chapter nine
no way out
The mission at the warehouse had been behind them for only a day.
They rested at the outpost, gathered their wits after such a narrow escape and harrowing experience where most of them had watched a person die right in front of their eyes for the first time.
Though Simone pestered her often, Walker refused to elaborate on what had happened to the hurt soldier and the vehicles they took to the warehouse, whether the group would be given freedom to start toward Dawn Zero again and how many weapons they had recovered. Nobody spoke about Lincoln, and if there was grieving, most grieved in silence.
Alina had scarcely spoken to anyone since the warehouse, still troubled by the death she had witnessed, and dragged herself from place to place, asking for a job to forget what she had seen only to be told there was nothing she could do.
That night, only one day after the mission, the group sat around the fire in the corner of the outpost between a towering wall of shipping containers and walls of the station, Alina's head on Felix's shoulder as they ate, spoke almost nothing about either the mission, what staying at the outpost would mean for them or the vehicles Walker had sent out again to intercept the Crawlers.
"I don't trust these guys." Felix said finally, turning his head toward the fire on the left where a few other soldiers ate and spoke among each other. He wasn't solitary in that regard - Alina agreed with him as well considering how many guns they had.
"What's not to trust. They gave us food, shelter." Mikkael continued.
"I'm with Lix on this one. They gave us shalter only after we almost died." Alina said, shaking away the thoughts of yesterday's warehouse mission. "Besides, you ever look at their uniforms?"
"No, why should I?"
"They're deserters." Said Dante. All heads swiveled to him as if shocked that he had spoken up. He shrugged and continued picking through his plate of roasted venison.
"Either way, we can't trust them." Felix continued. "Something's weird about them."
"Like what?" Mikkael said. "They're cannibals?"
The group shared a glance before instantly dropping it to the plates. "They could be." Said Denise, pushing the plate slightly away as if suddenly disgusted by the meal.
"We can't leave. Not yet. Lee is still our leader and without her, we're dead. But I suggest we figure out what's weird before shit hits the fan." Felix suggested. "If there's something, we bolt."
"We literally can't bolt." Dante said, meeting Alina's gaze. She gave him a barely perceptible nod and he continued. "I snooped around a bit. Lee has a device, probably connected to our trackers. If we bolt, she presses a button and we all drop dead."
"Bluff." Added Mikkael as Denise hit his arm. "What? Let's be real. If they're willing to waste resources on us, killing us in that way is pointless." It may be potinless, but that wouldn't erase what Dante had shown Alina, though she chose not to argue with Mikkael about it.
"It might be. But even if it is a bluff, let's not make them believe we didn't buy it. Leverage, that's all we need." Felix continued.
"False pretense. I like it." Mikkael laughed.
Dante looked around a little as if disturbed by the revelation he had made, checked the shivs in his bracer and stood with the group staring at him. Alina watched him scan the yard in search of something, and if she understood him well enough, it was probably the most inconspicuous route into the outpost station.
"Where are you going?" Asked Denise.
"To snoop around."
"I'll go with you." Alina stood, picking up her axe.
"Didn't say you could."
"Well, I did."
Dante only grumbled in reply, but complied and led them into the shadow beneath the station's roof where now no guards walked, his steps light while Alina's rang against the cement, but he showed no sign of being bothered by that. They walked in silence, and Alina battled with herself whether to ask him about the glare he directed at Felix at the warehouse or to be quiet in case the question would take him aback and force him to shut down again.
In the end, she decided not to bother about it anymore and put it down to the unpredictable situation that followed them at the warehouse as they reached the main station door and slipped into the scarcely lit blue station and its main lobby with scattered ticket buying counters around the room and a great waiting area in the middle, Walker met them on her way outside.
"Dante, Alina. Pleasure to see you're well." She holstered a comms device and smiled at them, the two sharing an uncertain glance.
"Walker." Dante said with a curt nod.
"Simone tells me you need to leave soon."
"We have another mission to finish." Alina stated, choosing not to refer to any details about the mission - perhaps Simone had said everything already, but if not, she elected not to risk it.
"To Dawn Zero, right?"
Guess that's off the table then. Alina thought back to her reluctance in sharing the details of the mission. "Yes." She said.
"And where are you two going?"
Alina was shocked to find how easily the lie had rolled down her tongue. "To find Simone."
