Defiance Pattern: Beautiful Resistance Book 1 by Sarah Stone & Sean-Michael Argo

Author:Sarah Stone & Sean-Michael Argo [Stone, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Severed Press
Published: 2017-09-24T23:00:00+00:00

8

Hayden still felt close to dead when he woke. He would have liked to spend a few more hours recuperating, he could still research and even run CodeSource from the comfort of his couch, but his day was jump-started when he received a message from Mitchell calling for the team to meet in one of the smaller conference rooms within the next half hour. His stomach felt shot through and sour, so he eased his way into eating a nutrient bar with a cup of subpar coffee made from the outdated pot on the room’s counter. He wasn’t sure if the real issue was himself or the pot, but the coffee was more hot water than flavor and he screwed up his face as he sipped it. It took a few more sips for the fog to clear and for him to remember that the off-kilter sense of taste was one of the side effects of the equilibrium pills.

Companies the world over had worked on reducing the side effects, which was good. Hayden could remember his first days as a teen slinger and how the pills would irritate his bowels and worsen his acne. If bland tasting coffee was the worst of it, that seemed like a fair deal, even if the disappointment kind of set the mood for the morning.

He wasn’t sure if he felt up to the casual conversations that might ensue if he took himself to the dining facility, and instead walked to the indicated meeting room and sat with his coffee warming his hands as he waited for the others to arrive. It might be sweltering outside the compound, but there was enough high-end hardware indoors that the temperature was kept at the low end, partly for the sake of the equipment and partly to help mask their presence from any satellite sweeps that might pass overhead.

Mitchell arrived just as Hayden found a mildly comfortable position in a chair that was no doubt made to be uncomfortable.

Mitchell’s face was drawn tight with worry, a sight that Hayden found rather disconcerting. Captain Mitchell might be a hard case when it came to protocol, but he was one of the most experienced non-augment operators Hayden had ever met. If a man who could walk through third world war zones was rattled, this morning was going to get worse than bad coffee.

Hayden wondered, as he had since he dragged himself from bed, what he had missed during his convalescence. The Captain fiddled with one of the ports near the empty wall at the front of the room, the sort that allowed holograms to transmit. Hayden half stood to help him with it, being quicker with any sort of technology than most people (and almost definitely quicker than those he classed as soldiers), but Mitchell waved off the help and he allowed himself to sink back down.

“If I couldn’t manage to set it up,” Mitchell said wryly, “I wouldn’t be in charge of anything.”

Hayden smirked in response and thought that perhaps Mitchell could have used the chance to crash for eighteen hours as well.

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