In the end I decided to leave Sally with the girls as they continued to rummage through the local grocery store. We hadn’t found any other clues, but I still had two minion travels left before the cooldown reset, and I would have to process what to do about Cindy later. This whole situation still left me with a sour taste in my mouth. Cindy and I didn’t end on good terms, and I’m not sure if meeting up during the alien apocalypse was the Maury episode break I needed right now. It was time to meet the new people face to face anyway.
“Warp,” I commanded thinking of Petra, a warehouse worker that was previously in charge of food distribution and supplies under Kevin. I only had one more warp left until tomorrow, then it was time to jog. The euphoria of the teleportation quickly faded and hundreds of faces looked over at me with little hope in their eyes. They still seemed wary of me even though I gave them enough inspiration for a lifetime just an hour ago.
The warehouse was one of the giant ones that Amazon worked out of in the more rural area of the city. A light rain had started to fall outside and we heard the drops patter above us. Clusters of the smaller groups around me resumed talking after the shock of having a random man appear in front of them faded.
“Why aren’t y’all heading over to our houses? This is whole area is kind of gloomy and that was before the aliens,” I asked Petra.
She was sitting down with her back to a forklift that had an injured man on it.
“Cure,” I commanded as she started to respond. His leg had been crushed in an accident and Kevin was going to leave him for dead. The minion heal command thankfully now took less of a toll on everyone else due to the legion’s growth.
“We want to be free. Like for real. We want to go to our own homes and find our families,” Petra said. She was a tall woman when she stood up I noticed, and had brown wavy hair down to her shoulders. Her face was the no-nonsense type and I knew that before the invasion we wouldn’t have gotten along very well.
“Point me towards the other injured people and let’s talk and walk,” I told her as Cindybot appeared.
This was going to be awkward. She nodded and started to walk towards the break room. People got out of our way but not without a few random glares and side eyes. Kevin had fucked these people up.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
“So I’m not really going to force you to go to the houses and our area but uh, what do you expect to do? From what we can tell so far, the only people roaming around are just as bad as Kevin if not a lot worse. We know the aliens are taking people to factories to work on…something that I’m not sure of yet. Cindybot says they’re like giant 3D printers,” I explained as we got to the room.
“Atomic-Scale Printers but yes basically. They have hundreds of thousands of humans working on that. But the millions more…who knows where they are,” Cindybot muttered to her. Petra just nodded as she opened the door. Inside were dozens more injured people, mostly older workers that had been pushed too hard by their former host. I started to use the Cure command as Petra responded.
“I’ve been trying to catch, glimpses of your memory,” she said with a grimace. “The older man who controlled us spoke of maps. He was in contact with someone about it. I saw them once when they were arguing. What do your memories of him show you?”
I frowned and tried to focus on Kevin’s memories as I walked over to the next person needing a cure. It felt so slimy trudging through the man’s past. His mother abused him for so long that it was most of what his stronger memories contained. Somewhere in there was what Petra mentioned but it was fleeting. It just reminded me to hug my mom extra hard when I saw her eventually. Hopefully.
“He mentioned something about the government before, during our little competition. He was supposed to be the food supplier for something big,” I said in between cures. The strain was starting to show itself in between all the large heals. One guy almost lost his entire hand and it was healing back very slowly. That's when I first noticed that there did seem to be some limits to the technology.
“I’m guessing that means we’ll have trouble on our doorstep whenever your food doesn’t show up wherever it’s supposed to go. But it isn’t enough to go on. I would normally support you but I won’t have you get yourself killed,” I finished.
“So you really won’t let us do what we want,” Petra said with slight acidity in her tone.
“We want to help him Petra,” Thomas said. He was the man who I had just healed, a shorter bald man that had been working for the company for 10 years. We both shook our heads at that.
“The alien tech doesn’t really work like that. You’re forced to do what I want in a small way still Tom,” I told him. “It’s like a weird pull. Petra gets it. But she wants a pre-invasion solution to a post invasion issue. Who knows what the hell you’ll even run into out there though. Nope. Head to the houses where it’s safe until we figure more of it out. Please. Give me a few days.”
Thankfully, Lonnie shortly broke the extra awkwardness that had settled around us.
Hey man Julio disappeared as soon as we got here he thought in MindChat to me and Kendall.
Also it’s…inexplicable shit. I can’t process this man. Most of these people really are free somehow. This one Tom guy is talking crazy over here though. He says he was a Challenger but some worm was in his ear instead and now it’s in some alien guy. He says he thinks this new worm alien wants YOU to help her. It’s like an alien vs alien thing going on or something just come over asap.
What the fuck is going on Kendall thought.
“Um. Let’s put a pin in this little spat while you guys head over to the houses we’re getting ready for you. I really have to go, if it wasn’t important I would talk more,” I told Petra in a rush.
She looked disappointed but felt my urgency through the link and nodded.
“Always some shit going on and you’re still calling me Cindybot,” my AI muttered as I warped to Lonnie.