"I would have liked to keep the plant running a few more days but at least we won't have to worry about flesh eating monsters creeping up in the middle of the night and taking people away anymore." Gerald said as their final day at the plant came to an end and they began shutting down operations. "That was the most stressful shift I've ever done."
"At least everyone back at our neighbourhood will have enough water." Karen said.
"And a large chunk of the city." Donny added.
Although they had found out what the "alien" was doing, it didn't change much. It hadn't made a move since the first time, and they still needed to keep the plant running.
When they began packing up, a few groups started negotiating about who would get to take back which animal remains.
Noah approached Will to cooperate but he declined. In the end, since Gerald declined to take anything, Norman's team claimed a larger number of the more recent and fresher remains since he argued that Nirvana had the most firearms out of all the groups. From the way he said it, it sounded like he meant that they contributed the most but it also could have been taken as a subtle threat.
The people from the hotel resort yielded some of their remains to Hope. Will didn't know exactly what happened but had an idea, especially after he saw the mutual exchange of friendly nods between the leaderships of both sides before the people from Hope took away their animal remains and packed them up.
In the afternoon, once everyone had finished packing all their things and were ready to depart, they waited outside for the last few people to finish using the bathrooms.
About 10 minutes later, some people started getting a little restless.
"What's taking them so long?"
Before they could send anyone to investigate, the radio buzzed and a man named Al spoke.
"I'll go check on him." Donny said as he jogged ahead of Jacques' group.
"Do you need us to wait?" Lionel—the man in charge of the hotel resort group asked the Hope group.
"No, you can go ahead first. We don't want to hold everyone up." Jerry replied.
"I was worried at first when I started hearing things about an alien. I thought it was going to be like a horror movie where we would be picked off slowly one by one. Glad to see things work out in the end."
"He definitely just jinxed us." Donny muttered and Karen nodded in agreement.
"Alright, it was a pleasure working with you all." He said, exchanging handshakes all around before he and his people entered their vehicles and left.
Norman gave Will a cryptic look before leaving with his team. In the end, Will could not find an opportunity to deal with the man, he also didn't find out who had tampered with his car.
"You don't have to stay for us either." Jerry turned to Will and Gerald's group, other than them, there was only Noah's group left outside.
"We still have to wait for Donny." Karen said.
"We don't mind a couple extra minutes." Gerald added.
They waited for a minute before the radio buzzed again.
"Al, can you hear me?" Jerry spoke into his radio to try to contact his team member who went missing but only received silence. "Jason?"
There was no answer from either of them.
"Do you think it's that alien?" Jerry asked in concern.
"Maybe you should come back outside and we'll make search teams, just in case."
They regrouped and created three search teams, each consisting of 6 people, while Gerald's group stayed outside to keep watch.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
While the other two teams did a thorough sweep of the administration building, Will's team—which included Jacques and two of his people, went to search the maintenance building, which was just next door to the administration building. Karen was forced to use a knife because her spear would be awkward maneuvering indoors.
As they entered the building, one of the younger men on the team suddenly screamed.
Bang!
He flinched as the broom he had stepped on slammed onto the floor.
"Sorry." He said in embarrassment.
After that, they slowly cleared the building. They always made sure to stay within eye distance of each other, and there was always someone watching every corner and entrance of each room they entered.
Once they were halfway through the building, the radio buzzed.
"Are they okay?" Jacques asked.
"Where are you?"
They left the maintenance building and retrieved the equipment from their vehicles before heading into the administration building basement. They arrived in a storage room, where one of Jerry's men were keeping watch by the door. Inside, they found the rest of Jerry's team gathered around a corner where two unconscious figures laid.
"What happened to them?" Jacques asked as he stepped towards the corner.
Will stopped by the entrance and covertly held Donny and Karen back. He noticed that one of the unconscious figures on the floor was turned over and had their face hidden. One of the men on Jerry's team also had his back turned away from them and was keeping his face from being seen.
When the two shot him a questioning look, he whispered to them, "This doesn't look right. Where's Noah?"
The moment he said that, he suddenly felt a surge of electricity in his senses. Other than the people in the room, there were 6 large sources of electricity—5 in front of them and 1 right behind him.
