“No,” Sarah said. Trista shook her head as well.
“Alright. Let’s head back to the entrance; we’ll post them up there, have them make some barricades or whatever they can use to defend it. Hopefully, Daryl will be back by then.” Drew looked around and raised his voice to get everyone’s attention.
“Alright everyone, we’re heading out to the tunnel we came in through. We need you guys to hold that position while we search for the rest of your friends and family. I’ll go first, Robbi, Trista, and Sarah will be the rear guard. If you have ranged attacks, come with me near the front. The rest of you stay back, keep together, and we’ll have you somewhere safe as soon as we can.”
It took more cajoling and shuffling than Drew would have liked, but they eventually got all the teens moving. They set up a base camp where they had broken in and Drew saw several of the kids start to fashion walls and barricades out of thin air. One of them created walls of ice, and he saw a few others try out some weak attack skills, swinging flaming swords. A particularly nerdy kid held what looked like a lightsaber. Although he clearly had no idea how to use it; his neighbors kept yelling at him to put it away before he hurt someone.
Shaking his head, Drew wondered how these kids still managed to be so…normal. The kids had started to gather in groups, and it was obvious the lines they had drawn around each other. Having been through a literal apocalypse and then captured and enslaved by a band of human sacrificing trolls, they still segregated into jocks, nerds, and cool kids.
From the tunnel they had come down, they heard one of the kids shout, “Something is coming!”
The four adults pushed through the crowd of kids who were trying to move in the opposite direction, Trista’s gun out and lining up a shot before Drew managed to slide into a spot next to her. Down the hall, they could see a form stumbling towards them.
Passing next to a torch, it became obvious that it was Daryl. Covered in blood and clutching his arm close to his chest, in obvious pain, the smile on his face seemed very out of place.
Sarah and Drew rushed out to meet him, “Stay here, guard the kids,” Drew shouted back to Trista and Robbi before they left.
When they got to Daryl, Sarah cast a heal, and immediately Daryl regained some of the color that had been missing from his face. He still cradled his arm though.
“I found her Drew. I found my wife,” he said, with a weak grin.
“That’s great Daryl… What happened?” Drew asked, gently lifting his arm and probing it with his fingers. There was an obvious fracture, his forearm bent at a significant angle. They led him back to the group, “Tell me when your cooldown is up Sarah. I’m gonna put this back in place and then I want you to heal it,” he said while he cast energize on the wounded scout.
“I found them,” Daryl’s voice was breathy, punctuated by grunts of pain. “Twenty trolls in a pit. Prisoners digging. My wife, digging. Hundreds more. Tried to get her. I slipped, landed wrong. Barely got out. Can’t focus on invisibility.” They were back with the rest, and Drew had Daryl sit down.
“Here, bite this,” he said giving the man a folded-up shirt he pulled from his backpack. “This is gonna hurt.” Glancing at Sarah, she nodded her head and Drew placed Daryl’s arm on the table, the only flat surface they had, then with a crunch pushed the bone back in place. Sarah immediately cast her heal again, which cut off Daryl’s muffled scream.
“There, you’re right as rain. We’re gonna go rescue her in a few minutes, so get your strength back,” Drew said, patting Daryl’s uninjured shoulder. He then turned to the group around him. “Get the kids ready; we’re leaving in ten minutes.”
Chapter Forty-One — Duty
Sarah wandered off to go deal with the kids. Trista stayed nearby while Robbi had only gotten halfway across the room before turning back to give basic pointers to the kids holding the swords. “Trista, can you give Daryl and I a minute?” Drew said, without looking up from Daryl.
“Sure thing IT2,” she said before heading out to talk to one of the groups of kids.
Drew crouched down next to the other man, his voice soft. “Two things, Daryl. One, you shouldn’t have gone off on your own like that. If we lost you…” Drew trailed off, trying to think of a way to explain to the other man how important his intelligence was. “We’d all be sitting ducks.” Daryl was still gingerly holding his formerly injured arm and he just nodded. “Especially now that we know you can’t hold your invisibility when you’re injured. I know your wife is important to you. I promised you I would help rescue her, and we will, but we both have more obligations than just our personal preferences.” He gestured around to the kids around him.
Daryl looked suitably chastised, so Drew let that section of their conversation drop. “Next, I need to know more about what you gave me. Who’s Kara?” Daryl looked confused by this.
“Kara? She’s one of the girls in the group.” When nothing registered on Drew’s face, Daryl shook his head, “You know, the brunette that isn’t Katie?”
Drew blinked again, was there another brunette in the group? “Okay. Let’s pretend I’m not a terrible person and know people’s names. How reliable is she? What do you think this other group Robbi is talking to is up to?”
Daryl’s switched to his telepathy. A glance at Robbi indicated his preference was not to be overheard. “Kara is pretty reliable. I mean, I don’t know her super well. As for the group, who knows? It could be another faction in the stadium that’s working against the senator, or they could have a different origin and objective completely. When we get back, you can ask her yourself.”
Frowning slightly, Drew gave a furtive glance around the room. “Alright, we’ll figure this out when we get everyone rescued. How are you feeling? You sound a lot better.”
“Better. I’m sorry for running off like that. I just…I needed to know. I needed to know that she was still alive, Drew.”
“It’s okay; like I said, I get it. When we get out of here, I’m going to tell you a story about what happened when I was asleep. Let’s just say there’s more to this whole Advent thing than we realized,” Drew said, helping the other man to stand.
Three kids were standing off to one side, clearly waiting for their one on one conversation to be over. Drew noticed that goth kid who had tripped the troll seemed to be the group’s leader. “We want to go with you.” His brave words were ruined slightly by the fact that he gave an almost audible gulp before saying anything.
Drew blinked, then looked at Daryl, who shrugged. “Hey, what’s your name?” he asked, while his eyes searched the room for Sarah. The Ensign did much better at these kinds of conversations.
“I’m Gary. This is Mike and Lewis,” Gary said, pointing to the two boys on either side of him. Mike was the lightsaber kid from earlier.
“You can call me Juice though,” the kid Gary had introduced as Lewis said.
“We’ve got red xatherite. We can help,” Gary continued after shooting Juice a glare.
“Gary, how many people in this room have effective red xatherite?”
“Uh, I dunno. Like five of us. Kim and Nora are staying behind to protect the others though.”
“And how many trolls can Kim and Nora kill if this room gets attacked?”
“I dunno, like two or three?”
“And how many more can you three kill?”
Gary gave the two guys backing him a look as if considering them. “More than that,” he said reluctantly. “But, that’s not the point, we want, no we need, to help rescue our families.”