Chapter 42 Chapter Forty-Two

Sifna couldn't believe it herself that she had escaped.But it is true. Most of the cultists who disturbed them went after Theremon.She looked back once and saw that they surrounded him like a pack of hounds around their prey.They knocked him to the ground and he must have been captured. Only two believers stayed behind to chase her.She stretched out her arms and slammed the face of a cultist with her palm, so fast that she rushed The force was so great that he shook a few times and fell to the ground.The remaining one was fat and slow and clumsy.After a while, Sifna left him far behind.

She turned back the way she came, and went straight to the elevated highway.But it seems unwise to go straight up, the road is easily blocked, and there is no way to pass safely except for the ramp at the exit.If you go up from there, it is also very dangerous, and you will fall into a trap.Even if there were no roadblocks ahead, and at most a mile or two, the believers would catch up to her in trucks and capture her easily. No, she had to run into the woods across the road, where the cult trucks couldn't chase her.Hidden in the short bushes, she was able to bring herself well enough to recover until she could contemplate her next course of action.

So what's the next step?she thought hard. She had to admit that Theremon's idea, crazy as it was, was their only hope: to somehow steal a truck and sound the alarm before the Cultist caravan hit the road again. But Sifna knew there was little hope of tiptoeing up to an empty truck, jumping on it and driving it away.Cultists aren't that stupid.She had to hold the believer at gunpoint and order him to start the car and drive as she wanted.That meant having an entire plan to try to subdue a stray cultist, get his robes, sneak into the camp, identify someone who could open a truck for her...

His heart sank, everything was too outrageous.Might as well figure out how to try to save Theremon... storm the camp with her gleaming pocket gun, take a few hostages, demand his immediate release... oh, this is absolutely stupid, a fool's dream, made by some cheap The gaudy tricks of children's adventure stories... But what should I do?what should I do? Crouching in a thicket of long, feathery leaves, tightly woven, she waited for the time to pass.There was no sign of the congregation coming out of the camp: campfires were smoking in the twilight, and trucks were still parked by the road.

Night is coming.Onas had disappeared from the sky, Dovim hovered on the horizon, and there were only her two least favorite suns in the sky, Tano and Sisar, bleak and pale, emitting their cold light from the far edge of the universe.It is believed that this edge of the universe, or rather, in those distant carefree days before the appearance of the stars, showed man how boundless and great the universe was. A long time passed hour after hour, and there was still no effective solution to the current situation.Amgando seemed to be falling, unless someone else managed to report them... Obviously, she couldn't get there ahead of the cultists, and the idea of ​​rescuing Theremon seemed absurd.She wanted to get away with stealing a truck on her own and drive to Armando.Only this doesn't seem so absurd.So what to do?Just sit back and let the believers direct everything?

There is almost no choice. In the evening it occurred to her that the only way open to her was to go into the camp of the believers, surrender, and ask to be locked up with Theremon.That way, they can at least be together.It surprised her how much she missed him.They had been together for weeks, neither had left the other, and she had never lived with another man in her life.During the whole journey from Salo, although they had quarrels and even small quarrels from time to time, she never got tired of being with him.Not once.It seemed natural for them to be together, but now she was alone again.

She encouraged herself to move forward, to surrender herself.Anyway, it's all hopeless, isn't it? It was getting darker and darker.Clouds hid the dim cold light of Sisar and Tano, and the sky grew darker, so much so that she hoped that the stars would appear again. Come out, the stars, she thought bitterly.Come out and light everything up and drive everyone crazy again.Why does it matter?The world can only be smashed once, and it has already been smashed. Of course the stars would not appear, and despite being obscured by clouds and mist, Tano and Sisar could still emit enough light to cover those mysterious spots of light in the far sky.Over time, Sifna found herself moving from a state of complete failure to a new, almost desperate hope.When everything is lost, she told herself, she is no longer afraid of losing anything.Under the cover of darkness tonight, she'd slip into the Cultists' camp...somehow, anyway...get a truck.If you can, rescue Theremon at the same time, and then leave for Amgundo!By the time Onas rose into the sky tomorrow morning, she would be there, with her colleagues and friends from the university, and with enough time to warn them to disperse before the enemy came.