Will quickly twisted around as he felt the source of electricity behind him moving before darting straight for him. With his increased [Dexterity], he reacted the moment he saw the man who had been guarding the door jabbing a stun baton in his direction. He dodged to the side and slammed his Hallagan bar down, causing the man's arm to bend at an angle that was it was not meant to.
"Ahh!"
"It's an ambush!" Will shouted as he slammed his shield into the man, sending him out the door and sprawling onto the floor of the hallway.
There was a flurry of action immediately right after. Jerry and his 4 men charged forward with their stun batons and tasers.
Jacques reacted quickly and charged forward, taking the stun baton to the gut but also tackling Jerry to the floor. Which confirmed for Will that he wasn't in on it.
The other two had their hands full with the first aid kit and the stretcher and couldn't immediately defend themselves.
Donny charged at his attacker with his shield. The baseline human didn't expect Donny to carry so much force behind the shield and was knocked to the ground completely winded.
Karen, on the other hand, used her shield to deflect her attacker's taser to strike his neighbour, helping out the young man holding the first aid kit. She then kicked her attacker in the gut, dropped her shield, and used her entire weight to pull him backwards to the ground, and into an arm bar where he finally let go of his taser and very likely suffered from something breaking from the way he was screaming.
Will transfer his Halligan bar to his other hand and picked up the dropped stun baton, using it to quickly close in and disable the man who had disabled the stretcher guy. He then gave the man a vicious kick to the gut, forcing him to fall to collapse to the ground and spill out all of his lunch.
By the time Jerry pushed Jacques off of him and was on his feet again, Will had his pistol out and pointed in his direction.
"How about you drop your weapon before I pull the trigger."
"You're bluffing." Jerry said. Everything had happened too quickly and he had missed most of it, instead, he was looking at Will like he was a child holding a toy.
"You think I'm bluffing?"
"No, Will, don't do it!" Donny called out anxiously as he stood up and grabbed Will's arm.
The people around the room began to recover and get onto their feet, except for the two men with broken arms and the man that was kicked in the gut, who were groaning and twisting on the floor while cradling themselves.
"What are you doing, Jerry?!" Jacques demanded with indignation when he caught his breath. "Where's Noah?"
"What am I doing?" Jerry sounded offended as he tested out those words in his mouth. "I'm doing what's best for Hope. If we let Anne continue doing what she wants, everyone will die sooner or later from her inaction."
"I don't see how this can help anyone." Jacques gestured around the room.
"Of course you don't. It's because you're part of the problem too. You always enable her by choosing to look the other way, pretending like nothing is happening."
"So that's why you threw that tantrum on the first day. To justify your actions here in that mind of yours somehow."
Jerry scoffed at that but didn't refute him.
"We just secured water for Hope. Aren't we doing something now?"
"Don't act like any of this was your deed. This was dropped into your lap by Gerald and that kid over there." Jerry pointed at Will. "If we hadn't lucked out, we'd either soon die of thirst or be too defenseless to protect Hope from all these bulletproof monsters cropping up around us."
"So that's your plan? You kill us to weaken Anne and take over as the leader?"
"I don't think he was planning to kill anyone." Donny said.
"What the kid said. I'm not so cold-blooded to do something like that. I'd leave you all the supplies we brought but I'd have to take the vehicles away."
"And leave us stranded here with that alien lurking around?"
"We could have dropped you off somewhere else too. I saw people peeking out from the warehouse down the street. I'm sure they'd be happy to take in someone as experienced as you."
"I've had enough of this." Jacques turned to one of the young men next to him. "Check on Jason."
After checking on Jason and the man next to him—who was another person from Jacques' team that had been swapped with Al, they found out that the two had awakened sometime during the commotion, they cut off the zip-tie around his hands and disarmed Jerry's group before zip-tying their hands up. They found Noah and his team tied up, gagged, and stuffed into a small office on the second floor.
"You son of a bitch." Noah snarled and threw a punch at a defenseless Jerry the moment he was untied. As Jacques and his people were scrambling to pull Noah away from Jerry, the radio buzzed and Gerald's urgent sounding voice came out.