In a strange way, Hunter felt like an old friend already and I accepted the fact that he was carrying me without question. Hopefully he wasn't a well disguised serial killer. Either way, I wasn't getting down.
"Well if you expect to participate you'll need to open your eyes," he said.
I fluttered my lashes and let my eyes adjust to the grey light of dawn. We were heading down a street that I recognised from my time in Franklin. In fact we were taking the street to the same destination: The Hub. Hunter nodded to the guards on duty as we passed them.
We were soon moving down the twisting walkway that would take us back into the meeting room where we'd been briefed on the mission before we left. It seemed like years ago but it was actually only a few days.
"Where's everyone else?" I asked, noticing that no one was with us.
"They went ahead. I promised Coal that I'd wake you up and deliver you to the meeting before he went for a health check, but it was like trying to wake the dead so I went for the easier option," he replied.
I noticed that my weight was causing him about as much difficulty as I would have had carrying a pen. He was insanely strong.
"Thanks." I stifled a yawn as we ducked inside the huge room.
I thought momentarily about the fact that I was being carried in like a child but everyone had seen me already so there wasn't any point in using my legs now. I couldn't muster the energy to feel particularly bothered about it either.
"Do you want to sit with Coal by any chance?" Hunter asked with a definite smug tone to his voice.
"I don't mind," I lied as he swept me down into a big, soft, office-type chair and I tucked my legs beneath me.
Hunter pushed the chair across the room on its wheels, my hair blew around me and I giggled like an idiot as he ran. He delivered me into a spot beside Coal, roughly shoving Alicia along to make room.
Coal raised an eyebrow at him but didn't say anything. His dressings had been changed for new, cleaner ones and someone had tended to the cuts and scratches he had elsewhere too. Luckily it looked like the King hadn't done too much damage to his face and with the blood cleaned off he looked almost the same as he had before the fight. There were just a few cuts, a split lip and a gash above his right eye that now held a six stitches.
"What did you find on the city networks then? 'Cause I could really do with a bath," Alicia said, stretching out in her chair.
She had been patched up too and I could see the shadow of a purplish bruise forming around her left cheek bone but she was just as beautiful as always. It just made her look even tougher.
"We know, believe me," Hunter laughed.
"Shut up! You're not exactly fresh as a daisy you know," Alicia snapped, flicking her ragged hair over her shoulder.
I felt pretty gross myself. I was cold, wet and filthy and all I really wanted was to wash it away but apparently this meeting wasn't going to wait.
"Can I interrupt now?" A stocky man not much older than me, stood up and took our attention.
His brown hair looked as though he spent a lot of time running his hands through it and he wore thick rimmed glasses. Despite his bookish appearance, like everyone else who I had encountered in Franklin, he had strong muscles showing on his bare arms and through his shirt.
Hunter mimed zipping his lips shut and throwing away the key and Alicia huffed and leaned back into her chair.
"Okay. So, I'm Jayden. Me and my sister Livi are basically the tech team here." His eyes lingered on me and Laurie before he continued.
"I don't have time to teach you all how to do my job so I'll give you an overview and you can take my word for it. We got the lists, and a whole lot more too." He grinned like a kid on Christmas morning. His fingers were constantly moving as though typing on a keyboard and he seemed unable to stop fidgeting.
"The lists confirm several things that we had suspected, firstly that a lot of the people who we had made contact with and who were trying to help us from ins
ide Harbour city, have been discovered and killed. Also it shows that a good portion of them have been imprisoned and, we believe, tortured. Probably for information that would help their Guardians to find other revolutionaries and, of course for any information they know about us."
"Imprisoned?" Laurie asked, looking surprised. "You mean sent to SubWar?"
"I don't say things that I don't mean." Jayden frowned at her.
"Are you usually wrong then?" she challenged.
I shook my head at her.
"I saw it myself, there was a list of prisoners," I said before they could continue arguing.