“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“Stay out of the way as much as possible if it’s a meta assault,” he said, taking a slow walk out the bathroom door and back into the bedroom, fishing his boxer shorts out of a pile of clothing next to the bed. He came up with my underwear as well and tossed it to me. I caught it in one hand. “Our job is to effect an evacuation of the campus, not to get into a rumble with Omega’s metas. We’re assigning out those industrial strength electro cannons like we used on Wolfe, but we’ve only got a half dozen of them. We’ve got some dart guns that will put most metas down, but they take a few seconds to work, so pistols and rifles are going to be option one. We’ve got some shotgun shells that have some extra pop to them, and some slug-throwing shotguns that’ll put a hole in an elephant. Other than that...” He shrugged. “Like I said, we’re evacuating and trying to make way for you metas to rumble to your heart’s content.”
“My heart’s quite content with no rumbling,” I said, and slipped on my panties. “I could use a nice long vacation about now.”
Zack smiled. “Like Italy?”
“Somewhere tropical,” I said. “Somewhere warm. It’s about to get really cold here in Minnesota again, you know.”
“Having lived here my whole life, I was dimly aware of that fact.”
“I’ve never been outside the Midwest,” I said, looking out the window at the sun, already high in the sky. “I remember thinking when Wolfe was coming for me how much I wanted to be somewhere, anywhere else.”
“I remember,” he said. “But you knew he’d find you.”
“Yeah. I should take those vacation days they gave me, and go somewhere good.” I stepped closer to him, rubbed a hand along the smooth covering over his chest as he placed his shirt on and left it unbuttoned. “What do you think? You, me, a sandy beach, warm sun overhead, crystal blue waves—”
“I think that sounds like a vacation that is a little above my pay grade.” He smiled. “But I like the sound of it. It sounds like more fun than that time we took a day off and went to Valley Fair.”
“I had fun with that,” I said, and slapped him on the shoulder. “You remember the list?”
“You mean the list of things you were supposed to do in your life?” he asked. “We did a good number on that list this last summer, you know.”
“We did indeed.” I stood up on my tiptoes and gave him a peck on the cheek that lasted a fraction of a second. “I had another list, you know.”
He turned his head to look at me. “Oh, yeah? What was on it?”
“Well,” I said with a nod toward the bed, “this was right up there.”
He let out a chuckle. “Mission accomplished, huh? Guess you better start making a new list, or things will start to get boring.”
I let a hand slip across his chest again. “I don’t think I’ll get bored with this for a good, long while.”
A flicker of amusement crossed his face as he buttoned his shirt. “That’s a relief. If you were tired of it already I’d be a little worried; like maybe I was out of practice or something.”