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51. Jasmine

"Why is it taking so long?" Jasmine asked Edgar.

Like her, he was sitting on one of the boulders that the ropes were tied to, and like her, he was looking into the chasm and listening to what was going on, but unlike her, he might actually hear and see something.

He shrugged. "I don"t know. But if I had to guess, they are opening each stasis chamber and checking who is alive and who is dead."

Swallowing the bile rising in her throat, Jasmine clutched the metal mug with the coffee Edgar had made for her. He"d also warmed up a canned meal for her, and they had shared it in companionable silence.

All in all, Edgar was a good guy. He had some rough edges that shouldn"t be too difficult to smooth out, but she wasn"t sure she wanted to put in the effort.

Finally, when the ropes went taut, Dagor and Negal climbed out of the cavern a few moments later, and Jasmine rose to her feet. "Are they alive?"

Dagor cast her a sad look that had her heart plummet into her gut. "The royal twins are alive, but barely so, and the rest are dead. We are bringing the two chambers up."

"Thank the goddess." Jasmine was so relieved that she didn"t ask how or why the twins were alive while everyone else in the pod had died.

Sitting back down on the boulder, she watched with bated breath as Negal and Dagor pulled on the ropes, their muscles straining with effort, and when the chamber finally crested the top of the crater, Edgar helped them to carefully maneuver the stasis chamber out of the chasm.

The chamber was bulky and unwieldy, and its sleek metal surface glinted dully in the sunlight as Dagor secured the ropes so he and Negal could guide it to rest on the ground.

A few moments later, Aru and Julian were pulled up, and as they scrambled over the edge, they were just as covered with dirt as Dagor and Negal.

They all just stood there for a moment, staring down at the alien chamber. For some reason, Jasmine had expected it to be rectangular, like the healing chamber the alien in the Stargate movie had used to regenerate his body, but the object in front of her was oval and curved, with no edges that she could see. It must have been difficult to secure the ropes around such a slick chamber, and now she had a mini panic attack thinking about the alien device slipping out of the ropes and crashing on the bottom of the cavern.

Staring at the chamber grimly, Edgar ran a hand through his hair. "It"s not gonna fit in the chopper unless we leave the doors open on both sides and it sticks out."

Julian nodded. "We need to tie it securely, so it doesn"t fall out, and do the same with the other chamber." He glanced to the other helicopter, where Norbu was taking a nap.

Edgar followed his gaze and shook his head. "I wouldn"t trust Norbu with the live ones. I"d rather take them one at a time."

"I agree." Julian let out a breath. "I"ll come with you. The two of us should be able to carry the chamber to the hotel while shrouding what we are carrying." He looked at the stasis chamber and chuckled. "I wish we could use the excuse of shooting a science fiction movie. It would have made explaining these things easy. But regrettably, we don"t have the proper set-up."

"This thing is heavy," Dagor said. "And it"s not easy to grip. You will have to improvise something to transport it."

Jasmine tried to picture the operational logistics. "Where will we put them?" she asked. "There are no rooms available in the hotel, and our rooms are barely big enough for us, let alone two giant stasis chambers." She worried her lower lip. "But maybe we can squeeze in one."

She wanted the one with the prince in her room, but she couldn"t ask for it without sounding like a weirdo.

Julian rubbed a hand over his chin. "We can make it work. We"ll put one in your room and the other in mine and Ella"s. It will be a tight fit, but it"s not like we have any other option. I don"t want to leave them outside on the truck."

Edgar looked unhappy with the arrangement, his jaw tight and his eyes stormy, but he said nothing. Nodding his acceptance, he turned to help load the first chamber into the helicopter.

After securing it with ropes, Edgar and Julian climbed in, and as the rotors whirred to life and the aircraft lifted off the ground, Jasmine felt a pang of anxiety twist her gut. What if the chamber slipped out of the ropes holding it to the craft and broke into a million pieces on impact?

What if Edgar made a dangerous maneuver on purpose?

It was in his best interest to get rid of the prince, and if he made it look like an accident, no one could even blame him for it.

Banishing the disturbing thought from her mind, she turned to Aru. "What"s going to happen now? Will Edgar make the rounds until all the chambers are transported out of here?"

"You can fly out on the next round," the god said. "We will take out just one more chamber, and the rest will have to wait for Yamanu to arrive. He can shroud Edgar while he"s flying back and forth. We don"t want the soldiers in the base to notice all this extra traffic. We also need him to shroud the area when we detonate explosives inside the cavern to bury the pod under rubble.

Jasmine frowned. "I don"t know much about things like that, but can Yamanu also conceal the helicopter from the base"s radar?"

Aru smiled, giving her an appreciative look. "He can"t. We will take care of the radar in another way."

He didn"t elaborate on the methods he would use, and she didn"t ask because the explanation would probably not help her understand the technology involved.

"What about you? With the stasis chamber taking up the entire back of the helicopter, only one seat is left next to Edgar. Is he going to come back for you? Or are you coming back with the other pilot?"

"We will stay to guard the pod," Aru said.

Jasmine glanced at the other helicopter and wondered whether Aru wanted to stay behind because he didn"t want to fly with the other pilot, or perhaps because he didn"t want the other helicopter to fly back to town so that fewer flights would register on the base"s radar.

"I get it. If Edgar doesn"t trust the local pilot with the stasis chambers, I can"t blame you for not wanting to fly with him. As for me, I"m more than happy to wait for Edgar to return and take me with him."

She suspected that the gods might have other reasons for wanting to stay behind. They probably hoped to extract whatever technology they could before burying it.

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