but once I send off this text I can't mask my presence anymore. It's secure and similar to the one I worked with before at the colony. I'd say it went up after the storms. I need more to go on to find this guy, any kind of nickname or username he would go by. Old numbers will be useless now."

"How many are we looking through?"

"Three hundred plus."

Olivia swallowed as her stomach clenched. Three hundred names meant three hundred possible soldiers and hostiles to deal with.

"He's a Russian pilot with an interest in firearms and hand to hand combat."

"Any attachment to animals?"

"No."

"Alright, ruling those out. Cars?"

Olivia shook her head as the game continued. She needed Marcel and wished that old phone of hers actually worked the way it used to. They narrowed it down to five possible names. The wrong one would condemn them and the right would get them inside. She dug her nails into thighs through her pants. Her eyes began to go cross-eyed from staring at the names listed on the paper.

"Listen, maybe it's best just to sleep on it." Nate swiped through the master list and a name caught her eye.

Marcwants2Liv

They'd been doing it wrong looking for Yuri when he had done the opposite, spelled it right out for them.

She nearly grabbed the phone out of Nate's hands. "That one. Send him, 'Maverick, where you at?'"

"A Russian with a soft spot for Tom Cruise?"

"How many Russian flight movies have you seen? And yes, he had an uncharacteristic love for American culture that drove his parents crazy."

After five long response-free minutes, they turned off the phone so they wouldn't reveal their position. Olivia swallowed her disappointment with another bite of rabbit meat. Hope had let her forget that Yuri could have easily perished since she last checked up with him or that he wouldn't help them and worse report them.

Conversations flitted past her between the group that seemed to have let the final destination and food warm their spirits. Matt's arms exaggerated what must have been a catch that got away in bush. Her eyes shifted back to the brush. The wind didn't help by rustling the leaves to add more noise to the environment. She tracked the overall movements of the group to account for every heavy footstep.

Nate walked over from his chat with Quinton, the teen who'd orchestrated an escape with his daughter, to sit beside her. She took another sip of her water, wishing it was a touch stronger. The sun showed hues of orange and pink. Not much longer until shift sleeps now.

Nate nudged her shoulder. "We'll check again in the morning. If we don't hear back, there's surely another way. We're all intelligent enough to come up with one together."

Olivia didn't say anything back. Agreeing would be a lie and arguing would just incite more efforts on his part. She could only hope that he wouldn't volunteer to be her shift partner.

Quinton and Amelia volunteered for the midnight shift and settled into a couple hammocks they'd managed to rig up. Olivia had bush survival training to thank for that. Anything could be knotted properly to serve a purpose. Matt and Reggie turned in next to the brush beds which left Gunnar, Nate and herself. They saw little action for nearly the entire shift. Gunnar was ready to nod off so Olivia sent him to get some shut eye. Once he'd settled in, branches cracked. The sand and gravel crunched.

She turned around to see if Gunnar had forgotten something, but couldn't catch any tall outline. The movements in the bush worked opposite hers. Someone was watching and playing with her. They wanted her to know. She took a deep breath and took inventory of her weapons. In the dark, knives and hand-to-hand combat were her best options. If the attackers had heat sensitive equipment, her group would have all been face down already.

A loud cry pierced the rustling, howling like a husky dog. Her shoulders relaxed and a smile found its way onto her lips. She wouldn't stash her knife just yet though. Within a couple minutes three figures walked in front of them, one a shorter man with dark whiskers who hadn't bothered with a mask.

"She lives!" he said with a grin. "Couldn't chose a night with a bit more moonlight?"

"We did your men a favour and kept them hidden."

"And Marc, where is that man of yours?"

Olivia's nails nearly dug straight through her hand. She was unsure if it was the reveal of her past with Marcel in front of Nate or the fact that she had to watch her old life fall to pieces in front of this new one.

"He's elsewhere attending to other business."

"This one, so generous with the details. Now, what do you want? You are a long way from Colorado and I heard through the grapetree that a large group of workers, including a female officer escaped their facility."

"Where do you stand?"

"On the ground, in front of you."

"Yuri." She narrowed her eyes.

"No sense of humour," he said turning to his comrades who had a quick laugh. "I stand where I stand. I do what is best for my people and what is best for them is to operate within the walls of these organizations, but with one foot out the door. We take while the getting is good, but don't forget why we're here. Our dreams are not their dreams."

"We want in."

Yuri crossed his arms in front of his chest. "No chance. Your face is not one they forget. You need fresh faces."

"I have them, three of them." She hadn't expected half of her team's identities to be burned already. It was poor planning on her part, thinking they wouldn't be that connected. "Maybe you can check three others. Nate, here being one of them."

"It's dark. His head might as well be a tree stump. You have more? You bring them, together tonight and we will hide them."

Olivia's gut instinct flared up. "How do I know that you're not going turn on us?"

"Liv, you hack into a network to contact me with an untouched account I had made for only this purpose so I can walk with my best men through the desert to find a place near a spot that you gave me five minutes to find on the GPS and now you think I am playing games. I have Chester and Rorke. If we wanted to capture and turn you in, you'd be bound and drugged already."

"He has a point," Nate said.

Yuri downgraded his frown into a softened gaze. "But really, Liv, where is Marc? It is not like him to miss out. I haven't seen him on the list of those who escaped."

