Halo: Battle Born by Cassandra Rose Clarke;

Author:Cassandra Rose Clarke;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2024-03-26T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

Victor

This is pointless,” Saskia said. “We’re not going to find anything out here.”

Victor sighed with annoyance. “We’ve only been out here an hour. And we’re not supposed to talk.”

“Then why are you talking?”

“To tell you not to.”

Saskia peered over at him through a curtain of her dark hair. She’d had it pulled back when they left, but during their trip, it had come loose, and she’d shaken it out of its ponytail entirely. Victor felt a flare of heat and looked away. There were more important things to worry about. And Saskia didn’t seem to really care about any of them.

They crunched through the forest, branches snapping beneath their feet. Victor cringed at every crack and rustle, but it was impossible to be truly silent in the forest. He and Saskia had learned that last night. Every time they spotted Owen’s light in the distance, they would try to move forward without making a sound. And every time, Owen would shine the light in their faces and tell them they’d lost. Again.

At least there didn’t seem to be any sign of the Covenant out here tonight. Owen had said that they tended to patrol closer to town, which was where he was surveilling now. Victor figured there wasn’t going to be anything of interest out here in the forest. But this was where Owen had sent them, and Victor wasn’t in much of a mind to try to sneak into town again anyway. Not after what happened last time.

They continued on in silence. Victor swept his gaze around, alert for the soft glow of alien light. Nothing. A whispering brushed through the tree leaves, and Victor felt drops of water on his skin.

“Great,” he mumbled.

And then, as if the clouds had been waiting for him to speak, water poured out of the sky in a thick curtain, shredding the tree leaves and soaking Victor and Saskia instantly.

“We should just go back,” Saskia said.

“Easy for you to say,” Victor snapped. “You don’t have anyone in the shelter.”

She recoiled and looked away, and Victor felt a sting of guilt. But just a sting. Saskia was the only one of them who seemed to not care that all the survivors were trapped in the shelter while the Covenant crawled over their hometown.

It’s not her hometown, Victor thought. He plunged forward into the forest.

“We’re not going to find anything,” Saskia called out to him, after a pause. Her voice was small and plaintive against the rain. “If I thought there was a chance, I wouldn’t—”

Victor stepped through a gate of trees, into the brunt of the storm. A clearing, big enough that the wind was blowing the rain at him sideways. Why was there a clearing like this in the forest? The forest was protected by the Meridian government. It was supposed to be untouched.

Of course, there had been a city computer nestled in it. People in Brume-sur-Mer weren’t great at following the rules.

He pulled the rifle off its sling and carried it loosely in front of him.

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