CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: RUNAWAY
10
„Watch out, Five. The wall."
"Yeah, I know."
"We're going to crash, Five."
"Relax. A little bit of faith, maybe?"
"Five… Five! The wall! Five, the wall!"
"Don't worry, Ellie, I got this."
"Five! THE WALL! THE WAAAAAALL!"
A long, frantic scream escapes my mouth as our big, camouflage-painted tank frontally slams into the garage wall. I'm thrown forward in my seat and almost hit my head at the various displays and monitor units in front of me. At the last second, my seatbelt yanks me back and I drop back into the cold leather of my chair.
A small red lamp lights up to my side, right next to a sign that says 'STUCK'. I look at one of the countless monitors in front of me, looking for the one that – as Five explained earlier – shows the immediate surroundings of the tank using some sort of infrared technology or so. Right now, though, the display is completely black, as if something was blocking the sensors.
"I think we're stuck in the wall," I say to Five, who's sitting to my left, in the driver's seat.
"Are we, though?" he replies, reaching out to press a couple buttons on the dashboard in front of him until the red light goes out. With a satisfied look on his face – well, I guess it's a satisfied look, with the bandage over his eyes I can't really tell for sure – he pulls a couple more switches and finally lays both hands on the steering wheel.
"You might want to hold on to something," he says to me, hardly leaving me enough time to follow his advice before stepping on the gas, though. The engine erupts in roaring protest as Five fully depresses the accelerator pedal and the tank makes a huge leap forward. In a rumbling explosion of dust, sparks and huge chunks of what used to be the garage wall, we plunge our way through the thick wall of the garage, making a loud scraping noise as the tank grazes along the concrete. The damage to the paintwork must be catastrophic right now.
Then, without further warning, the entire wall suddenly gives in with a rumbling noise and we come shooting out of the hole we just created at full speed.
"When you said we'd steal one of their vehicles, I thought you meant a sandbuggy or a jeep or something like that. But this?" I yell, pressed to the back of my seat from the sudden jump.
"Can a jeep do that?" Five shrugs and motions back at the destroyed wall behind us.
"Maybe not," I admit. "But still, a jeep might not have drawn quite as much attention to our escape."
As if on cue, two smaller monitors in front of me suddenly flicker to life, and after a short booting time, they show images of what I guess is the surrounding area, one of the front view and the other one of the rear. It's in black and white for some reason, though, so I'm not exactly sure what the world outside our tank actually looks like.
As far as I can tell, we're in some sort of asphalted courtyard, in the middle of nowhere. Apart from the small group of plain square buildings we just escaped from, there are no other signs of civilisation in sight, except for a long barbed wire fence surrounding the whole place about half a mile away. The sky is darkened by heavy clouds of rain, and thousands of small raindrops rush past my monitors, bursting into little puddles as they hit the ground.
I am dying to see it with my own eyes, to just go outside and feel the cold, fresh rain on my skin. After all this time in that stinky cell, I'd be more than happy to finally move around freely, even if it were just for a few moments.
But I know that's not possible, not until we leave this military base behind us. Up to then, I'll have to stick with sitting around in this cramped tank with hardly enough space to fit my feet.
A few metal rungs are embedded in the wall right next to me, leading up to the tank's turret. I rest my arm on the lowest of them, playing with the thought to climb up there, open the hatch at the end of the ladder, and just stick my head out into the rain for a while. Get some fresh air into my lungs, listen to the drops as they smack the ground.
Five reaches out for me and pats my shoulder.
"Soon," he says, having read my thoughts again. "Soon you'll be able to run around as much as you want."
It used to be a big issue, back when Crayton was still alive: Five reading our mind all the time. Crayton would sometimes get really mad because of it, he'd say it weren't right to invade our privacy like that, and that Five needed to ask permission before doing it.
But that's not the way Five sees it, no, Five doesn't think like the rest of is. Five doesn't care about things like privacy, and he definitely isn't one to ask permission. And no matter what Crayton would say, nothing could ever change his mind.
