CHAPTER 146: 146-HE WRITES DOWN EVERYTHING

Clementine:

"Ian, what are you saying?" I blurted, glaring at him for waking me from a beautiful sleep and asking for a conversation when all he wanted was a sex. He stared at my face with no emotion before a smirk crept onto his lips.

"You’re so dramatic," he muttered, rolling his eyes. "Come on, where is this place? We need to talk about this stuff."

It was his subtle way of letting me know he was joking about wanting sex from me. I took a deep breath, relieved, then pointed in the direction where the others and I always went.

The weather was bad. In a moment it turned stormy. The wind was cold, but at least it was fresh, not blowing dust into our eyes.

We reached the spot and I pointed to the ground. He stared at it for a few seconds, then turned to me.

"Is this where he didn’t try to toss you over?" He extended his arm toward the barbed wires.

I only gave him a nod. I never knew why he brought up the harsh past or my experiences with the other squad, but it always felt intentional. Maybe he wanted me to remember how they treated me. But he forgot that he was also one of them who treated me badly.

"Okay, what was it?" I asked, sitting down on the ground.

He looked around with a grimace before finally giving up and lowering himself beside me. I guessed he had been searching for a chair or a bench.

Once he sat down, he slammed the notebook he had carried between us. He opened it and flipped through a few pages in silence while I looked around awkwardly.

"What is it?" I asked.

When he finally finished with the book, he said, "Did you notice some stuff about the north?"

Creeps ran up and down my spine hearing the mention of North.

"Depends on what you mean," I replied, giving him a quick look so he’d also check around and make sure no lurkers were listening to us talk about the north and the ringleaders’ shadiness.

"You go first," he said, leaning back on his hands as his body rested against the grass.

"How did the ringleaders know what was going on inside the train?" I asked.

Ian smiled and nodded. So this was one of the things he had noticed too.

"Well, that and the fact they lied about sending help for Sadie," he said, pushing his body forward and wiping his hands of the grass and soil before shuffling through his pages again.

"They said they did send help, but they couldn’t find her," I reminded him, thinking maybe that was possible since Sadie did admit she had been going back to the woods for food before returning.

"And you believe them? Clementine, you and Troy spotted her so easily. Do you think the lurkers couldn’t do that? They’re much more trained than us, and they have weapons. They could have done a thorough inspection. Which takes me to the next point—how does the train know when to arrive and when to leave? The ringleaders make it seem like they’re controlling the train, because they always know when it’s coming. But when it comes to taking us back, suddenly nobody can do anything." He mumbled this as he raised his hands, then shrugged, almost like asking me if I had noticed too.

"Right! I remember how the train wouldn’t leave because the white squad was in our carriage. But when we brought Sadie’s dead body into our carriage, the train left," I said, putting my finger to my chin and dabbing it as I went deep into thought.

"That could be easily argued, Clementine. Maybe they’d say Sadie was no longer a crusader—she was dead. But that brings me to my next point. The ringleaders somehow knew the train was delayed because of the white squad. So how did they not know when Jessie’s sister was left behind? Are they really unaware and have no say in the train’s matters?"

Ian reminded me of that one incident where we lost a crusader because the poor girl was just delayed. The train shut up, almost like it didn’t even want to acknowledge that one of us was left behind.

And of course, since Ian wasn’t there with us that day, he had asked us to tell him what happened, and now I realized why. He had been making notes.

"And let’s talk about the monsters. The two of them were humans, correct?" he said, and I nodded.

"Isn’t it odd that they want us to slay the monsters to clear the north, but then they don’t want us to slay because they don’t give us weapons? Clementine, sending crusaders into the north when they could prepare an army of warriors, gammas, betas, all of them together, to invade the north and start clearing it out. Wouldn’t that be a much better option?" he paused almost like to take a deep breath.

"It just seems like they are doing great. There are monsters taking over the world, and an academy is trying so hard to stop it. But then it really is not. It just doesn’t make any sense," Ian repeated himself, and I nodded with him. He was right.

"But then I wonder if the crusaders before us ever thought the same. They must have tried to find answers. But what happened to them? Did you ever wonder what happened to the crusaders before us? There’s no list of names, no appraisal charts, no medals, nothing anywhere in the academy. It seems like they just refresh the entire place when new crusaders arrive," I said while staring at his notebook. He had written quite a lot in it.

"Clementine, there are a few more things wrong here. We just need to be very careful. From now on we’ll record everything we go through, everything that makes us feel iffy, especially about the ringleaders. And then we’ll discuss it," he said, tapping the back of his pen on the pages.

"What about the other crusaders? Don’t you want them involved?" I asked, thinking of our other squad mates.

"No, it’s fine. You can share it with them," he replied.

"Why won’t you do it? Don’t you want to get along with them?" I asked, curious about his mindset.

"Clementine, I don’t trust everyone so easily," he said. Still playing with his pen, he would roll it, toss it in the air, and grab it by the end.

"What made you trust me?" I asked, watching him raise his eyes without lifting his head.