Olivia hung her head. She was hoping he would let that go. "New Mexico."

"Why? There is nothing for him there. How did he escape?"

"He didn't escape. He left voluntarily before the final day."

"But you two make a good team, peanut butter and gelatin, right?"

"No, we don't." Admitting it out loud made it even harder to accept. She wasn't the only one who'd bought into the well functioning machine mentality. Even with their rare functional moments now, she couldn't imagine going back. "We come from two very different worlds."

The moment the idea of a baby came to light, Marcel lost all rational thought. He was going to have a family no matter what it cost her or them. She'd assumed he'd been okay without one, sticking with such a career-driven woman, but he'd made it clear that he'd expected her to change if the opportunity presented itself.

"So you two are finished? Kaput?"

Olivia nodded. A hand patted her shoulder. Yuri shook his head and muttered something under his breath in Russian.

"He is the bad guy?"

"I was, Yuri. He was just fine."

"But he leaves you in Colorado, breaking your team. What can you do alone?"

Olivia bit her lip, trying not to let the sympathy validate her past anger with Marcel. It had been her fault and she needed to accept that. "It's the past now, we move on. That's what we can do. Now are you trying to get us caught with all this chit chat?"

"We are the security team, and we have already found you. Don't worry, they change us when the sun comes up and we make our plan then."

A long walk through the desert confirmed that the spot they had chosen was sheltered enough from the main operation, or at least the security portion they'd seen. The operation ran out of a small hollowed out gambling den, where the tables had been filled with monitors. Olivia observed that while screen replicated their environment, it didn't mirror the situation. They ran loops, clever of them.

"Now we need to bring you here to see whose identity is over and who can find a way in. Colorado people, you stand here," Yuri motioned with a heavily muscled arm. "In the light."

Olivia took a few steps forward, but Yuri stopped her. "Not you, Liv. You can help us."

Rorke input a few strokes on the keyboard and her face popped up. Wanted for treason. Reward and promotion: dead or alive. At least she knew the director didn't have a heart from the start and that she wasn't paranoid.

Amelia came up in the search, Williams too which was a surprise. What had her for colleague done after he'd let her Nate and Edward escape? Edward came up and his dead or alive statement unsettled her more than her own. At least she stood a chance in a fight. Nate, his daughter and Quinton were missing from the list. Most peculiar if they had members from both of the escaping groups.

A small message popped up on the bottom of the screen and Rorke's expression darkened. "You brought friends?"

Stay out.

Simple and direct, but who would be concerned with the matter.

Rorke's fingers stormed away on the keyboard, all breaths ending with groans and sighs. "I can't locate him."

Quinton's ear must of perked up because he strolled over, as if he had any right to observe their classified information. Rorke didn't seem to mind. "Navjot!" he exclaimed far too loudly, earning glares from each of the other members with a price on their head, including the new three helping them, should they be caught. "May I?"

Rorke shrugged and stood. "Please, it's not as if this is my job."

A few correspondences passed between the two techies before the chat shut down. Quinton turned to the team as Edward and Amelia's notices disappeared from the computers. He wouldn't make eye contact with Olivia but spoke to her.

"He couldn't touch yours. It came right from the top. In twenty four hours he should have every copy of the others wiped, including any that may have been downloaded to mobile devices. Everything is extremely linked and synched here. Makes our job much easier."

So she would be on the sidelines for her own operation. At least it had opened up one of their team members and taken the threat off Edward. She wasn't sure how she felt with Quinton having a connection back to Colorado. She had wanted to sever all ties.

"You seem to have all the right connections," Rorke observed to both Quinton and Olivia.

"Old friend. Couldn't pry him away from the computers to come with us, but he's more valuable there."

"As long as he isn't too cocky and gets himself caught," Yuri added.

Yuri brought them to a safe area, an old quarantined zone of the city that instilled more fear than it needed to in the locals. Since Olivia's group had spent time on the outside, none were too worried about the infection. Plus these security officers enjoyed hunting there and were quite familiar with the area. No three headed animals lurking around, but they joked to capture any if the crew came across them.

"You need to clean this place yourselves, and don't drink the water. We'll show you where to get some," Yuri instructed. He sent Quinton and Amelia off to find containers for the water. The others set about setting up a suitable base for resting. "Liv, I cannot stay much longer."

"We understand, Yuri."

"I still want to help you."

"We appreciate it."

He reached out and took her hand, "You, Liv. Maybe you don't see it, but he hurt you, he changed you."

She hardened the face threatening to cave into tears. "I'm better off."

"Are you sure?"

She thought of Edward, of the way he'd hold onto her if she started to fall apart. A tear escaped her eye and she nodded. Maybe the darkness would cover it, but maybe it wouldn't. She wasn't as concerned with it now.

"Good," Yuri said. "You deserve happy. Now where are my water carriers?" It didn't take him long to find them.

***

Thanks for reading and for your support. Sorry for the delay. It was bound to happen during the never ending road trip that I missed a weekly update. I'm starting to feel like my characters living in a tent and being on the road for 40 plus days. I've been running through some cool ghost towns and big mining operations so that should be fun (and a nice coincidence) to incorporate into this story when I actually get a chance to write again.