Over time, I got used to him always knowing what's going on in my head. There's even something reassuring about it, not having any secrets from him. Not having to pretend like I'm the helpless little number Ten…
Crayton would always say him knowing everything about me couldn't lead anywhere good, that this form of trust shouldn't be forced.
But I trust Five. He hasn't let me down once.
"We just need to get past that fence and you're free to do whatever you want," he says with a smile.
I sigh and turn back to the monitors. Behind us, the cloud of dust that has formed around the hole we ripped into the buildings wall is almost fully washed away by the rain already. In an oddly childish thought, I had almost expected the hole to have the exact shape of our tank, like in all those stupid cartoons Crayton would never allow me to watch.
Comparing reality to cartoons, though, the hole looks rather bulky and shapeless. How uninspiring.
Looking at the collapsed building, I have to admit nothing else really suggests that this actually is a military base from the outside. If you don't know what it is, you could mistake it for just another one of those old and ugly factories. Buildings like these exist in thousands of places all over the states. No one would suspect this is a secret underground US army facility.
Got to give the designers credits.
But considering the fact that this actually is a military base, I'm surprised at how easily we were able to escape from here. I mean, of course the people guarding this place are just human, and Five has quite some experience in breaking in and out of highly secured facilities. But still, it seems a bit odd that they just let us get out like that. The only attempts they made to stop us were those few soldiers that chased us back when we were running through those endless corridors inside the base. After that, it's like they just gave up. No cars, no jets, nothing comes after us, even though they obviously had more than enough vehicles back in that garage.
"Why aren't they following us?" I ask Five after a while of mulling over this question.
"They have others things to worry about," Five replies in a tone as if he was expecting the question to come sooner or later.
"And what would that be?" I say, staring at the monitor that shows the tank's rear view. Still nothing
"The Mogs. They're afraid the Mogs might attack."
I frown, not quite getting what he's talking about. Why would the US military be afraid of a Mog attack. They're allies after all.
"You remember that park that got wrapped up in those giant roots? Where the soldier caught you?" Five asks and I nod.
"Of course. I almost died there after all," I answer.
"And do you know how the plants got there in the first place?"
I shake my head.
"It' a chemical compound that mainly consists of ammonia and iron pyrites, but also uranium, sulphur dioxide and a bit of sodium chloride," he says. I shoot him a confused look, not quite understanding what he's actually saying. It sounds like he's just making up smart sounding words.
"What does that have to do with the humans being afraid of the Mogs?"
Five gives me a patient smile, motioning me to wait.
"It's an artificial super-fertilizer," he continues. "On contact with any plant's roots, a chemical reactions will take place, exchanging the natural phytohormones – that's what causes the plant's growth – with artificial, way more aggressive ones. You pour the liquid into the ground and whatever plants are down there, they'll immediately start growing rapidly until they reach about a hundredfold of their usual size. The formula itself was discovered by humans only a few days ago, but it was the Mogs who used it in the park."
"Mogs? I didn't see any Mogs," I interject.
"That's because, by the time you and the others arrived at the park, they were all dead already. About thirty or forty highly trained Mogadorians, all wiped out by Six and Eight," Five explains.
"That doesn't make sense. No way Six and Eight could have fought so many Mogs without being gunned down, there were snipers all over the place," I point out, but Five shakes his head.
"Human snipers, Ella, not Mogadorian ones. This is where it gets interesting: The snipers didn't even fire a single shot before you guys arrived at the park."
I frown at the monitors in front of me, trying to make sense of what he's saying.
"Wait, are you telling me the humans let the Mogs die?"
Five nods and leans towards me, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "The ambush was meant to be a combined attack of both Mogadorians and the US army. The beefy Mog soldiers were meant to fight the Garde on the ground while the humans would snipe them down from the surrounding buildings. A simple yet effective plan. They took out number Eight first, so he wouldn't be able to teleport out of there. And they knew that while number Six can wipe out entire armies all by herself, she's vulnerable to well-coordinated, organised attacks, so they sent a couple of Mogs as cannon fodder to distract her while the snipers in the buildings posed the real threat. Minimal losses, maximal gains," he says indifferently, as if he were just talking about a smart move in a chess game.
