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Nox caught up to him at the door. “We were on assignment.”
Luca stopped.
“A surface-to-air missile took out thehelo.”
Luca wrinkled his brow. “The what?”
“Helicopter.” Nox leaned against the doorjamb. “Abel, a beta like me, was killed. And…” He struggled to find the words, but it only brought back the sound of Koda’s screams still haunting his dreams. It had haunted all of them.
“Hey.” Luca held Nox’s face with a hand on each cheek. “It’s okay, just show me.”
Nox could have opened his mind and let Luca in. But he didn’t want to infect Luca with his nightmares.
“No, no, it’s just….” Nox took a breath. “The point is, New World Genetics found us within hours after the crash. Really fast, considering we were literally in the middle of nowhere.”
“Don’t airplanes have tracking devices on them?”
“Yeah. EPIRBs. But the mission we were on was too sensitive. There wasn’t a tracking device.”
Luca set the toiletry bag on the small counter next to the toilet and removed his toothbrush. “How come you never said anything about this before?” There was enough doubt in Luca’s tone to make his words sting.
“Because I worked very, very hard to forget that day.”
“Why?”
Since Nox didn’t want to show Luca, he had to tell him. “The helo was in pieces and burning. We were all hurt. Bad.” They’d all lost limbs and most were gutted. A shredded rotor blade had severed Nox’s legs from his torso and taken most of the right side of his face. “Some men from a local village saw the smoke.”
Confusion crushed Luca’s expression.
“Healing the kind of injuries we had… the process burned up every cell in our bodies. We spent all our resources surviving long enough to hit the ground. The fire barely left any of our skin, let alone our supplies with the specialized MRs we needed.”
“But you survived.”
“Because the Anubis doesn’t care if the calories come from enriched military rations or innocent people.”
Luca widened his eyes.
“We were still in bad shape by the time New World extracted us. The only reason we didn’t get to the village and kill more people before they found us is because we barely had functional limbs.”
“That was the Anubis, not you.” Luca swallowed hard enough to make his throat click. “And it only did that to save you.”
If it hadn’t saved Nox, another beta would have been standing there in front of Luca. If there’d been another beta strong enough to keep Luca alive.
Nox knew there wasn’t. It’s why Koda sent him.
“The point is, New World Genetics found us without an EPIRB. That means they had a way to track us.”
Luca nodded. “Okay, let’s say they do. It doesn’t change the fact they haven’t shown up since Canada.”
“Like I said—”
“Yeah, it could have broken. But do you think if they had something capable of tracking you, they’d wait this long to fix it? If they couldn’t, what would stop them from building another one other than they can’t?”
Luca was right. If they had a way to repair what they’d used to find Nox’s team in the past, they would have, or they would have made another.
And even if there was some science-fiction way to track them, it didn’t explain how Jelani had.
Luca met Nox’s gaze and said, “I think we should talk to them.”
