Page 64 of Lifeline

None of us were surprised when Xander searched out Colin first, and I would bet that only the newer members were surprised when he then glanced at Mav. The stoic man sat in silence for a few heartbeats before lifting his chin. “Trevor and Colin, Mika and Aidan.”

“Hmph,” Xander said, the sound too neutral for us to glean whether he agreed with the assessment. Whatever his personal feelings, he was clearly willing to show trust in the man he had assigned as his temporary second and nodded. “Then there’s your groups. Obviously, it’s not rigid, and if pairs need to swap around or you need to move around, you tell Cait.”

“And you tell me quick,” Cait said, stepping into the room, and Xander stepped back, letting her speak. “I don’t care if you’re going a few feet away to take a piss, you let me know, you hear me? Your partner is there to watch your ass, but I’m the one who needs to know where all the asses are. If you move to help someone else, if you swap partners for whatever reason, you tell me. That means you too, Colin, we know your ass might have to move around and quick depending on how tits up things go, but I want constant updates, you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, and I heard the easy, expected obedience of a soldier in his voice…or sailor, in his case.

“And she means it,” Xander said, looking at Aidan and Carter. “And if you don’t listen, if you don’t do what she says, pray that I get to you first because there won’t be much left if Cait gets her hands on you first.”

“Understood,” Aidan said easily, and I believed him. Carter nodded, but…I knew it wasn’t unfair to single them out. Aidan was still an unknown since he’d never been in a genuine emergency before, but Carter…sometimes his young age and inexperience showed when his emotions got the better of him. It hadn’t been a serious problem in the middle of an actual threat, but there was always the chance, and I didn’t blame Xander for pointing it out to them.

“Good,” Xander said, and I wondered if he was actually satisfied or if he was just accepting he had no other choice. “Mika, any word on how bad things are going to get?”

“Bad enough,” I offered and sighed when I saw Xander’s scowl. “You wanted the answer.”

“I wanted something more than what a kid could give me after looking it up online,” Xander ground out.

“If you wanted someone to give you an answer that sounded right but wasn’t, then you should have got a forecaster in here,” I told him with a frown, ignoring the way Aidan shifted in his seat to get a better look at me as Xander’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve been here for over three, almost four years now, Xander, you know how I operate. For all the advances we’ve made in my field, Mother Nature sometimes likes to feint, and sometimes she pulls a brutal ace from her sleeve. I have nothing definitive, but we can count on some damage to the forest and buildings, high winds and probably debris being thrown around, and we should monitor the nearest rivers because their levels are probably going to rise.”

“Flooding?”

“Right now? That’s a probably. How bad the flooding will be, I don’t know. I said I would keep you updated when something significantly changed, but right now, I’m still waiting.”

Aidan cleared his throat softly, nervously, but I ignored him, save to bump him with my leg to assure him everything was fine. Colin was clearly the one who had absolutely no fear of butting heads with Xander, but everyone had had their moments with Xander as well. The one thing I had learned was that the people with the hardest heads and a tough will were the ones who stayed. I didn’t know if it was because Xander got rid of those who didn’t make the cut, or if they got rid of themselves rather than be bulldozed constantly, but the result was the same. He wasn’t afraid to push us, but neither was he afraid of being pushed in return.

“Do that,” Xander said and turned to Cait. “And our new arrival?”

“Another one?” Jake asked, the first words he’d spoken.

Xander sighed. “Yes, I was supposed to tell you sooner, but all this got in the way, Cait?”

“There’s no way we can bring someone new and naïve into this,” she said with a shake of her head. “And with kids? Hell no. He needs to stay in town until we’re ready.”

“Kids?” Carter asked, flabbergasted. “Since when do we have kids here?”

“Since orders from someone making more money and with less sense than me said so,” Xander scowled.

“Kids?” Reno repeated, looking wary. “Here? I mean, even if we pretend for a minute that this group isn’t exactly the sort you want around kids…shut up, you all know it’s true. Anyway, where the hell are we housing kids?”

I remembered first, or at least said it aloud. “The exile house.”

“I’m sorry, the what now?” Aidan asked with a confused laugh. “There’s a what now?”

“Oh, shit,” Jake said with a little laugh. “I forgot about that.”

There were noises of agreement from everyone but Carter and Aidan, who just looked confused. Cait rapped her knuckles on the counter. “Focus boys. To answer Aidan, it’s what everyone has called it for years. It’s on the edge of, I guess, what you’d call the outpost property, opposite end to the outpost building.”

“Uh, outpost building?” Aidan wondered.

“It’s what people call where me and Mav work most of the time,” Carter explained.

“So the outpost building for this outpost, great, that makes complete sense and doesn’t invite confusion at all,” Aidan muttered with a snort.

“It hasn’t been used in ages because it just…hasn’t,” Cait said with a shrug. “It used to be the house used by the head of the outpost before Xander took on the role. The cabin he uses now was considered a guesthouse, and we rarely had overnight guests; he took that instead, and the other house went unused.”

“It’s a house?” Carter asked. “The fuck, he gets a house?”

“He and his children get a house, yes,” Cait said, shooting him a sharp look that shut him up.