Patriots & Tyrants (Rebels & Lies Trilogy Book 2) Read Free Page B

things. He wasn’t imagining it at all. It was a small
lesion with jagged edges. On the inside was a brownish yellow crust with cracks
all around. Small droplets of blood leaked through them. The reality of their
situation hit home once more.
    “Is it bad?” Krys
asked, noticing Kaspar’s face.
    “It’s not too bad,”
Kaspar lied again. “You in any kind of pain at all?”
    “Just a little bit
here and there. Not enough to stop me, though. You know how it is. I have my
good days and bad days.”
    Kaspar hoped that
today wouldn’t be another bad day for her. Maybe she had started to lose track,
or didn’t want to face the truth, but her bad days had begun to far outnumber
the good ones.
    “We’re going to find
that cure,” Kaspar replied.
    “We can’t even be for
sure that there is one.”
    Kaspar rubbed his
fingertips slow on her cheek. “There has to be one. They couldn’t have made a
drug with this kind of an effect without a contingency plan. If all the women
got sick, then there would be no one…”
    “Isn’t that the
point?” Krys interrupted. “To save the world from over population? Look, I just
want to live out the rest of my life as best I can. I want to spread the word
to as many people who will listen. But, I don’t need to lie to myself with
false hope. And, I don’t…”
    “There is a cure,”
Kaspar’s turn to interrupt. “We just have to find it.”
    “Ryan, please.”
    Kaspar kissed Krys on
her forehead once more and rolled over. She moved in close from behind him and
wrapped her arms around his waist. He had to come to the conclusion, at some
point, that maybe he was lying to himself as much as to Krys. No matter how
many complexes they stormed not a shred of evidence even hinting at a cure were
found. Kaspar just loved Krys so damn much that he didn’t want to lose hope.        
    He was going to save
her…somehow.
    ***
    While everyone else
was gathered around for some breakfast chow, Kaspar stood beside Robert Clarke
as he feverishly typed away at his military grade laptop. Clarke was such a
fast reader, and so fast with typing and mouse moving, that Kaspar had a hard
time keeping up. It was a battle within to not interrupt the computer nerd by
asking what he saw prematurely. Kaspar had learned his lesson the hard way
months ago: never interrupt Clarke while he’s doing his thing. The only thing
to do was sit, wait, and try to keep up.
    Clarke still had the
same scraggly, salt and pepper hair which never seemed to see a bottle of
shampoo and conditioner. He was like a hermit. All that was missing was a long,
scraggly beard to match the hair. For his part, Clarke took the constant
ribbing he got from Kaspar and the others well enough, only occasionally taking
offense to it. There was no fight in the leftover hacker even when he did. He
would merely say he didn’t appreciate it. Then he would disappear somewhere
with his computer. Truth be told, Kaspar grew a healthy respect for Clarke. He
might not have been a warrior, but his role in this fight against the USR was
one which Kaspar understood as vital.
    It had been Clarke who
introduced Kaspar and Krys to this new rebel team. After the incident with the
lab which left only the three of them, and Greg Boler who later disappeared
without a trace, the Wizard (as Kaspar came to call him) hacked the databases
of the USR to find out if there were others, like them, who had been used.
That’s when he found out about Sam Harvey and his squad. They operated a few
hours’ drive away from their old safe house. It didn’t take much to gain
Harvey’s trust. Just the mere mention of the name John Paxton did the trick.
    It was finally safe to
talk. Clarke shut the lid of the laptop and bit down on his lower lip. Kaspar
paused before talking to him. He didn’t want to know the answer, but he needed
to know. There was always this sense of hope after Clarke went through these
USR documents. It was becoming more and more apparent,