"Wake up!" RJ shouted. He flipped a blanket off one sleeping camper, who groaned and rolled over on the ground. "Big day!" He scratched the canvas of Kenna's tent with his fingers. "Get out of there, Sleeping Beauty."
"Fuck off," Kenna hissed from inside.
RJ laughed, unhurt. "You all are going to want to hear what we have to say! Make your way to the campfire in ten minutes!"
RJ loped back to the leaders' area and pushed the blanket aside. Neither Banner nor Rina acknowledged him. Typical.
"I woke everyone up," he said. Banner made a noncommittal noise. "'Wow, RJ, thanks! I'm so glad we have you to do the chores we don't want to do.'"
"We're taking a look at our presentations," Rina snapped. "You should be too. This is a very important meeting."
"No need," RJ replied. "I made this PowerPoint thing with audio—using this little gadget." He'd walked over to his makeshift bed and pulled a metal, circular device out from under it. "I took it from the facility."
Banner glanced up. "We were there for weapons. That thing could be dangerous."
RJ rolled his eyes. "The only thing it does, Dad, is make holographic presentations. Trust me."
Banner eyed him.
"I promise! I spent three whole days reprogramming it to English and checking it for any dangerous abnormalities."
Banner and Rina looked at one another, then back at their presentations. RJ tossed the "Presentationator" onto his bed, then flopped down beside it. Seven more minutes passed before Banner and Rina stood, gathered any necessary papers and props, and headed out of the tent. RJ followed.
"Good morning," Banner said to the campers. "Today, there will be no training, no chore tree, no lounging around. We are beginning, at last, our final fight to free ourselves of Liivat."
RJ smirked as some of the campers whistled and cheered.
"It will be a long, strenuous journey, filled with danger. I am willing to take the chance of dying, if it means the possibility of getting home. I know that you all feel the same." Banner took a stack of paper from where it was leaning against a tree. "I've made these visual aids to make my speech easier to follow.
"Lii DNA works differently than human or Muyl DNA. It is made in the tentacle-like things attached to their heads called teayi, and then given to the rest of the body in a complicated process. Once it is in the rest of the body, it is weakened, and therefore will not be of use to us. We need the DNA in the teayi. We've calculated that we will need four Lii per Goroea Tower. Usually, this would mean that we'd need over a million Lii, but lucky for us, Doc and RJ discovered that they could amplify the range of a Tower by rerouting a few machines. Because of this, we only need to add DNA in every fifth Tower.
"The Towers are four miles apart. We will need to disable every Tower that will not be using Lii DNA. We are having Kledao construct a message that RJ will send to all Goroea Tower workers saying that they are to leave their posts and not come back until further notice. The Muyl has promised that it will not attack the Lii while we are working, as our jointed plan will make for a much more thorough cleansing.
"But back to the amount of Lii we will need. By only needing every fifth Tower activated, our total number of Lii is down to two-hundred thirty-four thousand, three-hundred ninety-six Lii needed. As you know, this is still a lot. Rina, would you like to take over?"
Rina stepped up to the fire pit with a make shift folding table. She opened it, then took out small wooden objects from her pocket. "This table represents the space surrounding us. This" —she pointed to drawn-on, misshapen oval— "is Filla, the large saltwater lake that houses Galie, the capital city of sorts of the Galida Lii. This" —she pointed to a different oval a little ways away from the first— "is Logri Cu, the mountain that houses Nei, the Neda's capital city. We are here." She slapped a circular piece of wood a few inches under Filla. "Roughly twelve miles from the Galida city if we were to go in a straight line. Goroea Towers line every single place the Lii live. This means that there are two million, nine-hundred twenty-nine thousand, nine-hundred forty-six Towers in total—including the outer villages. We need to fill five-hundred eighty-five thousand, nine-hundred eighty-nine Towers with Lii DNA."