"Well then, don't let me stop you. She's in your room." Walker smiled and went past them, patting Alina's shoulder before she slid through the door and left.
"She gives me the creeps."
Dante laughed feebly, but said nothing and continued down the room into a hall on the left where they climbed a set of rickety metal stairs leading to a spacious hallway with four set of doors on each side. However, Dante passed the second door on the right where Walker had appointed them, and carried onward to the forth one where he tried the door knob.
He leveled himself with the lock and prodding around using one of the shivs he carried while Alina stood by and watched the vacant hallway, straining her ears on whether she would hear someone approach them.
The door clicked open, Dante pulling her inside before sliding it shut behind them - they stood in an office, in its middle a table cluttered with paper, empty shelves pushed to the left wall and crates beneath them. A row of dusty windows through which moonlight glimmered shone ahead of them.
They walked in silence for a while, checking corners and crates, rifling through the stacked papers for any out of ordinary file or sign which could follow up on their secret.
"Anything catch your eye?" Alina asked as she snooped through the shelves littered with maps and notes about Crawler activity.
"I didn't throw it." Dante answered.
Alina snorted, but concealed it with a cough and spoke seriously. "Why do you take everything so literally?"
"It's hilarious." He said, and after a short pause whistled to her.
Alina joined him in the corner of the room where a discarded map laid on a few crates, fading red ink marking a place between the town of Lowlake a long way eastward of the outpost and some kind of facility, probably a chemical lab marked only with three red dots. Beneath that, written in big letters, was a single word - Lieutenant.
"We're close to him, aren't we?"
Dante nodded.
"Let's bring it to others." Alina said resolutely as Dante crumbled the map into his pocket. He slid open the door to check for a sign of soldiers before nodding to Alina, and together, they slipped back into the hallway, down the stairs and into the main hall. Soldiers rushed around, but spared them no second glance and luckily, Walker was nowhere to be found, otherwise they could have fallen into a lot of trouble.
Upon returning to the fire with the group's expectant glances their way, Dante threw the map in front of Felix, who instantly picked it up and surveyed the writing. "What's here?" Dante pointed to the map with his shiv, then settled next to Denise.
Felix shared a glance with Alina who shook her head. Nevertheless, he continued. "I'm guessing his base." He sat down the map and looked at each group member individually. "They've got a lot of supplies, but it's all heavily guarded. Stories say, few years back, there were three big survivor groups. Apparently, Lieutenant fused them all into one big army and has over a hundred people. Crusaders have lasted here longer than government establishments and army bases."
"I don't usually feel threatened, but that psycho of yours is closer than a death sentence." Mikkael said.
"Walker really doesn't know what's close to her, huh?" Denise stated.
"I doubt it. She knows very well. But there's some kind of deal. Trading most likely. Nobody goes get weapons on a whim, especially not people like army who are supposed to have them."
"You think they're cooperating?" Alina wondered.
"I can bet on it."
"So, what do we do?"
"Wait and see. If Lieutenant and Walker are corresponding, there's a good chance he already knows we're here."
A shiver passed through Alina at the mention of Lieutenant being anywhere near them, but she couldn't voice any of her concerns before a group of three drunk soldiers dropped beside their fire. Felix hurriedly bundled up the map into his pocket as the female soldier leaned on him while the other two dragged two nearby crates over to the fire and settled next to each other by her side.
"I wanna know." The drunk soldier said, tossing her hair over her shoulder. "What did all of you do before this? Start with you." She pointed to Denise.
Denise laughed, picking through her plate. "I was an accountant in West Hope Office."
"You don't look like it. You?" She tapped Felix's shoulder and he shifted away from her.
"Thief."
"Really? You must be brave."
"Not brave, just stupid."
"You?" She nodded to Alina.
"I worked in a bar. The boss pinned a debt on me. I got shackled with a tracking band and cleaned the West Hope streets for years after that."
The woman took a swing of her drink and laughing, gestured to Mikkael. "Blondie?"
"City planning."
"Is that how you stole from Congregation facility?" Denise asked.
"Yeah. My dad helped plan it, I happened to run into his plans one day and studied them until there was nothing to study. Then I helped maintain it. Didn't take long for some big boss to find me and offer me a bargain I couldn't refuse."
