Even with a blade pointed at his neck, Adam felt that the previous sensation of doom looming around him grew much lighter as he announced Megan's nickname as Magpie.
"Only her friends call her that," said the woman wielding the blade at his neck.
"Y—Yeah," he replied, stuttering a bit. "I'm the one who invented that nickname, though."
His reply surprised the woman, causing her to immediately drop her threatening posture.
"You're Adamant?!"
Adam hesitantly turned, not expecting to hear his gamer tag out of the blue, and the woman he saw putting away a long machete was strangely familiar.
"I… I know you," Adam said, seeing an African-American girl of his age taking a step away from him with suspicion in her eyes. He quickly introduced himself: "My name is Adam."
"I know," she said, and looked him up and down without dropping the suspicious look in her eyes. "I'm Candice. Why you here, Adam?"
Adam lowered his hands, but he found that Candice still had a pistol aimed at him, shaking her head as if to warn him not to think of anything funny.
"I'm… My group and I ran into Megan's group the other day. They were in bad shape," he replied.
"And you have them?" Candice asked, pressing ahead. "Why aren't they here?"
"Our encounter was brief; we gave them brief support so they could run, but we definitely saw each other. They were fighting in Intersection 44/33 with two monsters. There was a dead Gigant…"
"A dead Gigant!" Candice's eyes widened, and the believability of Adam's story narrowed. "Who the fuck could do that?"
"My thoughts exactly, but the Gobzkin and Hosts didn't seem to care much except for killing each other over the corpse. We saw Megan in the fray while we were scouting."
"I get it, but I don't get the part where Megan told you to come here." Candice narrowed her eyes.
"She met some kind of trouble after we ran into her. She made a transmission we were monitoring on our radios. She left a message only I could decipher. It led me here. She needs help."
Adam's words made sense and were nothing but the truth, but Candice didn't drop her pistol, not a twitch.
"Alright, we'll see if your story is straight with the others once we get them," Candice said as she glanced sideways.
Adam frowned, realizing she seemed to have sent some of her people, hidden in a nearby building, to pursue his group, who were in another building nearby.
"That's not a good idea," Adam replied immediately, his heart beginning to race.
"You bet?"
"I bet. My people are serious."
Candice didn't seem to like the sound of it and changed her position. A few seconds of utter silence passed; both she and Adam were calm and collected, but then…
"Let me talk to them. I can signal them to come peacefully. No need for anyone to get hurt," Adam said.
"You wish!"
"Your call."
Adam's words had barely faded before something appeared in Candice's vision from the direction Adam had previously come. As she expected, individuals were coming with their hands behind their heads, but as Adam expected, they weren't his people.
"Shit!" Candice aimed her gun at Adam's head now that she saw six of her team being led ahead at gunpoint.
"He told you not to be a bad host, didn't he?" Candice heard a feminine voice from behind her group.
"I did, Sergeant," Adam replied.
"And he told you we came in peace?" the voice asked again.
"Shut it!" Candice stepped behind Adam with her gun still aimed at his head. "Where are the others? I've sent ten."
"Tell her." Elena urged the young man she was holding at gunpoint to speak.
"They're alive. They are taped up in the other building," the young man said.
"See? Everyone is alive. We didn't come to cause trouble," Adam spoke calmly, trying to get Candice to see reason.
"…"
She didn't reply, but a couple of seconds later, more people appeared from her direction.
"Alright, that's enough."
This time, it was a male's voice, and he came in a group of ten, each armed and armored. Adam looked at him and felt he looked familiar as well; in fact, everyone around here felt familiar.
"Hey, isn't that Meg's boyfriend from campus?" one of the young men who had just joined asked.
"Ex-boyfriend," the man in the lead added. "Adam, if I recall."
"You're Raj." Adam recognized him from his hazy memory, as well as because he was the only Indian in the group.
"She sent you?" Raj asked.
Adam nodded, retelling the story of encountering Megan's group to Raj and highlighting the fact that he and his group were here. Raj looked past his people, who had been taken hostage, then spoke to Elena:
"He called you Sergeant. You're military?"
"Yes," Elena replied.
"What organization?" he asked.
"There is no organization left to cling to, but we keep the ranks," Elena replied, then deceptively added, "Our Commander was kind enough to send my team after Adam's girlfriend when we got the distress signal."
