I N V A D E R S **also being trashed and rewritten soon**

||Chapter 16 - "We're going to do WHAT?!"||

"But do not ask the price I pay

I must live with my quiet rage

Tame the ghosts in my head

That run wild and wish me dead

Should you shake my ash to the wind

Lord forget all of my sins

And let me die where I lie

Beneath the curse of these lovers eyes."  

-Mumford & Sons 

  ☽☓☾ 

Bryce

She looked lost and afraid as the crowd pushed past her, latching on to Winston's arm as they tried to make their way to the door. Avaidtay and her rascal twin brother waved to them from the entrance, waiting patiently for them to catch up.

No!  I wanted to scream at them. That was not proper emergency drill procedure. War waits for no one, and if this had been the real deal...

I shook my head and turned away from the ledge of the balcony overlooking the cafeteria. They would hear it from me later. 

And yet, I had a hard time suppressing my guilt from what I had done earlier. Had I really made her endure two hundred push ups just to prove a point? I really was an ass. 

But she did it. She actually did it.

I couldn't feel too guilty for letting it out just for awhile. But I could feel uneasy. I had absolutely no control over my actions in that hall. I could have killed someone and felt no remorse until after I had regained control of my own mind. It was like two different people playing tug-of-war with my brain constantly. More than ever since she had shown up. 

Even then, it was pushing. Always pushing in the back of my conscience with its cold little fingers.

I blocked it and shoved it down as hard as I could as I made my way down the steps and followed the thinning crowd towards the Lower Levels. After pounding down six flights of steps and finding the door marked with a number four, I shoved it open and entered the Fourth Lower Level Training Facility. The entrance hall was filled with floor-to-ceiling racks of fighting equipment; vests, guns, and any weapon under the sun, all stocked up in the Nightcorps' prized LLTF4. Past the tunnel shaped entrance hall, it opened up to the enormous "gym". After the jump, there were very life-like sequence drills complete with small to average size death machines and small to average size...booby traps? Is that what you would call a trap door that has a pit full of spikes at the bottom of the pit below, impaling its victims as they fall? 

Not just when they reach the bottom, as they fall. 

I looked around the entrance hall. My Crew, among others were milling about, strapping vests on and grabbing guns off the shelves. I found Stella near a corner, looking just as bewildered as before and having difficulty with the straps of her vest.  Winston, the fool, was no where to be found. I pushed away my sizzling anger. He just left  her there.

I would wait. Get my own gear on, grab my favorite knives and my very special Monica.

Monica is a personally modified "photon stun rifle", in case you were wondering. Don't worry, it's almost completely non-lethal... as long as I set it to stun.