"Fire hair, you?" The woman laughed, and all gazes fell upon Dante as Alina watched a soldier from next to the woman whisper something to his companion before he returned his eyes to Dante.
Dante had already readied himself to stand and disappear, but Alina grabbed his wrist and lowered him without anyone noticing, shaking her head as he sat back down and gazed at the soldier.
"Name's Dante."
"Yeah, I don't care. What did you do?"
"Soldier."
"Very original. Where?"
"The Eagles."
The hush that fell onto the gathered was full of shock - the soldiers looked among each other with wide eyes as if almost disbelieving their ears while the group, all aside Dante, seemed to question why had the soldiers reacted in such way at the mention of that name.
"Eagles? You're kidding." The woman said finally. "How?"
"What are the Eagles?" Denise asked.
"Only the most elite army unit in history of elite army units. Back when I was trained, there was talk about the Eagles, people saying that they're ruthless and can't feel a thing."
Surely Dante wasn't like that, Alina thought, looking sideways at the serious man she didn't know any better now than at the beginning of their journey. Surely, he felt something other than pain and disappointment. But she wasn't sure how much of what Dante felt was real and how much was his training, for he seemed to show no emotion at all.
"Is it true that they beat you until you can't feel anything?"
"No."
"No?" She aimed her gun at him, but Dante gazed down its barrel without a change of emotion on his features. Her fingers wrapped around the trigger, her head falling to the side as the group around Dante readied to spring into action, and pulled the trigger. A hollow shot echoed through the silence - the magazine of her gun was empty. Dante stared at her unphased, hand on the shiv in his bracer. "I knew it. You Eagles are all ice cold. Pity, really." She holstered her gun and Dante relaxed his hand.
"Tell us about the Eagles." The soldier who had whispered with his companion said as the woman finished her drink of that awfully looking reddish liquid and set down the glass. "What you do, who you do. Stuff like that."
Dante looked at his shivs, then back at the soldier. "We don't do anything anymore. There's no Eagles."
"You mean, you're dissolved?"
"Forcibly." He really should explicate on what he meant by forcibly dissolved, Alina considered.
The woman laughed. "Then tell us what it was like. How many of you were there?"
"Forty-three."
"A sizeable unit."
"No. Fifteen survived."
"And the rest?"
"Dead."
"How?"
"They're dead! That's all you need to know." The group was stunned into silence by his shout, sharing glances between each other as if they could barely believe Dante had such a terrible temper.
"Okay, okay." The female soldier sighed. "And how many Eagles are there now, today?"
"Four."
"You and..."
"Angelo Aguilar Saraiva, Hanying Liao and Sofya Mikhaylovna Rodzyanko."
"And where are they? Why aren't you with them?"
"Angelo is on...business. Hanying has gone rogue and Sofya is hiding."
"Hiding where?"
"Doesn't matter."
That sentence concluded the matter of the Eagles and left a lingering silence as the three soldiers looked between each other again, stood and rejoined their previous circle while the group only considered Dante with an air of tension, but spoke nothing to further on their discussion of the army unit.
Alina looked to Dante again, and though his features, lit in orange light of the fire, displayed nothing, he toyed with the shivs beneath his bracer and watched the flames flicker. He was bothered by something, either revealing the truth about his unit or that he had been forced to do it, but nobody decided to pester him any longer about that part of his past.
Still overwrought and tired from the mission, they retired to their room to find Simone already asleep there, and soon settled into their own bags.
Alina was dreaming again. Dreaming about the warehouse, the Crawlers swarming her, the blood beneath her boots, that deathly firm hold of its decaying hand, and bullets rang out in her mind with each image, though in the darkness of her nightmare she couldn't find their source.
Then, a great explosion sounded and she snapped awake.
Her group was in disarray, packing their supplies and checking their weapons, their words drowned out by relentless swarms of bullets ricocheting on the outside and shouts of soldiers echoing along the hallway.
She sprung into action and packed her supplies without a moment of hesitation, stopping Felix who had thrown his pack over his shoulder. "Lix, what's happening?"
"We're under attack."
The Crawlers? It couldn't be as Walker had taken every measure to redirect them from the outpost. "By what?" She asked.
"People."
They rushed to meet with Simone in the middle of the room to dicuss their next move, though they didn't have much time to consider before either the outpost would fall or the soldiers would repel the attack. Simone paced the lenght of the room, hand on her gun.
