The woman began to throw a tantrum, "You bastard! Did you kill them?!" She asked Lazar, barking furiously at him.
Lazar frowned, annoyed by such behavior, 'Is she just crazy or does she not feel my blade against her throat?' In addition to not putting away her weapon as Lazar had ordered her to do, the woman even allowed herself to ask him this question while insulting him.
He applied more pressure with his blade, going as far as piercing the skin of her throat, but this didn't change anything. Despite the blood slowly flowing on her throat, she kept a combative expression.
Lazar came to wonder if she had lost all sense of reality, had she not understood that he was the one with the ascendancy? 'Either the Apocalypse fried some of her neurons or the person who took care of her psychological assessment screwed it up when she was recruited.'
"He... He just knocked them out." The words said by a shy voice calmed the woman down a little.
The person who spoke was Sullyvan. He was squatting next to the two soldiers who had collapsed to the ground and was taking their pulse.
'She wouldn't have believed me if I had told her that, Sullyvan has maybe more than one use finally.' Lazar thought while looking for Amandla with his night vision.
Seeing that Amandla was aiming her bow at the woman and was gradually getting closer to their group, Lazar moved his blade away from the woman's throat enough so that she could turn around and realize that her comrades weren't dead.
Now that Lazar was assured that the woman would be killed before she could do anything to him, he could give her that freedom.
"Show her, Major." Lazar said, without taking his eyes off the woman who was now facing him after turning around.
Sullyvan grabbed on the ground one of the two flashlights that had fallen from the hands of their owners when they collapsed.
They were still lit, so Sullyvan only had to direct the one he had in his hands to light the scene.
When the woman saw that there was no trace of blood around her comrades and that their chests swelled and deflated successively, sign that they were breathing, every muscles of her body finally relaxed and she sighed with relief.
"Good thing you weren't stupid enough to make the mistake of killing them. I would have sent you to the other world right after them, and if it wasn't me, the Major General would have done it." The woman declared haughtily.
One of Lazar's eyebrows rose, 'Does she realize what she's saying?' Thinking that this woman needed a good lesson, he didn't stop Amandla who was rushing towards her.
After a short consideration, he felt compelled to clarify something with Amandla since she seemed to want to use her bow on the woman and him wished to keep her alive even though she was a pain in the ass.
"You can beat her up, but don't kill her!" Lazar imposed while continuing to look at the woman. He thought he didn't need to call the person to whom his words were addressed for her to recognize herself.
Amandla didn't take her hateful gaze off the woman, but still gave Lazar an 'ok' sign with her hand to tell him that she had understood before making her bow disappear.
"Huh?!" Shouted the woman as a sign of incomprehension of what Lazar had said.
She didn't react soon enough to avoid Amandla's kick. She took it in her right hand and it made her sword fly a few meters away from her.
Seeing that the woman was about to blind Amandla again by pointing her flashlight at Amandla's face, Lazar grabbed the wrist of her left hand to stop her.
"Stop this at once!" Ordered a sizzling voice.
Upon hearing this, Lazar immediately recognized a human voice transmitted by walkie-talkie.
"Stop!" Lazar shouted while putting his sheath between Amandla and the woman to prevent Amandla from starting to hit her.
Amandla gave a cold glance to Lazar to make him understand that she couldn't let what had just happened pass her by.
However, when she saw in the look that Lazar was giving her back that he was asking her to trust him, she managed to calm down and took a few steps back.
"You owe me one." She whispered to him.
"I know."
Lazar took the walkie-talkie from the woman's belt and snatched the flashlight from her left hand, she was too shaken to react, "Go help the Major wake up your comrades." He ordered.
Having finally recovered, the woman continued to be uncooperative. She crossed her arms and stood still, "I don't take orders from you." She said.
"Do as he says, Captain Camaggio."
When she heard the piercing voice coming from the walkie-talkie, the woman became as gentle as a lamb and executed herself without arguing.
Lazar shifted his attention to the walkie-talkie, "So, in addition to listening to us, you are observing us. Doesn't a man of your stature have subordinates to do that, Major General?"
"I had to see with my own eyes how you were going to react to this test."
'So this asshole took the liberty of thinking that threatening my life would be a good test.' Amandla thought chocked by the coldness with which these words were said.
"Well, let me tell you this test is either crap or very poorly executed." Lazar said looking at Amandla with a little compassion.
"So you've seen through all of this?"
"Such an unjustified attack by your soldiers was a bit big for me not to notice that it was a masquerade."
Lazar realized that this was a test long before they were attacked, but thinking that Buren could never be a reliable ally after this it seemed clever to him to let Buren believe that it wasn't Sullyvan's inaction when Amandla had to justify her identity that had made him realize that everything was false, 'The very fact that Amandla's arrival was supposedly unplanned was enough to make me realize it.'
"We are unable to wake them up." Sullyvan told Lazar as the woman next to him was shaking the soldier she was taking care of to try to wake him up without success.
"Drag them with you if you have to. Captain Johann, take Mr. Walker and his friend to me, we have to talk in person." Buren ordered.
...
"It's here." The woman said calmly to Lazar in front of a doorway.
As Buren had ordered, she and Sullyvan had dragged the unconscious soldiers with them, a task less painful than it seems since they are both awakenees.
The most complicated moments were when they had to climb stairs with the unconscious soldiers since Amandla and Lazar had refused to helped them, otherwise their walk to Buren was just a succession of door openings and changes of corridors.
*Knock*
*Knock*
Lazar knocked twice, then entered the room right afterwards.
From the very first second he set foot in the room and laid his eyes on one of the two people already there, he understood that the presentiment he had felt in the truck had just come true.
'They really have planned everything, there is not even a window from which I can throw myself into this room.' Lazar lamented when he saw the middle-aged man with grayish blond hair in front of him.
"Logan! How nice to see you again!" The man exclaimed on his seat.
'Unshared pleasure.'
"Still as quiet as ever, I see, yet you must have a lot to say since the last time we saw each other. When was that, by the way..."
'I'm really going to have to stay at the same table as him...'
"Ah! Yes! It was graduation day, I remember it very well. When my daughter heard you were leaving Boston she spent the next 3 days crying in her bedroom."
'I only told that to 2 people and I asked them not to tell anyone. How did she find out?'
The man who was talking so familiarly with Lazar was someone he often saw on the local news channels when he was still living in Boston.
On a less recurring basis, Lazar also saw this man at the exit of his high school when he came to pick up his daughter.
He was Andrew Sullivan, Katelyn's father, and from what Lazar had seen of him, he was perhaps worse than his daughter in some aspects.