Page 6 of Delirium

Mess up the pig launcher, or tell my boss to go fuck himself.

Run for the boat, or let myself be arrested.

Sometimes I liked to think about what the other Mes were doing in my other timelines. If they were happy. If they were alive.

Unfortunately for me, I’d just be here.

Right now, though,herewasn’t so bad.

One of the prettiest women I’d ever seen—scratch that,theprettiest woman I’d ever seen—was looking at me, after just saving my ass. She had shiny dark hair tied into a braid, and eyes bluer than the sky. Granted, her expression was a little scared, but only because she didn’t yet realize I wasn’t a threat to her.

The big guy standing next to her looked less scared, but more confused, though. To be fair, he probably didn’t get further than the eighth grade, and I just appeared on the boat he most likely grew up on. Too much for his tiny brain to comprehend.

“Okay,” he finally spoke again, his voice gruff. “Okay. This is what we’re going to do here.”

“Glad you finally seem to have a plan,” the blond guy next to them muttered. He hadn’t said a word since I jumped on board, but his disdain was evident.

The boat pushed against a steep bank, causing all of us to try and steady ourselves.

“I’m going to get us to the next fork in the river. It’s a couple hours downstream. I can’t turn us around in this current, but at the very least, there’s a small village where we can deposit our new friend for them to take back to the appropriate authorities.”

We hit another bank, harder this time, and the boat groaned.

“Shit. Okay, you two keep an eye on him. I have to get us through this next bit.Carpe Diemcan’t do it on her own.” The big guy ran off to the helm, flipping a switch so the engine roared back to life once more.

My two keepers watched me silently.

“Fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “I promise, I’m not a serial killer or anything. My name really is Camp. I didn’t murder Camp and steal his backpack.”

I rubbed my elbow, aching from when I’d smacked it on the edge of the boat jumping to safety. The bugs were brutal on the boat, too, but I didn’t want to show even more weakness by flailing around as the annoying fuckers bit the shit out of me.

The pretty girl crossed her arms in front of her chest, only succeeding in pushing up another inch of delicious skin above her thin long sleeve. Her tanned complexion held a smattering of freckles, like a constellation spelled across her flesh. “And you expect us just to trust you at your word? You just jumped on a boat to escape the police.”

“If we’re being specific, you told me to jump,” I pointed out. “I’m only here because you invited me.”

“Are you a vampire or something? Just because you’re invited doesn’t mean youshould. Nash said we were missing another guest, and I wrongly assumed it was you.”

Nash. That had to be the big beefcake’s name. Now I just needed to figure out the name of this exquisite creature in front of me.

“Notme. But I did need a ride. Doesn’t that count for something?”

Those perfect blue eyes widened. “Not when you’re a literal criminal!”

“Please.” I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t do anything thatshouldn’thave been done.”

“So what did you do then?” The blond guy spoke up for the second time, a touch of an accent in his quiet voice. He sounded expensive, if money had a sound. “If it’s something you’re obviously proud of, you shouldn’t mind sharing with us.”

I rolled my eyes again. “If you must know, they’re trying to build a new pipeline right in the middle of this rainforest. Everyone is excited for the prospect of new sources of oil, and no one is paying attention to what that pipeline isreallydoing.”

The woman raised a brow, giving me a curious look. “What exactly is it doing?”

“Destroying the eco-system from the ground up!” I slammed my hand down on the wooden floor, eliciting a glare from Nash at the helm. “We act like we can do whatever we want to this world with no consequences, but that’s not how it works. Everything we do has an effect, and it only takes the smallest disruption to kill off an entire chain of species. What do you think we’ll do for houses once we destroy all the trees? How will we grow crops once the last of the bees fade away? No one thinks about this stuff. They only think about themselves. So I did what had to be done. What no one else would do.”

Or at least that’s what I told myself, when the doubts crept in while I slept.

I met her bright blue eyes, not caring about Mr. Moneybags next to her. She was the one whose opinion I cared about. He could go fuck himself, or I guess, pay for someone to fuck him. Whichever he preferred, really. “I monkey-wrenched the pipeline they were almost done building. Blew it up, if we’re going to be more specific. Unfortunately for me, it just happened to be when security was doing their walkthrough, and they saw me before I could sneak away.”

I shook my head, still annoyed at the series of events that landed me on this boat. It was supposed to be a foolproof operation. Or so my boss, Chad, had told me. Security didn’t do their walkthrough for another hour after I finished. And yet, there they were. Fuck. I just hoped I had cleaned up my mess enough so there wouldn’t be any identifiable trace of me left behind.

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