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.“Good.Good.I thought I saw something on the rear gate camera last night and wanted to double check with you.Was worried my head had come undone.”Hal shook his head as he gobbled down another large mouthful of delicious warm food.“Nah.Not at all man.I saw naught last night and your head is right fine.Tonight I’ll make double sure to keep an extra eye on the rear gate just in case.Help you sleep a little better at the very least.” Hal ate greedily.Their journey to find Adrian meant many days and nights skipping more than one meal.To have hot, good food was a luxury he couldn't afford to waste.Adrian dug into his food after thanking the young black man.He really would sleep easier knowing that Hal was on the job.Adrian was already building a solid level of trust with the new men, and that made him feel terrific.The seasonings on the potatoes and carrots was helping as well.*****Tap.Tap.Tap.Several nights later Adrian was woken by a rapping noise on his bedroom door.Always a light sleeper Adrian opened his eyes and picked the 10mm Kimber pistol up off the side of the bed right near his cat.The hammer was already drawn and with a slight movement of his thumb the safety flipped off and the gun became lethal.He watched the door as the rapping came again, this time more clearly from a living person.Tap.Tap.Tap.“Adrian, are you awake man?” Said Hal from the other side of the closed door.It was the British marine.“Hold on Hal.” Adrian crawled out of bed as his cat Otis rolled over onto his back, yawning wide.The tall man with his fresh Mohawk haircut got to his feet and walked to the bedroom door.Despite his growing trust with people he didn’t put the gun on safe until the door was open, and he was sure it wasn’t a strange, late night attempt on his life.Who knew exactly what was inside the hearts of the people? Adrian had been wrong before, more than once, and had a hole healing in the back of his neck as proof of it.After Adrian got the door open, Hal’s expression told him something was amiss.“Have you been looking at the feed at all? I just saw something fucking off.You have the computer that records all this bullshit yeah?” Hal asked, a bit of confusion and fear in his eyes.“Yeah.Come on in.” Adrian put the weapon to safe and tucked it into the waistband of his boxers.The metal was cold against his skin.The pistol tugged them down a bit but the elastic held as he sat down in the rolling office chair at the student desk the other computer was installed on.The solar panel array on the roof of Hall E kept enough power in the dorm’s batteries to keep many things in electricity at night, and this computer was one of those items.Adrian powered the monitor on, and started looking through the saved files the system generated every hour.“When did this happen?” Adrian asked Hal as he clicked through dozens of files.“Like, 20 minutes ago, tops,” Hal said as he had a seat on the edge of Adrian’s bed.Otis got to his four feet and plodded over to him as Adrian continued his search.Otis bonked his head affectionately against the young man from east London, seeking a scratch on the head.Despite his concern, Hal obliged the furry cat.“It just saved ten minutes ago.Talk about lucky.Here it is.I’ll fast forward.Rear gate, right?”“Yeah.”Adrian clicked on the file until it opened in a video player.He clicked down the bar until it was three quarters complete, and then let it play the last fifteen minutes.At 51 minutes and 10 seconds precisely, Adrian saw what made Hal so uneasy.The image immediately brought Adrian back to his sleep soaked half glimpse the other night.He HAD seen something.The faint green tinted image showed a downward camera angle from just above the rear gate into Bastion.In the immediate bottom of the image was the rear gate itself, a thick wooden structure that stood out against the natural ground in the upper portion of the screen.A thin, wispy figure appeared suddenly out of nowhere at the base of the gate.It appeared to be human, likely a girl, a tiny waif that wore insubstantial gray and white clothing, as if she was surrounded by fog, or a ghostly shroud [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]