All right, she thought, let's go. Slowly...slowly...more cautious than before, just in case their Sentinels hide in the grass... When she walked out of the woods, she hesitated for a moment: on the one hand, she was afraid that she would easily expose her target if she left the densely tangled bushes; on the other hand, she felt that the hazy darkness still protected her.Now, she crossed the clearing that led from the woods to the elevated highway.At the foot of the viaduct, into the overgrown field where she and Theremon had been terrified. Go down and meander along the road they walked on.Across the field again...Look left and right, to see if there are sentries standing guard on the perimeter of the cultist camp...

She holds a pocket gun and adjusts the scale to the largest, most accurate, and deadliest position.If anyone ran into her now, he deserved it.At a critical juncture, the details of civilized morality are less thoughtful.Having killed Barrick in the archeology lab while she was semi-comatose, he was dead, albeit unintentionally; to her somewhat surprise, she found herself wanting to kill again, this time with Deliberately, of course, it may be a last resort. Compared with getting a car, leaving here, and sending news of the arrival of the believer team to Amgando, killing someone is nothing.Everything else, including moral concerns, is secondary, everything.This is war after all.

She then lowered her head, looked up, bent her body and continued to walk forward.It was now only a few dozen yards away from camp. It was silent there, probably most of the people were sleeping.In the gray darkness she could see a figure or two on the edge of the main fire, though the smoke rising from it made her doubtful.She figured she'd have to sneak into the shadows behind one of the trucks and throw a rock at a tree from afar.The sentry might go to check, and if they spread out, she could sneak up behind one of them, stick the gun in his back, warn him to keep quiet, and force him to take off his clothes.

robes on... No, she thought, no warning.Shoot him down and get his robes before he can call the police.No matter what happens, these people are just believers. Her sudden ruthlessness surprised her.go ahead.go ahead.Now she was at the nearest truck, hidden in the darkness by the campfire.Where can the stone be found?Here, here, this piece is just right.She switched the gun to her left hand, and was about to throw a stone towards the biggest tree on the opposite side... When she raised her arm to throw, she suddenly felt a hand grab her left wrist from behind, and another strong hand grabbed her throat. Grab it! Shocked and annoyed, she was momentarily at a loss.Angrily, she mustered all her strength and kicked back hard.Although a painful groan was heard, it was still not enough to make the man let go.She turned and kicked again, trying to turn the gun from her left hand to her right. But the attacker pulled her left arm up quickly and violently in an excruciatingly painful way that numbed her and the gun slipped from her hand.The other arm held her throat, gripping her tightly.She coughed and gasped. Damn darkness!How stupid of her to let them sneak up on them when she wanted to use it to attack them! Tears of rage burned her cheeks, and she kicked back again and again in a rage. "Take it easy," a deep voice whispered, "you'll hurt me like that, Sifna." "Theremon?" she said in surprise. "Who do you think it is? Mondel?" The grip on her throat and her wrist loosened.She staggered forward a couple of steps, struggling to catch her breath, and then, out of nowhere, she turned and stared at him. "How did you escape?" she asked. He grinned. "It's a holy miracle. An absolutely holy miracle...I've been watching you run from the woods. You're wonderful, really. You're so focused on getting here that you don't realize I'm following you." "Thank God, it's you, Theremon. Although you got me and scared the hell out of me... But why are we standing here? Quick, get a truck and get out of here before they see us." "No," he said, "can't go on with that plan." She gave him a blank look. 'I do not understand. ' "You'll see." To her surprise, he clapped his hands lightly and called out, "Here, boys! Get her!" "Theremon! Are you crazy..." The almost star-like destructive light of the flashlight shone on her face.She stood there, unable to open her eyes, shaking her head in bewilderment and horror.Figures flickered around her, and it took a moment for her eyes to fully adjust to the light, and she saw them clearly. They are believers, there are five or six of them. She fixed Theremon with reproachful eyes.He seemed so calm and so pleased with himself that her bewildered heart could barely take it, and she realized that he had betrayed her. As she struggled to speak, some incoherent monosyllabic words came out: "But...why?...what...?" Theremon smiled. "Come on, Sifna, I want you to meet someone."