Hide and Seek: The Mad Girl Sees All novel Chapter 60

Chapter 60

Chapter 60

DE

If you don’t believe me, Lana, why don’t we go see for ourselves?” Lyra tilted her head, a mischievous glint in her eyes

Lyra tugged at Lana’s sleeve.

“Let’s go, Lyra said, dragging Lana down behind the sandbags.

Lana nearly lost her balance from Lyra’s sudden pull.

“Lyra, where are we going?” Lana asked.

“Let’s go right up to that fog.” Lyra replied.

The members of the 7th Assault Squad nearby all went pale, and their captain stepped forward, blocking their path.

“Absolutely not! Chief Advisor, it’s way too dangerous. You can’t go!” the captain said.

“If there’s a mission, just let us handle it!”

Lyra stopped in her tracks. “Who said we were going in?”

“I’m just going to do a little experiment from the outside,” she added.

Lyra pulled Lana into the armored vehicle they’d just arrived in.

“Let’s go!” Lyra said.

“Drive forward, Lyra said, pointing ahead.

“Take it slow, and stop when I say so,” she added.

The armored vehicle rumbled to life, slowly rolling toward the ghostly fog, with the 7th Assault Squad scrambling to follow in their own vehicles.

The towering wall of gray fog loomed closer and closer.

“Stop. Lyra called out.

The captain slammed on the brakes, bringing the vehicle to a halt about 165 feet from the wall of gray fog.

Lyra reached into her oversized coat pocket and pulled out a fist-sized red apple, one she hadn’t gotten around to eating yet.

She held the apple up, gesturing toward the gray fog outside the windshield, as if trying to find the perfect angle to throw it

Just as she was about to throw it, Lyra paused, her eyes lingering on the shiny red skin of the apple.

“It’d be a waste to just toss out a perfectly good apple, Lyra muttered.

Lyra parted her lips.

With a loud crunch, she bit down.

She took a huge bite, taking out nearly half the apple in one go.

Her cheeks puffed out as she chewed, and with her free left hand, she pressed the window button, letting the glass slowly roll down.

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“Lana, keep your eyes peeled,” Lyra mumbled, her words barely clear with the apple stuffed in her mouth.

She leaned halfway out the window, gripping the remaining half of the apple with the core still attached, and hurled it forward with all her strength.

The half-eaten apple sailed through the air in a wide arc, clearing the dry, cracked ditch in front of the armored vehicle/ before landing on the ground about thirty-some feet from the edge of the gray fog.

Because Lyra had taken such a big bite, the bitten side of the apple was pointed right at the armored vehicle’s window

Lana was sprawled across the back of the front seat, her eyes locked onto the chunk of apple sitting by the edge of the chark in the ground.

The captain in the driver’s seat stretched his neck out for a better view.

The second hand on the watch inside the vehicle ticked away.

Ten seconds passed.

The pale yellow flesh of the apple, still glistening with a bit of juice, started to transform right before their eyes.

Twenty seconds passed.

A ring of grayish-brown patches showed up around the edge of the apple’s flesh, and the color started spreading inward toward the center.

Forty seconds passed.

The apple shriveled up like a vacuum-sealed bag with all the air sucked out, its once-tight red skin collapsing in an instant.

It wrinkled and sank in, looking totally lifeless.

Sixty seconds passed.

About thirty-some feet from the edge of the fog, that once-bright half apple had lost all shape, reduced to a heap of black gunk-nothing left to even hint it was ever an apple.

Lyra finally swallowed the bite of apple she’d been chewing.

“See that?” Lyra said.

She reached over and rolled the window back up. “That’s what it looks like when vitality gets devoured.”

The only sound left in the vehicle was the low rumble of the engine.

Lana felt a numbness sweep over half her body, like she was frozen from the inside out.

That half-eaten, out-of-season apple was replaying, right before her eyes, everything this area had suffered.

This wasn’t just rot.

This was life being stripped away.

“Retreat,” Lana forced out, her voice barely making it past her clenched teeth.

The captain slammed the vehicle into reverse, the wheels spinning wildly in place and kicking up a cloud of yellow sand.

They tore back, racing straight for the iron gate of the temporary defense line.

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Chapter 60

Lana hopped out of the vehicle, and the cold wind at her back finally swept away that choking, suffocating feeling-like she could finally breathe again.

The captain rushed over to her.

“Chief Advisor,” he began.

Lana waved him off, not letting him finish, clearly not in the mood for questions.

Lyra hopped out of the vehicle, crouched down, and yanked a dry blade of grass from a crack in the dirt. She snapped clean in two.

Lana stared at the snapped grass, then lifted her gaze to the soldiers posted along the defense line.

A thought exploded in her mind.

“Lyra,” Lana said, swallowing hard.

“If what you just tested is true,

“We’ve got thousands of soldiers holding the line out there,

“Doesn’t that mean they’re in real danger?”

Lana looked at those young faces, all of them standing day after day on the edge of this life-drained wasteland.

“If the apple can rot like that,” Lana said, staring at Lyra, “does that mean the fog is going to devour our soldiers’ vitality too?”

As she spoke, her legs went weak.

Lyra tossed the broken grass aside. “Yeah, it will.”

Those two words mercilessly shattered the last bit of hope Lana had left.

Honestly, she should’ve known the answer all along.

The cracked, powdery earth, the dead forests, and that pile of black gunk from just now-that says it all.

The barrier might keep the Wraiths’ forms out, but it couldn’t stop them from draining life away.

Lana ripped the comms device off her bulletproof vest and pressed the talk button.

“Garrett!” she shouted.

“I’m here!” Garrett Hayes’s voice came through immediately.

“Get me the data, now!” Lana barked.

Lana was speaking so fast, she was practically tripping over her words.

“Pull up the attribute panels for every soldier stationed at the buffer zone’s edge,” she ordered.

“Now!”

“Focus on the changes in their three Vital Flame values over the past week!”

The rapid clatter of keyboard keys burst through the comms channel.

Lyra hunkered down next to the wheel, absentmindedly tracing loops in the dirt with a stick.

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Two full minutes passed.

“Chief Advisor, Garrett’s voice came over the comm, shaky and almost breaking.

“Give me the numbers!” Lana barked.

7th Assault Squad, 3rd Company, 2nd Platoon. They’re exactly about 0.6 miles from the gray fog. Garrett reported.

Last week, their average Vital Flame was fifty points.”

The latest numbers, Garrett hesitated for a second.

“It’s dropped to forty-seven!”

“And the soldiers in the 4th Defense Zone,” Garrett said, taking a deep breath.

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