A new plan was devised upon the discovery of Tommy's artifact, and the two vehicles moved at a moderate speed, stopping to report the Gob's movements under the effect of the Tracking Rune.
It was a startling moment, the blame mostly falling on Tommy, whose impulsive behavior and agitation against Adam had driven him to clash head-on before revealing his item and its valuable use. Nevertheless, this revelation presented new hope for finding Megan and a revival of the almost-failed operation.
The group set off with Tommy at the center of their formation, the spearhead in his hand. The moment they spotted the wounded Gob that was traveling through the ruined streets with a destination in mind, Tommy activated the rune on his spearhead and reported that he now had a tracker of sorts on the Gob, with a range of about 300 feet.
With that, the group decided to call the cars and maintain a distance from the Gob while Tommy kept updating them on the Gob's direction.
"So, your sister gave that to you, told you not to tell anyone about it until you could attune with it?" Kave asked Tommy about the runic item.
"Yes," Tommy replied meekly, realizing that everyone in this car was pissed at him in some way, shape, or form.
"Explain this 'attuning' thing." Kave pressed on.
"So… you know the thing you have to do to awaken the System with a rune?" Tommy asked, looking between Adam and Kave; the two were simply staring at him, waiting for him to explain.
"I didn't awaken with a rune." Kave replied and then pointed at Adam, "He had different circumstances."
"That's weird." Tommy exclaimed, "Professor Hendrick had a theory that runes were key to the System."
"That's not important now. Just tell us what 'attuning' means?" Kave asked.
"That's what the Alfari called it. We used to call it bonding or syncing, at first. Once you acquire an item with a rune, you try to focus your will through it. Usually, it takes a few hours, and then you'd be able to use it."
Adam and Kave looked at each other with wide eyes, realizing that this was why Kave wasn't able to use the Cloak of the Skulker, which he was already wearing.
This 'attuning' process makes such runic items more exclusive to its current user, and it would take a significant amount of time to bond with a new user.
Adam could confirm that his experience with the Puppeteer rune was something similar. He was dying, and through a lot of tenacity and willpower, he could use the rune, even though its item had been destroyed, and somehow the rune was now inside him, which was different from the rest of the runes they had seen with Hendrick's students.
As for Kave, his bonding situation was a little different, since he was bonding with Elena, rather than a rune.
Do the Wartopians count as runes or magical creatures, since they are Adam's summons? Kave had to turn to his journal and record the question.
Questions like that kept popping up the more they questioned Tommy. Turns out he was helping Professor Hendrick most of the time, and through that he knew a lot about the discoveries and theories the Professor had made.
But just as they were getting into more details about the mechanisms of the runes, Sergeant Elena at the front passenger seat stopped the convoy with a message through the radio and immediately got out along with Buzz and Sharp flanking her. Adam peaked his head with obvious curiosity, before following them out.
The sun was already up and everything was visible from where everyone stood, and it seemed that the fight had dragged somewhere else, with Gobzkin and Raider corpses littering the streets.
"Careful, this could be a sniper's nest," Buzz warned Adam, telling him to stay behind him.
"No." Sharp, on the other hand, dismissed it. "The angle is too low; this was a gunfight."
"You can tell what happened here?" Adam asked.
Sharp nodded, but it was Elena who replied:
"I didn't give him the name 'Sharp' for nothing."
With a wink, Elena gave Sharp the green light to go ahead and do his magic. Sharp looked around the place for a second before walking in a certain direction and pointing.
"She came from here—a woman. She was wounded, but she could still run," Sharp said and watched the chaos around him as it rearranged itself into a scene from the past. "It was dark…
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It was dark; she couldn't see well. She had to rely on the weapon she had to guide her through the arcane means of the rune adorning her wrist as a bracelet.
She escaped the raiders' garage, but to do so, she really had to unleash hell on that place, and now hell was hot on her heels.
She was trying her best to avoid leaving a trail, but since she had to abandon her jacket in order to confuse the raiders into thinking she had climbed into a vent, she was now more susceptible to injury, with a wound over the back of her shoulder that she had no time to treat.
Thanks to her quick thinking, she managed to stuff herself inside the sofa bed in the office where she was trapped. Following that, she waited until the raiders broke into the office, found a vent hatch open with her jacket beside it, and then they started running as soon as other raiders came.
This gave her a window to walk out of the sofa bed, collect the medicine bag she hid behind a drawer, and she started running back to the vehicle.
It became clear to her that escaping through the front, the way she had sneaked in, would be impossible, as bullets were flying all over the place. However, there was a ladder leading to a hatch in the ceiling, and this was the only option to take at the moment.