"Only that when the time to strike came and Six was killing the Mogs off one by one, the humans just stood by and did nothing."
I stare at him with my mouth open, slowly putting the pieces together in my mind.
"Is that why those people aren't chasing after us right now? They don't want to send any troops out, because they are worried the Mogadorians might want to take revenge for those few soldiers the humans refused to save?"
"Oh, it's not just the few soldiers. The humans also took number Six, number Nine and you, Ellie, to secret US military bases, instead of handing you over to the Mogadorians. And when the Mogs demanded that you'd be transferred to Mog prisons, the humans pretended like they didn't have you in custody."
"So that's what that group of Mogs you killed earlier was so angry about," I conclude, and Five nods.
"Exactly. Remember what their leader said into that cell phone, right after they killed those two humans?"
"Yeah, he said 'execute the assaults on all targets'," I say, suddenly realizing what that means. "So the Mogs are going to attack the humans sometime soon?"
"If they haven't done it already," Five agrees. "The Mogs aren't exactly known for hesitating when it comes to killing."
"So the humans only used the Mogs as bait," I think out loudly. "And then they just waited for us to show up."
"Yeah. They thought they could capture all of you at once, but number Four, number Seven, number Eight and Sarah Hart were able to escape."
I let out a sigh of relief. At least the others made it out. "And what happened to Six and Nine?"
"They were taken to another prison, somewhere in Pennsylvania. I tracked you down first, though, I just had to make sure you were alright. I'll go after them once I got you back to the others," Five says and I shoot him a sceptical glance.
"Aren't you planning on joining me and the others?"
"You know that's not how I do things," he says, and I nod.
Five has always preferred staying in the incognito, operating in the shadows, pulling the strings from the background. If he doesn't think the time has come to step out of those shadows, then it's fine. He usually knows what he's doing. I'm just going to miss him when he's not around, though.
With a sigh, I turn back to the monitors. We're really close to the barbed wire fence now, and there's still no sign of anyone pursuing us. Maybe we were actually right with out theory about those people being too afraid of a Mog attack to expose any troops.
We speed up one more time as the tank gets closer to the fence, and I realize Five's planning to go rambo through it like the wall earlier.
"Here we go again," I say to myself as we're just a few feet away, preparing for the impact. I clench my hands into my seatbelt, expecting the same kind of collision as last time. But as we hit the fence, we just rip a nice, clean hole in it, and before I know it we've already passed it.
"That was easy," I note and Five shrugs, as if to say 'told you so'. I role my eyes.
We drive on in silence for a while, slowly leaving the base behind us. I keep glancing at the monitor with the rear view, but I still can't see anyone following us.
"There still is one thing I don't understand, Five," I say after checking the monitor for the hundredth time. "Why would the US government want to betray the Mogs? I mean, the alliance between them was working out quite well for both sides, right?" I ask, and Five shrugs.
"Don't forget these are humans we're talking about, Ella. Do they even need a reason to start a war?" He says, and I tilt my head, not quite convinced.
"That seems like a harsh thing to say," I say.
"You think so?" Five replies with a shrug. "Well, of course it could also have an actual reason. Maybe the humans thought they could be slick and take you guys prisoner without the Mogs noticing. They'd have something to blackmail the Mogs with this way. Or maybe they just realized this whole thing was getting over their heads and they wanted an insurance, which probably is a much more likely option. They finally saw how dangerous the Mogs really are and started asking themselves the questions the should have asked a long time ago."
"What questions?" I demand.
"For example, are the Mogs actually going to just leave earth after their business with the Loric is finished? Or are they maybe looking for more than just wiping out the rest of an alien species, that – for all practical purposes – is already pretty much eradicated? Is this maybe just a cover for something bigger, let's say, an invasion, maybe?"
I stare at Five as he turns his attention back to driving.