"We're leaving." She said. "Walker is willing to give us weapons and a truck."
"We're letting them die?" Mikkael asked.
Simone shook her head. "We've got no other choice. Let's go." She threw open the door and ran into the hallway.
Slowly, the group followed down the stairs and into the main hall full of soldiers and discarded weapons as bullets rang on the walls around them, followed by shouts and orders, and rushing soldiers eager to step into the fight.
As they approached the main door, its glass window above shattered and a metallic clang carried through the room, a can rolling into Alina's sight with yellow flame on it producing tendrils of smoke. Dante ran ahead and kicked it to the right into the counter, but the smoke had already spread and visibility had worsened so much Alina could barely see a finger in front of her face, much less her group.
"Dante, what was that?" Denise said, but Dante only quieted her and produced a shiv from his bracer with a metallic screech as they moved closer to the door, or where door could be.
Hasty footsteps and a clang of heavy weaponry sounded on the marble floor as the door slid shut behind them, and Alina froze in her place, hefting the axe closer to her chest as she attempted to decipher the figures that moved across the floor, and whether any of them were her group she had lost in the smoke.
A person wrapped in a black techsuit with a sliver of green on their helmet and gloves appeared in her view, and she moved forward with leaden legs, to avoid the figure slinking about with expert step through the smoke. She reckoned the masked figures were on the hunt for someone, most probably her group, but now dressed as soldiers they blended in with the rest of the environment.
Alina hurried toward the door, shadows and outlines in her sight of which none looked remotely like her companions, and slipped through the smoke into the clear outside.
Instantly, she fell behind a column as rapid fire of ringing bullets rattled the wall where she previously stood, and found Felix laying down behind a cement divider, flanked by other group members spread out through the station patio. Simone was returning fire on the left by another column while Denise took care of the figures crossing into the station.
"It's Lieutenant!" She fell next to Felix, and he glanced at her with fear.
"We need to leave right now." He lifted himself and crawled to the column, and as three bullets hit the wall behind them, jumped behind its coverage to avoid being hit. "Simone! It's Crusaders!"
"What?!" She fired into the yard before turning to them, and pulled Dante to squeeze next to her as he kicked away a masked figure attempting to get inside the station.
"Black suit, green lines! Alina saw it!"
"Denise, pull to the west! Mikkael, Alina, let's go!" She switched into a run down the patio, pulling Dante along who stared back at Alina and Mikkael before waving them over, telling them to hurry.
Alina pushed Mikkael ahead, and he passed by toward the edge of the station just as another masked figure ran to the patio, aiming a gun at her. Felix threw himself at the figure and the bullet ricocheted off the cement ground as Felix pushed the person down the stairs, grabbing Alina's hand.
Bullets rang as they ran toward the edge, shouts echoed as the figures followed them. At the edge, they jumped onto the ground, but Alina never landed on her feet. A sliver of sharp pain passed through her shoulder as she crumbled to the ground with a scream, warm blood pooling beneath her hand. Tears sprang to her eyes with the prickling pain that continued in her shoulder before Felix picked her up.
With shaky legs she ran into the garage of makeshift cement where dozen vehicles were parked, following Felix who held upon her other shoulder toward a blue truck parked in the corner. Walker, who had so far been returning the fire, lowered her gun and pushed them to the truck.
"Half a way to Dawn Zero. You've got supplies and guns." She threw the key to Simone. "I'll come collect your debts, Lee." And rising her gun again, she fired into the yard where a figure approached. "Go!"
Dante hurriedly collected their packs and threw them into the back as Felix pushed Alina inside, settling next to her and holding a hand to her wound while the group filed into the vehicle. Simone turned on the engine and even before Denise could close the shotgun door, she pressed on the gas.
She navigated through the firing, through soldiers and masked figures while ducking and evading shots that rang across the truck's surface, and soon burst onto the open road now surrounded by at least fifteen vehicles, luckily empty, before the outpost and the rapid fire faded behind them.
The road was wide ahead as the night gave way to early morning.
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a/n:
for the record, hanying and sofya are two female eagles.
and so, this marks the end of part one and more or less peaceful chapters. now heavy stuff will follow. notice how i didn't kill any main character yet? let's get ready to change that.
so yes, part two follows and we're about to learn everything about liuetenat, new hope and the mission.