[Story] Delta – S01 E20

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 20

♦ Charlie ♦

“So, what do we do now?” Josh asked in the car the following day.

Great, back to that question. That always seemed to be the starting point for all of our wonderful little discussions. And usually that would be followed by some bull crap suggestion to do something that probably wouldn’t help us. And yet we always had to go through with this conversation, no matter what.

I felt Pierre looking at me in the rearview mirror, as if wondering what was going through my mind, but I was too fed up with this whole thing to react to his searching look. Astrid had her feet up on the dashboard, absentmindedly twisting her dark braid around her finger as Pierre turned the steering wheel to avoid the path of a large semi. I sat in the back seat of the car next to Josh, wondering why we were back to square one again.

When I returned from blowing up the bridge, it was mildly irritating to see that Pierre had been about to leave without me. Of course, him being the prick he was, this hadn’t exactly been surprising. After all, I probably would’ve done the same thing. It still wasn’t good for the ego, though. But the look on Astrid’s face when she saw that I was okay definitely made up for that. Plus I got to blow up a bridge; that made the world incredibly better.

“Okay, so what did we find out?” Pierre prompted, sounding irrevocably like a professor, and an annoying one at that. I resisted the urge to kick the back of his seat, instead mimicking him in my head.

I know, call me a preschooler. But seriously, what could I do? Astrid would kill me if I shot him, and Josh would think me immature if I came up with a stupid argument. Still, it was all I could do to keep the bitterness that was rising inside of me steadily.

Astrid glanced back at me as if she had read all this on my mind. “Well,” she began in a mock-patient tone. “Apparently, Decrioux is attempting to start World War III by hoarding stashes of explosives, arsenal, and this.” She pulled the can of the mysterious liquid from her pocket, holding it to the side and brandishing it so we could see. “What this is, we don’t know.”

Astrid had filled us in on everything that had happened in my absence. I personally thought that the explosion of the bridge was a lot cooler than some old can of liquid, but if she said it was important to this assignment, then it was.

Taking the can from her, I ignored her warning to be careful and studied it. Josh craned his neck to look at it as well. “Stewed Turtle?” Josh read, frowning. “Did we ever figure out if this was a code?”

I gave him a dirty look. “If we had, we would have been sure to enlighten you,” I informed him sarcastically. “Stewed turtle is a cover, idiot. The real stuff is inside here.”

Looking back at the can, I couldn’t help wondering why they had decided to call it “Stewed Turtle” of all things. Astrid twisted in her seat to watch me with dark eyes as I carefully took the cap off the can, a little surprised at the ease at which it came.