Page 64 of Code Bound
“Very good choice,” Cipher breathes in my mind.
“You could feel that?” Locke asks. “I couldn’t feel anything, not even when you two were eye fucking each other.”
“That was just a ruse to get him to go into the room alone,” I grunt. “I needed him to believe me.”
“Well, you were damn sure convincing,” Locke muses. “I almost believed you were about to fuck the two of us.”
I glance at him as we leave the safehouse with a raised brow. “And what? You were going to go along with it?”
He grins. “Well, who am I to shoot down a good time?”
The laughter that bubbles out of my throat is two parts shocked and one part intrigued. I don’t tell him that though. Instead, I smack his arm playfully and we disappear into the Red Bloom Court again, rushing away so there’s enough time to escape Stryker and his ice-filled eyes. We’re just going to have to keep moving without rest at this point. There’s no other option.
My hand continues to tingle long after we’ve left the biggest of the carnivorous plants behind.
CHAPTER19
VESPER
We move fast. Faster than we had before. Avoiding the carnivorous plants becomes a high stakes game, one much bigger than before now with the possibility of Stryker chasing us. I don’t know what Stryker’s Glitch is or if he’s fast enough to keep up, but I don’t want to risk being anywhere in the Red Bloom Court at all just in case he’s some super human runner. He looks fast, which means we gotta be faster. Who knows what he’s capable of doing?
I keep my hyena mask on most of the trip through the Red Bloom Court, especially when we grow closer to the Amazon River again. We’re going to have to cross it and then stay along the edges of the Whispering Canopies and whatever zone is beside it. Neither one of us have any desire to face off against the howler monkeys again. Even with better weapons, the beasts are terrifying. And I highly doubt it’s the worst the Whispering Canopies zone has to offer. Besides, the map is marked with a Major Boss for that zone, which we need to avoid while we’re at such a low tier.
“How exactly are we going to cross this?” Locke asks, staring at the rushing water in front of us.
With my mask in place, I can barely sense the caimans in the river, somewhere close, but too far for my newfound skill. There are other smaller pings on my awareness that I can’t place, but they don’t seem threatening. The river is teaming with life, too much that makes it difficult to pick any one creature out. The brown water rushes by, the current strong as it churns up the silt and debris. I watch as a few logs bounce to the surface, actual logs, that then roll and begin to float along the surface.
“I’d prefer not to get in the water,” I murmur, looking around for options. I open my menu, checking to see if there’s some way around it. I sigh when I get a good look at it. “We can’t follow the river because it curls back into the Red Bloom Court, through the Secret Abyss, and into the Whispering Canopies where we started again. If we go that way, we risk losing time and the howler monkeys again. Our only option is to cross the river here.”
Locke crosses his arms as he stares at the brown water. This part of the river isn’t as wide as it was where we fought the arapaima, the shore significantly closer, but it’s still impassable without swimming. When neither one of us can swim, it would be too risky to assume the river isn’t deeper in the middle. The current is strong and would sweep us down river quickly the moment we lost our footing.
“Any chances we could magically learn how to swim?” I ask Locke, wincing.
He glances at me. “We could try. How hard can floating be?”
“And the caimans?” I run a hand through my hair. “No, that’s a bad idea. We can’t get in the water. Even if wecouldswim, it’s bad.”
“We could build a raft of sorts,” Locke comments, looking around. “Use some of the trees and tie them together. I know you’ve got rope in your inventory. Along with a million other things.”
I blink. “You remember the items I’ve been picking up?”
He shrugs. “Some of them.”
For some reason, that makes me feel . . . safe. He’s paying attention, watching my back just as I’m watching his. I can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips as I open my inventory and look through it. My eyes catch on the man-eating houseplant I’d forgotten about entirely. Shit, I’m going to have to pull that out and figure out what I’m supposed to do with it soon, but I figure that’s an issue for another time. Instead, I look through the rest of the items I have, trying to see if I have enough to build a raft.
“The rope coils are only a meter long each,” I sigh. “I have three of them, but unless we’re making a very small raft, they’re not long enough to wrap around a bunch of trees.”
Locke nods and looks around. “Okay, so we look and see if there’s anything here we can use.”
“Even if we managed to use some of the vines as rope, we’ll never be able to topple any of these trees. I’m not trying to dull my new blade to try it.”
“I can sharpen the short sword,” he offers.
“Which takes time we don’t have,” I point out. “We don’t know how long Stryker is going to wait around before he realizes we’re not there anymore. The moment he realizes, best believe he’s going to give chase. You saw the look in his eyes.”
Locke throws his arms in the air. “Then what the fuck are we supposed to do? We can’t swim. We can’t make a raft. We can’t go around it. We’re fucked!”
My eyes fall back to the churning brown water again, the logs bobbing to the surface and easing along the river. I watch as they move, following their path as they bob like forgotten garbage. When my eyes reach the other side, and I realize the path we should take, I smack at Locke’s arm.