"And what are you here for?" Raj asked.
"Your help," Elena replied.
"Your Commander doesn't have the numbers?" Raj narrowed his eyes, scanning the men-at-arms sharply, one by one.
"The best he could do was five. Adam and Kave came for their friend, but my priority is making more friends." Elena's reply was sharper.
"It is hard to make friends at gunpoint, right?" Raj spoke with a light tone, looking between the hostages and Adam.
"I agree." Without further negotiations, Elena immediately raised her gun and pushed the young man in front of her, Sharp, and Hammerhead forward.
As three were released, Raj turned his eyes to Candice, who was reluctant to let Adam go but still put her gun away. Then Elena let the other three walk off before walking to Adam, checking if he was alright.
Raj stepped ahead and greeted Elena:
"I'm Raj. I oversee the defense around here."
"Sergeant Elena Skarn," she replied without humoring him with more information.
Raj didn't seem to mind and asked for proof of their claims. Elena ordered Buzz to call base and have Rusty play the recording of Megan's distress call over the speaker. It put Raj's mind at ease regarding the secrecy of their location, but still made him worry about Megan.
"How many members were in Megan's team when you ran into her?" he asked.
The question was difficult to answer since it was all in a heated situation, but Sharp somehow had a reply:
"Five, mostly injured."
"Fuck! That's half of them gone." Raj shook his head in frustration. "If the broadcast was five hours ago, it's hard to imagine she'd survive a situation like that."
"She trusted me to find you, even hoping I'd hear the suicide broadcast she made and sent me here," Adam said, standing firm against Raj.
"I'm sorry, man. I can't risk more people on this." Raj shook his head with a regretful expression.
Going back and forth, Adam and Raj argued, each desperate to make sense of the situation. Seeing that, Elena found it vital to step forward:
"You sure you want to do that?" she asked Raj with a stern look in her eyes. "Another group has sent a team of military-trained individuals to rescue a member of your own, and you don't want to risk it? Are you sure this is sending the right message to your people? That you'd abandon them just because it got a little hairy?"
Elena's words turned Raj's expression into a deep frown as he looked at the faces around him. Elena's words cut deep into their ranks, and it seemed that further persisting in his position might hit morale.
"If you are just overseeing defense, it means there is a leader. We'll meet him, guns holstered and all," Elena said, putting her gun back in its holster and stepping forward between Raj's group without lowering her guard.
Raj felt uncomfortable around Elena, but the more he resisted, the worse it would look. He may have been the strongest awakened in the camp, but this didn't make him the one everybody listened to. Only Professor Hendrick was the one everybody listened to.
"Call it in; we have visitors," Raj said and turned away.
A smile formed on Elena's face as she winked at Adam, who followed her. Kave's idea was simple, but it worked: civilians should be easily intimidated by military people like Elena. God knows how many times Adam and Kave had been manipulated by the Dorsetts.
After walking a couple of blocks, Adam's group came upon a large factory complex with a large metal gate. Within the gate, there was a door, and it seemed the group was able to get some power to the place.
Most of the surrounding buildings were also secured, making the competence of this group of survivors seem much better than anything Adam had seen before.
The door was opened by more armed young people whom Adam also recognized. Putting two and two together, Adam realized that most of Megan's class seemed to have survived—a lucky situation, for sure.
But just as they walked into the main building, they were greeted by a large survivor camp hidden within the factory building, separated by makeshift walls and corridors. The smell of people and the noises and murmurs revealed their number to be over a hundred, bringing a smile to Adam's face.
Just as the group of seven walked in with the armed students, a couple of hooded strangers descended from the metal stairs, following an elderly man whom Adam also recognized as one of Megan's professors. In fact, Adam had attended a course on Robotics with that same professor three years ago.
Just as Adam's attention settled on the professor's familiar face, the hooded strangers drifted past him, making for the door, intending to depart. Yet, before they could make it, a certain Solarium Sergeant Mechanic of the men-at-arms drew two sharp, audible breaths.
Her eyes, which were the very soul of calmness mere moments ago, now brimmed with furious crimson.
A low guttural murmur escaped her lips, followed by a single, stark word that instantly shattered the room's composure, plunging all present into a state of extreme alarm:
"Xenos!"
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
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