"Why would they agree to working with the Mogs in the first place, then?" I ask him.
"Picture yourself as a the head of the USA, Ella", Five replies. "For the past decades, your country has been the world's most important and powerful nation. But now there are other states rising to power, looking to compete for your position, and you're not going to be able to keep up with them for much longer. A couple more years, maybe, then they'll be taking over and your country will steadily lose power after that.
And in this catch-22 situation, the Mogs suddenly appear out of nowhere, offering you superior weapons, superior technology and superior knowledge. Things that will give you power. Things that will get you back on top of the world. All you have to do is capture a few little kids that are causing nothing but trouble anyway, then it's all yours. Tempting isn'T it? Wouldn't you agree to that in their place, Ellie?"
I want to answer no, that I would never agree to that, that I'd never work together with a Mog, but then I hesitate. The way Five put it, the human's decision to help the Mogs kill us actually sounds reasonable. Almost as if he's making excuses for them.
"I'm not making excuses, I'm just seeing things from a different perspective," Five responds my thoughts. "Understanding the way your enemies think is key to winning a war."
A cold shiver runs down my back as he says that. It somehow reminds me of a something Uncle Pit once told me.
It was after one of those counselling sessions with those other important people, after my home planet got destroyed by the Mogs.
Uncle Pit had stepped out of the meeting looking infuriated, and when I had asked him what had happened he had just shaken his head.
"Those people, child, they're always talking about this conflict like it's a war. A glorious, enduring war, in which only the strong and brave will come out on top. But this is not a war. It takes two sides for it to be a war. No, this is not a war. And as long as we can put our differences behind us, it will never be."
I had long forgotten about that moment, but right now, I remember each and every word clearly, as if uncle Pit had just spoken them this second.
With sudden determination, I turn around in my seat, grabbing Five by the shoulder and pulling him towards me.
"This is not a war, Five. We're merely surviving," I say with quite some forcefulness. "You need to finally understand that. You can't just go around, doing your own little crusade while the rest of us is dying out there."
"We talked about this already, Ellie," he says back in a somewhat stiff tone, shaking my hand off his shoulder. "I can't just put it behind me, you know that's not possible for me."
"Why?" I bitterly reply. "What is it that makes it so impossible? What is so great about this 'war' that makes you want to believe in it so badly? There must be something that is more important to you than your own little personal revenge. Something that's worth forgetting about all this and just move on."
Five takes his time before he answers, and I know him well enough to tell it takes him quite some effort to get the words out.
"There is something," he says slowly, nodding his head at every word that crosses his lips.
I bite my lip, waiting for him to continue, but he doesn't.
"What?" I finally blurt out when I can't stand it anymore. "What is it?"
He exhales loudly and if the bandage wouldn't be covering his eyes, I'm sure they'd be fixed on me right now.
"There is one thing I have left," I rise in my seat in anticipation. "The only thing that keeps me from going insane from thoughts of revenge and hatred.
It's you."
Hey there folks!
Phew, another cheesy scene behind us, guys. If you liked this sort of crap, then this is your time to be happy, 'cause chances are more will follow. If you don't like it, well, congratulations, you might actually have some good taste after all ;P
Thanks to Zack619 for helping me figuring out the beginning :)
Anyways, review-answering, here we goooooooooo!
I-wish-I-could-be-Number-Five: No problem, you deserve it =)
ZazzyZ: DONT TELL ME WHAT TO DO! Nah, seriously now, we're gonna see about Nine, I got the strangest feeling this might not quite be his end just now...
destinybroughtme: Well, I don't want to reveal too much, but as I just said, there might be a slight chance of Nine's survival, at least for the moment. But shushhhhhhh, don't tell the others.
lordpujan: Yeah, I can see why you'd like Six/Four more. Still, isn't the Lorien Legacies' motto you only love once?
PaladinofEsklig: How... why... what could possibly make you think that?
So, that's all for today's chapter, hope to see you all next chapter, til then, have a great time and thanks a ton for reading my story :)