The Deathless Trilogy

3.5. All the Souls

For lunch, the remaining nutritionists have prepared protein balls for us, packed full of everything our bodies would need to continue through the day. Each person gets three, which they say is plenty. My rumbling stomach would disagree.

I grab three for me and three for Declan before heading to the Captain's dining room.

During the day, the family is scattered. Daniel is out training with the troops by now—though I'm still not sure where he was this morning—Celia and my mom usually work in the Mechanics sector through lunch to get our armor ready, Eleanor is often taking her early afternoon nap around now, and my dad is usually away from camp with the group of hunters, finding food for dinner.

"Declan?" I call, entering the dining room, but when I fully open the door, I see the entire room has been transformed. There are blankets over the couches, and burlap sacks over the chairs around the dining room table. The tapestries have been torn down, and in their place are the spray painted words, "Happiness, Love, Life," in white spray paint. Even Declan has changed. His hair is messy again, and he wears his usual uniform of jeans and a flannel shirt.

"Um?" I ask, laughing.

Declan smiles, walking over to me from the table where he's been looking over maps and electronic tablets. "I knew you'd likely come back to see me, since—you know—we're an awesome team, so I decided to break up some of the red. You said something about red when you were freaking out this morning, so I figured I'd just go ahead and get rid of it. The color wasn't really my taste anyway. I like rooms to have a spray painted eclectic feel," he says with a smile.

I laugh. "Well... I'm not sure you'll be winning any design awards, but I really appreciate it."

He shrugs. "No problem."

I present him with the bowl I've carried from the cafeteria. "I got your balls."

"My whats?" he asks, pushing his glasses up.

"Protein balls. For lunch. Perv," I joke. He laughs. "How can you act so professional as president, and so goofy as a friend?"

What I really want to ask is how he could be so playful so soon after Hugh died.

"Code switching, dear friend. You've got to know how to play the crowd." He chuckles to himself, and continues, "So listen... I was thinking if you came for lunch today, we could go up into the lookout above the control room to eat. Not a trace of red there. I guess, except for some of the terrain around here kind of looks red."

I smile. "Yeah, that would be nice. I've never been up there."

"Then we must." He takes one of his protein balls and pops it in his mouth. Mid-chew he says, "Follow me."

He leads me out of the dining room and down the hall, outside past the patio, and into the hall of labs. Across the hall from the infirmary is an unmarked door I never really noticed since it's the color of the walls. He flips up a grey cover hiding a keypad and types in a code on. The door unlocks with a thud, and we walk inside.

The far wall is one large window looking out over the terrain. At the center of the room is a control panel, mounted on a podium beside a large steering helm. Buttons of controls cover the walls on either side of us, and at the back of the room is a clean door leading only to a sunlit ladder. One solitary soldier stands on duty at the helm, despite the fact we're completely stopped. He salutes Declan as we enter. "Mr. President," he says.

"C'mon, I told you, loosen up with the 'Mr. President' stuff. This isn't going to be like how it was at the bunker or Cooper's estate, okay?"

"Yes sir," the soldier says, though he doesn't seem to ease up at all.