Cordero asks me to pick up where I left off. “You were on your way to Norway,” she says. “To Jotunheimen, I’m guessing. I think that’s where all those trains eventually brought you. Am I right?”
I take a second to tap into the feeling I had last time when I actually got the dose. Like I had clouds inside my head. I think of Sebastian and how he can make even breathing mean something. Convey something.
I need to sell this for it to work. I need to come across as the same old gut-spilling Gideon. Bad way to put it. The same uncensored Gideon.
Act blunt on the outside. Get sharper on the inside.
I can do this.
CHAPTER 46
Norway was Jode’s idea. We needed a safe, remote place where the four of us could work on mastering our weapons while Daryn waited for her next directive. Jode assured us Norway fit the bill.
After almost three days on trains, we arrived at the Oslo station around midday. Jode left with Daryn to go work some Ellis money magic at various travel agencies inside the station. An hour later, they came back with keys to a Mercedes van and a hold on a cabin in Jotunheimen National Park.
The former was purchased outright, in euros. The latter was free—part of a system of huts the Norwegian government provided for the pure enjoyment of the great outdoors.
This seemed a little too easy to me. It felt like were winging some pretty important stuff, but Jode knew more about Norway than I did, meaning he knew something about it. I had no choice but to roll with it.
Before we headed into the mountains, we stopped at a market and loaded up on food and supplies to last us a few weeks. Essentials like rice and beans. Canned soup. Crackers and chocolate bars. Then we left Oslo and drove past some of the most stunning vistas I’d ever seen in my life. Smooth winding rivers that cut through soaring mountains. Bright blue glaciers nestled in ridges. Waterfalls that dropped hundreds of feet into vivid green forests. After the past days crammed in train cars, not sleeping, on edge from Ra’om’s effect on me, the views and the fresh air restored me some.
Finally, with nothing around us but raw, unspoiled nature, we reached a tiny tourist stop where a woman gave us a map and instructions for reaching our hut. There were no more roads now. We had to go the rest of the way on foot.
By then, it was getting late in the afternoon and an approaching storm was bringing in strong winds and cooler temperatures. I was tempted to spend the night in the van, considering the group’s safety, but everyone else was determined to sleep in a place that was completely stationary.
We pulled on our packs and set off on a trail that climbed through dense alpine forest. Over an hour later, the trees thinned, the wind picked up, and the trail turned into pure ankle-twisting, rocky misery. Below us, a network of fjords spread out, their waters so calm they mirrored the dark clouds above perfectly.
“Where the hell are we going, Jode?” I’d already asked for the location and marked it on my GPS. But I was feeling the seventy pounds of food and supplies on my back. The cadre in RASP would’ve given this hike their stamp of approval.
“You told me remote,” Jode replied. “Remote requires a good bit of trekking.”
“You mean hiking.”
“No, Gideon. I mean trekking.”
We’d been doing that a lot, Jode and I. I’d become a human autocorrect for all his weird British phrases. He used fancy as a verb. Nosh meant food. Bum was ass. Loo was bathroom. And everything was either bloody, brilliant, or both, bloody brilliant, which to me only described one thing. Actually three: the color of my cuff, my sword, and my armor. They really were bloody brilliant.
“We should almost be there,” Daryn said. She was carrying a pack as heavy as mine, and didn’t looked winded at all. Tough girl. Tough, pretty girl.
Eyes down, Blake. Focus on the trail.
“We were told this hut is so far off the main trails, it never gets used,” she added.
“And it’s free, right?” Bas said, huffing at my side. He grinned at me, his teeth a white flash in the stormy light. “So it’s afjordable.”
That made me laugh, which I needed. A free cottage hours away from the nearest sign of civilization sounded like the opening to a horror movie to me—and I’d actually seen creatures that belonged in horror movies. I knew they were real so I wasn’t exactly feeling calm.
We arrived at the location as the last bit of daylight faded out of the sky. I studied it as we approached. The location was incredible—a bluff that jutted right over a fjord, providing panoramic views of mountain ranges as far as the eye could see. But our shelter itself wasn’t as impressive.