The Unfinished World (The Armor of God Book 2) by Diego Valenzuela Page B

for the situation—but she did; she blamed Ezra. He had caused the chaos, and left her waiting for an uncertain end to reach her. Left her without purpose
    At least until she found one herself.
    “Ma’am, may I be excused?”
    When General Adams dismissed her with a nod, Vivian saluted and left the table.
    Things changed , the general had said with too much indifference, as though nothing had been machinated, as though it had all been out of anyone’s control. They knew they had a saboteur in their ranks, probably more than one, and Vivian Poole didn’t believe in coincidences.
    She wouldn’t die without understanding the reasons why.
     
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    It was after they uncovered the source of the oases’ apparent imperviousness to the sickness that things began to grow confusing and complicated.
    Indeed, when things began to go wrong.
    Heaviness was left hanging from their shoulders like a cloak after the incidents at the edge of the island. They didn’t say it out loud, but they had become acutely aware that after discovering the effects the Creux were having on them, things would not be the same.
    They could no longer trust themselves, or each other, as they had before, and this took away one of the most valuable assets they possessed as a team—perhaps one of the few reasons they were still alive at all.
    The entity that was Besoe Nandi had crawled into his mind long ago, but now it reverted back to Ezra’s initial perception of what it was: a monster. He had befriended it, learned to trust and commune with it, but now he dreaded another encounter.
    Ezra pulled at his nose ring and felt its sting in the flesh. It had begun to absorb the cold, chilling his nose and making it numb.
    Though he still wanted to diminish the stupidity of his actions, Garros was no longer laughing. Ezra had seen, with great clarity, the precise moment of sobriety hitting Garros. It happened when he viewed his actions through Erin’s eyes—he remembered what it was to feel like he was about to lose someone he loved, and suddenly the piss in his pants was no longer funny.
    “I could have died,” he repeated more than once, most of the times to himself, like he was trying to convince himself that what had happened had happened.
    “It’s not the first time. But it’s not something you get used to, is it?” Erin sighed, as they made their way closer to the center of the oasis, which they intended to explore before retiring for the night. They had decided to give themselves at least eighteen hours of rest from the Creux before heading towards the peak, and the destroyed city behind it.
    “It’s not,” Garros said and picked up a branch from the floor. There was a thickness to this wood they were walking through; it was not large by any means, but the trees were very close to one another, like they were searching for warmth in close company. “I wish it was.”
    “Well, it’s not,” Erin repeated.
    “You know, when I die,” Garros said, and Erin looked back at him, still walking through the dense wood. “I hope it happens quickly, when we don’t expect it.”
    “I don’t like this conversation,” Jena said, walking close to Ezra, sometimes holding him to keep her balance. She had helped clean and wrap his broken fingernails with the materials in a first aid kit Erin had equipped in Phoenix’s Apse. It still hurt, but it had stopped bleeding.
    “And I don’t mean because I don’t want it to hurt—that’s not something that scares me at all,” Garros continued, lowering his head to walk under a thick branch. “I mean because when I die I want no goodbyes.”
    Ezra wondered if Garros was still under some kind of trance, still affected by the madness of the Creux. Even one like Quantum Ares, with such a weak T-Core, had grabbed hold of the man’s mind. It was a terrifying thought.
    “I don’t want to hear anyone say goodbye to me, and I don’t want to say goodbye to anyone. Feels like that’s when you can tell