Page 65 of Lifeline

“Wouldn’t it be run down by now?” I wondered. “We haven’t gone out to clean it since…God, this time last year, and it was looking rough.”

Colin snorted. “Raise your hands if you somehow missed the crews that were here last week.”

I looked around and sighed when I had to join the sea of hands that went up and looked at Aidan in surprise. “You did?”

“I’m more surprised that you missed it,” he said with a curious look. “They were cleaners.”

“And Trevor was busy the week before, getting it back into a livable state of repair,” Cait finished, and we looked at Trevor, who shrugged, clearly unbothered by our lack of attention.

“Idiots,” Xander said. “Cait, run interference. Make sure they pay for him to get a room for a few days while we hunker down here.”

“They’re going to whine, bitch and moan.”

“Then you send them my way. I’d be glad to lay out the facts for them.”

“It’s true,” Colin said with a chuckle. “I’ve heard him talk to them a few times over the phone. You’ve all seen how he can get. Now imagine you’re some mild-mannered desk jockey, or a cocky bureaucrat who’s used to their position keeping people in line. And then you’ve got Xander rolling up in your ear.”

We all thought about it, but it was Aidan who snickered. “Damn, I feel bad for the first guy, but the second? I worked for the middle manager assholes before; I’d pay good money to witness that.”

“It’s fun,” Mav grunted and ignored us when we looked at him.

“Ah, and I thought I was special for having seen it when no one else had,” Colin said in a tone that said he wasn’t the slightest bit bothered, but was enjoying the way it made Xander sigh heavily. Trouble had clearly left paradise.

“Anyway,” Xander said, shooting his other half a dirty look that was clearly meant to make him behave. I knew I wasn’t the only one who thought that was a wasted gesture. “Is there anything else? If not, then start the preparations, except you, Mika. I need you with a finger on the pulse of what’s coming our way, so sit your ass in the lab. Aidan, you follow him and do whatever you’re handed, and when you’re out there, you listen to Mika. You got it?”

“Got it,” Aidan said, and although I was a little annoyed at Xander’s insistence when Aidan was clearly listening and behaving, Aidan didn’t seem bothered.

“Good, then get going,” he said with a wave of his hand, and the scraping of several chair legs against the tiled floor filled the room as we got to our feet.

“One second,” Aidan said as he followed me out the back. “Hey.”

I snorted when he took advantage of our alone time to slip an arm around me and pull me in. “I literally just saw you a couple of hours ago.”

“Did you?” he wondered lightly. “I would swear it was longer than that.”

“You left your laptop on my lap,” I pointed out to him. “Because you were there all morning.”

“You’re mad about me ‘cluttering’ up your space,” he said with a snort, kissing me. “I’ll come by and get it later, but if I go with you now, I might get distracted.”

“Sorry Xander was singling you out,” I said. “I don’t want to make excuses for him, but⁠—”

“This is serious. I’m new and not nearly as experienced as you guys, I get it,” he said easily. “Don’t worry, my feelings aren’t hurt. I just hope it doesn’t come down to me not fucking something up because holy shit, I’m nervous.”

“Don’t be,” I assured him quietly, kissing him. “You’ll be with me and we can get through it.”

“It will be nice knowing it’s you that has my back,” he smirked. “And ordering me around…out of the bedroom.”

“Shut up,” I said with a laugh, pushing him away. “Don’t get any ideas. Until we’re no longer under alert, we’re all sleeping in the bunks, so don’t get too wound up.”

“Well, that’s fucking disappointing,” he said with a sigh and turned when he heard his name called. “Gotta go. Behave.”

“Always,” I told him, and watched him walk off, wistful at the loss of any alone time over the next few days.

I had a job to do, though, and I made my way back to the science building. I walked to my laptop and discovered nothing new had come in. Frustration filled me. Ordinarily, I would take a lack of conclusive results as just another part of the process when you were dealing with something as mercurial as the weather, but when you had Xander breathing down your neck, it added a sense of urgency. Well, forewarned was forearmed, and considering the storm could be better or worse than we thought, it was important to know if we were about to face it head-on.

Sitting around while all I could do was nothing was a brutal combination for me. I looked around; my eyes fell on Aidan’s laptop, open and charging nearby. I remembered hearing that everyone in the group had read Aidan’s writing and how I’d felt like shit that I hadn’t. I still hadn’t got around to it, though it was on my to-do list. I grabbed his computer and slid my finger over the touchpad to bring the screen to life.

Aidan had given me the password when he needed me to pull up a video for him, and I punched it in. It wasn’t his desktop but his email that popped up, and apparently he had been in the middle of one before we’d been called to the house a couple of hours before. I wasn’t even thinking when I skimmed the unfinished email, but it was enough to catch my attention, mainly because it was three partially started sentences.