Chapter 140: A code red.
"He started it." Hades shrugged as he defended his decision. "If it came down to the sheep biting the one that drugged them or other innocent people, I would rather hand over the culprit."
Sunshine could not argue with that logic. "It would be deserved. I suggest that Godwin joins the wool weavers that way he is distracted. What do you think? Is there any other job suitable for him?"
Hades pondered on it for thirty seconds, going through the jobs they had on the base. He could not find anything for the doctor other than kitchen work or babysitting. "If he cannot weave, he will just drag others down. How about babysitting?"
She frowned. "He can’t be trusted to watch the sheep, and you think letting him watch kids is a good idea! I would rather have him join the gardening teams. Even if plants mutate, there is not much damage he can do."
Hades nodded. Then he tilted his head, "Unless..." he dragged out.
"Unless what?" she asked.
"Unless he eats a mutated plant." He finished.
Sunshine shrugged. "It is his funeral or his awakening. Or maybe just a running stomach and a fever. But I think we can both agree that this is it."
Hades nodded. He looked at the distance between them and frowned. The small gap which was no more than five inches looked like five thousand inches to his eyes. So, he pulled her chair and joined the arms of their chairs.
He exhaled like he could finally breathe now that she was near.
She raised her brows.
He shrugged and smirked.
She rolled her eyes. "Can we just focus on work?"
Hades closed his eyes and sniffed her hair secretly. She smelled like grapes. Was it the soap or the lotion she had used?
Sunshine was looking at her to do list. The next item on there gnawed at her mind like an itch that refused to fade, restocking diminishing supplies. Ariel, ever meticulous, had placed the neatly folded list into her palms before he left the house, scrawled with names of dwindling goods.
Sugar, flour, cooking oil and spare batteries for walkies-talkies.
With the urgency in Ariel’s tone as he reminded her to look at the list one would think that these supplies were the lifeline of fortress four, and without them the entire community would falter.
"Why have the sugar and flour reduced so quickly?" She asked him.
"We opened the inside market and when the acid rain stops, we will open the outside one. Those interested in the food business have been very aggressive when it comes to stocking what they will need." He told her.
She frowned. "We should regulate the sales."
He nodded. "I came to the same realization when I saw Ariel’s list." He reached into his pocket and brought out a list of things that he thought they should re-stock. Things that were in Sunshine’s space.
Together, they left the office and drove to the private section. While she took supplies out of her space, Hades called for trucks and some men to drive over and load the supplies into trucks.
Hades barked short commands as the trucks were loaded, and the drivers drove them to the storage room in the second wall. He followed them just to make sure that there was no foul play involved in the transfer.
Sunshine informed someone to find Ariel and inform him about the new supplies. The little boy would be so excited. It would probably be like christmas morning for him.
She visited the weavers to take a look at the wool and took a sample for the system to scan. From there, she went to the garden and showed the gardeners how to plant the coconut beans, tomatoes and other fruits and herbs she got from the other world.
When she finished, she planned to go and work on Castiel’s octopus, but duty called. An urgent call came in from the information center in the first wall. She made her way there, boots echoing in the narrow corridors.
In the newly remodeled lobby, which had been beautified by Lisha, she found the woman curled in a very large soft office chair, half distracted, half amused, as Bob the cat tried to grab a small tennis ball with his paws.
Bob meowed once and hissed. Lisha laughed and got a feather to tease him.
"Looks like someone’s enjoying this place a little too much." Sunshine said, curling her lips faintly.
Lisha smiled, scratching the cat behind the ears. "Bob keeps me sane between the static bursts and signal drops." The smile grew wider. "Welcome back, this place was miserable without you, and can you believe that Hades forbade us all from seeing you yesterday? I cannot believe that I had to fake an emergency to get you here."
"I can believe both of those things. " Sunshine laughed. "My husband is very dependable and very protective. When you are looking for a man, find someone with some of those qualities. Meanwhile I have to commend you on a job well done. It’s great that you held this place together even without me."
The screens glowed with data, lines of light mapping energy, heat and movement inside and outside the base. On other screens, footage of different sections of the base was playing.
People were walking in and out of the information center, some with smiles and others with frowns.
"Everything is fine with the statistics I hope?" Sunshine walked to the screen in front of Lisha and pulled up the thermal band statistics.
"Yeah, all is good, I check the thermal band data twice a day." Lisha placed the tennis ball on the table.
Sunshine’s eyes furrowed. Two of the readings stood out, flashing at abnormal levels one more than the other. Elevated energy, heart beats and body temperatures far beyond the normal.
Sunshine’s heart skipped a bit.
"All is not good, when did this happen?" She asked Lisha.
Lisha leaned over and explained, "Tommy Kirkland’s stats have been fluctuating since the mutated sheep bit him. The med bay run some tests and declared it nothing to worry about. I have been monitoring him none the less. As for Rosario Delgado, her statistics were normal this morning when I checked."
Sunshine’s breath hitched. Her chest tightened. She leaned closer, her heart pounding in her ears. "It looks to me like they may have awakened." Her fingers aggressively tapped the buttons of keyboard, pulling up more of their details.
"Suni do you mean like real Superhumans?" Lisha asked, a mix of fear and excitement lingered in her eyes.
Sunshine did not reply immediately as she was thinking Tommy Kirkland was the teenager that was bitten by the mutated sheep, that was how he had probably awakened. The sheep infected him.
As for Rosario Delgado, Poncho’s wife, heavily pregnant wife, she had no clue how the woman awakened. But the thought of a woman in her condition awakening made Sunshine’s stomach knot.
She snatched the walkie-talkie from her belt, pressing the button until it almost cracked. "Hades we have an issue with Rosario Delgado. Have her located and brought to medic bay immediately. This is a code red."