"You're kidding, right?"
"No, I'm not. The masters of the Code were very meticulous in disguising their places of work for fear of exposure before their plans could come to fruition." Jane said in a perturbed tone at my lack of belief in her.
"You speak like you weren't one of them, but it was technologies like the ones you worked on that brought the Code's bloody two-year reign to life!"
She looked hurt by my words and in some ways I was glad and in others I was ashamed.
In a hurt tone she said, "You make it sound like we did what we did willingly. Do you know what kind of torture they threatened us with?"
"I would've killed myself before doing what you did!" I stated harshly in return.
"I thought about attempting to do that many times!" She fired back just as harshly, as I had spoken, but then lamely she finished with, "but I didn't."
At last an honest response from her.
She looked away, as she thrust a paper out to me, "The coordinates of the temple and what the device looks like."
I took the paper from her hand and headed for the door of the apartment.
"Utah?"
I looked back and she said, "Please be careful."
I didn't say anything in return, but just left the apartment.
Oh she was going to pay for this! My skin felt like I had been chewed upon a thousand or more times. My ancestors may have dwelled in jungles similar to this habitat, but I was far removed from that time. I only wished that I was as far removed from the sweat soaked humidity and voracious bugs, as I was with the continent of Africa.
I hate humidity!
I hated bugs and more alarmingly given the habitat I was now in, I hated snakes!"
I peered through the heavy undergrowth at the Incan temple long since overtaken by the forest. Imagery from Indiana Jones movies I had watched as a kid kept playing over in my mind; weighted floor tiles that flipped into oblivion, poisonous arrows that shot out from holes in the wall, and worst of all a huge writhing pile of entangled snakes on the floor, as tarantulas and scorpions skittered up and down the walls and across the ceiling.
I shivered involuntarily at the prospect of those horrors.
Stop it your scaring yourself half silly!
Did they even have scorpions in South America?
Whether they did or not, they still had plenty of other undesirables to deal with. I started forward again toward the temple, as my observations told me that no one was in the immediate vicinity.