A/N: This one is extra long to make up for the time I haven't updated.
Thank you for the reviews, keep 'em coming!
"You said you have medical supplies?" The woman asked in a rush. By now, the soldiers had sent the crowd away and she was the only civilian in sight.
"Yeah, but not with us. My head doctor has the infirmary stocked up and her teams are prepped. Just tell me what you need."
"There is a patient, a little girl, she needs a drug that I ran out of a while ago but she won't make it twelve hours. At best, she has an hour left," her voice was thick with panic.
I turned to Cameron, " How long will it take?"
"Ten minutes, flat," he said confidently. "I can even do it right here," with that he disappeared into the rover to retrieve a duffle bag.
"I can't do this," Kyle moaned as he took a few steps back, covering his face with his hands.
I grabbed his arm and pulled him closer to me, "You will pull yourself together." I was going to continue threatening him but Cameron climbing onto the rover caught my eye. I sent him one last look before I went up to the gate to talk to Taylor again.
"We have a portal that can take us back to our base," I explained. "It will take him ten minutes to reopen it but we need your help."
"I won't allow this," said Taylor. "You just show up out of nowhere and expect me to help you? What if there is an army on the other side of that portal?"
The woman spoke up again, "You can't not do this! That little girl will die without help."
The only man in plain clothes touched her arm gently. "Elizabeth," he started, but she cut him off.
"No, Jim, what if that was Maddy or Zoe or Josh? You can't do this!" Elizabeth was close to tears and I knew that I had to find a solution.
When the rover had approached the gate I was in the market with Zoe. She wanted a red ring and I reminded her that her birthday was coming up and maybe she should wait. She had sighed deeply before muttering that she agreed.
I had paid for the apples and was beginning to walk home when soldiers started coming from everywhere and formed a semi-circle around the gate. The colonists whispered amongst each other for a few seconds before the off-road vehicle came into view. After they caught sight of that, they immediately silenced.
I turned to Zoe and told her to keep moving to the house. She opened her mouth to protest but then decided not to and promptly closed it and kept waling.
Once we were in the house, I told her to put the food away and lock the door after me. Again, she thought about protesting but didn't.
When I stepped outside I wasn't surprised to see the crowd. Instead of fighting it, I went to the Bio-labs. The first one had an observation deck that housed a small telescope.
I wasn't surprised to see the lab empty because of the ordeal outside. But even though they were outside now, the soldiers would probably usher them in soon.
From the observation deck I could see that there where five people outside the gate: Lieutenant Washington, Kue, Cameron, and Kyle.
Kuesy was by the gate talking to the Lieutenant and Commander Taylor. Cameron was on top of the rover holding something up. He had an interesting duffle bag by his feet.
Then there was Kyle. He was pacing near the back on the rover, in jeans and a plain, grey V-neck tee.
He looked good, very good. In fact, they all looked good. Well fed, even had a little muscle. Okay… Kyle and Kue had a little muscle-Kyle a little more than Kue. While Cameron was lean and pretty fit; you wouldn't be able to see any muscle under his long sleeves and jeans. Entomophobia, I scuffed.
That's when it hit me; they had made without me. This shouldn't have come as a surprise; they are probably the smartest and strongest people I know. But looking back at it, all we had been through, it was nothing short of a miracle.
I had used my overwhelming charm to convince the good Commander to let us open the portal outside the gate. Of course the convincing testimony from the now undead Lieutenant didn't hurt.
He did have one condition; whoever was helping us had to go in and get the medicine.
"You ready?" I asked Cameron, who had recently gotten off the rover.
"Yep, do you have her tags?" He asked, motioning to my neck.
"Yeah," I drew out, not sure where this was going. I pulled my chain out from under my shirt and handed him Maralle's tags.
He took them without even a "thanks" and pressed the button to display the information. A few clicks later he was on a password screen.
"And here's where it get interesting," he breathed. "You wanna do the honors?"
"You need her for a password?" I asked confused.
"Yeah, the key to my equation is in an encrypted part of her data. Only her password can get in, and since only she knows the password" he drifted off.
This made no sense to me. Cameron designed these tags, he should be able to hack them-wait-he wouldn't. He was too smart and too afraid of me; or maybe that was the problem.
I turned to Kyle, "Remind me to kill him."
Someone snickered from the other side of the gate, "You put the fear of God in him last time he hacked someone's tags- your tags. Told him never to do it again."
I had put the fear of God in him that hot summer night- and that's saying something because he's atheist.
"I believe you were afraid of him finding those revealing pictures you had taken the night before at that party. You knew that he would mess up and tell Ian," Meralle continued.
"As I recall, you were on those pictures, too. Dancing with every guy in the place; you even threw back a few shots of vodka," I reminder her. She had also made the fake IDs and gotten us into the party.
"The difference is I could afford to loose more brain cells at fifteen than you will be able to loose ever," she shot back and I turned to Kyle for help. Then I remembered, he wasn't going to say anything against her.
She must have noticed because the next thing out of her mouth was directed at him. "Say something, Ky, I dare you."
"I'm good, you two just duel it out," with that he took a few steps out of the line of fire.
Mr. Shannon finally got out of his daze and asked, "Maddy what is going on?"
'Maddy' ignored him and looked at Cameron, "The password is 'loochuhu mineos.'" Forever Lovely.
"Kilianan," he said as he typed it in. "Nice, that way no one but a Jack would guess."
"Yeah, Cam, I know why I chose it."
I grabbed the radio and called for Camille to be ready with the right dose of meds and then went to talk to Meralle for a few minutes while he clicked away on the lazar keyboard.
"So… How have you been?" I asked.
"Bored out of my mind," was her response.
Then Mr. and Mrs. Shannon walked over to talk to her.
"Maddy, how do you know they people?" Her dad asked with no regard to me.
She put on her innocent voice, the one that had gotten us out of so much trouble as kids and promised to tell him everything later.
"We are locked and loaded," Cameron called. He then put his little drive on the ground and pressed a button. A huge circle of pink light formed and started swirling around.
"I thought these things were blue?" Meralle asked.
"I added a color option one day, I was bored without my chess partner," Cameron explained sheepishly.
"I'll play with you sometime. Maybe even tonight," she promised.
We had slowly made our way to the gate and she was standing right by Commander Taylor.
"You are not doing this, Maddy! I forbid it," her father yelled.
I stepped in, metaphorically, "This was your one condition, Taylor. Stay true to it."
"Ok, raise the gate just high enough for Miss Shannon to go under," he hollered at the tower guard. "I'm sorry, Jim."
The gate was loud and slow to rise but when she could fit she did. The first thing she did was hug Cameron.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Lieutenant Washington step under the gate and shake hands with her Commander.
The pink portal loomed ahead of me, waiting for me to step in. I heard Kue say something into the radio and then I felt the world shift.
Instead of grass under my feet it was sand. Magnified sand, my memory said.
When my hearing returned I heard clapping, and lots of it. There was a circle of people around me, all of them cheering and clapping for me. That's when I knew I was home.