She immediately scaled the ladder, hoping that no raider up there would notice her. She found that the place up there was used for defense, with three raiders hiding behind sandbags and shooting at the attackers.
They were already distracted, so she pushed herself up, and just as she was about to stand on the roof, a fourth raider emerged from behind and struck her in the back with the stock of his assault rifle.
Megan fell with a pained cry, but she had a knife strapped to her knee, and she went for it before pushing herself up quickly to stand between the raider and the three armed men. He thought about shooting her, but then he realized that he might as well shoot his comrades. But before he could think clearly and shoot her in the leg, Megan threw her knife at him, causing him to instinctively block the blade with the body of his firearm, giving her the time to pull her pistol out and… BANG! BANG!
These were the last two bullets she had in her pistol, and the other raiders defending from behind the sandbags were now fully aware of her. Seeing their comrade die, they hurriedly aimed their guns at her, but she was already running towards the guy she had just shot, and as he fell, she went prone behind his corpse to use it as cover.
The raiders feared being pincered, so they prioritized killing Megan. However, she also prioritized killing them, as she now had the assault rifle of their fallen comrade.
An exchange of bullets in the darkness was a risky move, but Megan had a distinct advantage no matter how bad her situation looked. Her True Aim rune wasn't just a mere accuracy buff; it was a target finder, providing a sensory feeling of where every bullet would hit.
Each trigger pull was a risk, as the muzzle flash would expose her location, so she needed to stay low, shoot fast, and trust her senses.
She shot the first, missed the second as he managed to take cover in a split-second, and then shot the third right through his neck.
The second man emerged from cover behind a large AC roof unit, but Megan was already taking cover behind the same unit as she rolled there as fast as she could.
She immediately went out of cover as well, while lying on the ground, trying to shoot the man from below, but his reflexes were fast, and he immediately stomped on the gun barrel the moment he sensed movement. The rifle still discharged, shooting him in the foot he was standing on.
With a pained scream, the man fell, leaning over the AC unit. Megan tried to retrieve the rifle as fast as she could, but the man pushed himself against her as fast as he could, pushing her down.
He crawled towards her, and she crawled back, trying to create distance to allow herself to aim and shoot, but he wasn't letting her. Amidst the painful groans and screams, he toppled over her, and the two rolled twice to the side. She screamed and tried to hit his injured foot twice, but as he yanked her aside, trying to take the rifle away, he didn't realize that the unwalled section of the roof had ended, pulling them both to the mercy of gravity.
I was lucky! She thought to herself as she landed. Not only did she land on the man, fully cushioning an approximately 20-foot fall for her (6 meters), she walked out of it very lightly, only feeling pain in her elbow, but something scratched her as she scraped against the wall.
She had medical supplies; all she needed was to run, and luck still smiled upon her. The place she landed in was part of the alley network connecting the area, and she was near the van her friends had been in. However, once she reached the place, she found no one in the van, only a note explaining their current situation.
Luckily for her, they still left her rifle hidden under the car, so she grabbed it, stuffed the paper in her back pocket, and started escaping.
She ended up on the way leading to the rendezvous point mentioned in the note, but she had to fight her way through a group of Raiders and Gobzkin that was on her tail, each aiming for her for its own twisted reasons.
The fight erupted all night long; both the monster Gobzkins and the Raiders killed each other or were killed by the one they thought was prey. Before the sun rose, Megan was already gone, but she dropped her note after a tussle with a Gobzkin, and Sharp picked it up for Adam.
"What would a piece of paper do with a Gob?" Sharp asked with a smirk.
Adam received the note, and as soon as he read it, realizing it was addressed to Megan, with the last line catching his attention.
"What does it say?" Kave asked, joining him.
"Meet us up at the fairy tale shop old John never stopped looking at." Adam quoted the last line of the message before handing it over to Kave.
Adam examined the message before passing it to Ivan, who frowned in similar contemplation. But when the message was passed over to Tommy, he immediately had a lightbulb moment.
"I know that!" He said and pointed down the road ahead. "That's Toby teasing Megan about a church. He's an atheist; he's telling her to meet him at that one old church. The one the statue of John Harper in Harper Campus is facing."
"The First Parish of Crownbridge." Ivan immediately turned to Adam, agreeing with Tommy. "It's 10 minutes from here if the roads are clear."
"We go from Massachusetts Avenue. We'll go faster, since it's wider." Kave suggested.
"Cars, now!"
Adam was the first to run towards the wheel of the van, telling Hammerhead to back off and urging everyone to ride up just before he accelerated rapidly.
Finally, there was a clear clue about where Megan went, perhaps a cliché like a note left behind, but Adam wouldn't let that stop him from rushing to wherever she was, even if it were the bowels of hell.
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