Barrett pressed his head against the concrete wall and let out a deep sigh as Alex locked the cell. Lucas pulled on the bars a few times, ensuring it was locked. Barrett’s head was already down, he’d seemingly resigned himself to his fate. We made sure to take his phone and search him for any weapons or other communication devices. I kindly left the room while the boys conducted the invasive search, but I came back after they’d given his clothes back and put him in the cell. I wanted one final look at him before I went about business.

With that out of the way we were finally free to check on the others after the brutal battle. Isabelle had likely already started the process after she left us in the front yard. I thought back to the way her face had gone red and her voice strained as she screamed in Barrett’s face. I’d never seen that type of anger out of her before, but I understood it completely, and I hoped her words were a wake up call for the governor in these coming days. We’d need him to see his errors and take our side if we stood any chance of finally getting this settled.

I left the basement feeling a sudden sense of urgency to find Jake and check on everyone else. Lucas and Alex were right on my feet, likely thinking the same thing. I needed to know where that explosion was, and how bad the damage was. More than anything, I needed to know Jake was okay. After seeing first hand the way Isabelle suffered, I knew I couldn’t go through that.

I reached the first floor landing and made my way straight to the infirmary. There were a lot of people gathered in the doorway dripping wet from the rain. A puddle had formed under the group, with a slight red tint to it that struck fear into my heart. The group noticed my presence and parted for me to get through. Finally I reached the doorway to the large room designated for patients and laid eyes on the three members of the med team hard at work. They quickly moved from bed to bed as they shouted information to each other and worked to stabilize everyone. There looked to be twelve people currently in beds.

I spotted Isabelle in the corner with a clipboard. She was writing something down as she spoke down to one of the beds. The curtain was pulled halfway closed, concealing the identity of the person from my view. I quickly headed towards her at the back of the room, peeking at each bed on the way to see who was injured. I finally reached her and she stepped aside upon noticing me, pausing her conversation. Deep down I knew it would be Jake in that bed, but seeing it still hurt my heart.

“Oh hey,” he said in far too casual of a tone.

His hands were propped up in front of him, both fully bandaged, but I could already see blood starting to seep through them. I was thankful the med team had already treated him and hidden his injuries from my view. I wouldn’t have been able to keep calm if I could see how badly he was hurt.

“What happened? Are you okay?” the questions spewed out of my mouth betraying my fear.

He laughed softly, triggering a coughing fit. I held the water that was sitting on the metal table next to his bed for him, allowing him to sip from the straw, and waited anxiously for him to stop coughing. He finally nodded for me to take the water back and I took it away from him slowly, placing it back on the table. He took a long deep breath and looked at me apologetically.

“I’m okay,” he said, taking it more seriously now.

“How’d you get hurt?” I asked with a frown plastered across my face.

“The explosion. I wasn’t in it, but a lot of people were. I could hear them, I could smell them. I was given this power, I had to use it,” he said, a look of horror on his face as he recounted the events to me.

He told me in excruciating detail about the other battle. They’d gone out back to take their places. The original battle plan had them waiting for a signal to filter around both sides of the building and take over the fight from there if we were pushed back. While most of them were still grouped up waiting for the signal, Jake had pushed up close to one side of the building, straining to hear our conversation and relay it to the others. Others from the detection team had spread out for the same reason, and several who planned on using guns instead of powers were positioned near the back of the field.

He told me how he heard the negotiations turn sour, and our fight began. Right as he was running back to the main force yelling at them to tell them to take position the explosion went off. The timing was too important to be coincidental. Isabelle had told him she suspected they used a radio or something to tell the other group when to attack. She also suspected some sort of heat signature device was used to hit the largest group of people. Otherwise it would’ve made more sense to hit the building itself. They still weren’t sure what they used to trigger the explosion, but that wasn’t important at the moment.

Jake painted the picture of him standing there in the rain listening in horror to the group of people the explosion had engulfed. He heard screaming and groaning coming from inside the blast zone, and smelled burning flesh, much to his dismay. He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose to help with the smoke, leapt into the fiery aftermath, and started dragging them out one by one. The heat stung his eyes and the smoke suffocated him without relief until he reached the edge of the blast zone on each trip. The original strike had scoured the ground and tore apart everything in that part of the yard, causing large chunks of debris to come to a rest on top of people. He found it nearly impossible to see through the thick smoke, so he was locating them almost entirely based on sound and smell. Each piece of debris he moved to free another person caused his hands to hurt more, but he wouldn’t stop.

One of the girls caught up in the blast zone, Melissa, had a power that allowed her to throw up a dome like barrier, which she’d done at the very last second upon hearing Jake yell about the front line and turn towards them. She’d said it was just in case, because something felt wrong. She’d saved many lives with her quick action, and those she saved rushed to engage the group of soldiers that had pushed through the barrier. They were presently fighting the gunners from our group and we were just barely holding them off until the attack groups joined the fight.

In the meantime Jake and the rest of the detection squad focused their attention on dragging those hit by the explosion to safety. He told me even though his hands were burned badly from dragging burning debris off people to free them it was his only injury, and one he didn’t regret. He’d ordered the med squad to wait outside of the blast zone and not risk their own health. The job they had was too important. He’d bring injured people to them and they could take it from there.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

I listened intently to his recount of the events without interrupting. He’d wrapped up his story by telling me that the battle ended shortly after the attack squads used their powers on the group of soldiers.

“It was raining, obviously, so the guy who can channel electricity, Trey, dealt with them easily. Fried them all with what looked like just a few rounds of lightning. We got lucky. Thank god he was standing close to Melissa when she threw up her barrier or things could’ve gone very differently. He annihilated them,” Jake said in awe, hesitating but clearly wanting to say something else.

He reached out to grab my hand, but quickly remembered the state of his own battered hands and stared down at them silently. A few tears appeared in his eyes and I watched as he blinked them back, trying not to make me worry. He threw on an unconvincing smile as if nothing was wrong. My heart ached for him, and I desperately wanted to take his pain away. I gently laid one arm across his shoulder and pressed my head against his to give him the comfort of a hug without hurting him. I stayed like that for a moment, willing his pain to go away.

“There were a lot of people dead between the explosion and the gunfire,” he choked out. “I couldn’t save them all in time. I kept finding dead bodies when I was searching based off sight or smell, so I had to just rely on sound. It was fucked up,” he admitted, stifling a cry.

Getting worked up like that caused him to start coughing again, so I reluctantly pulled myself off him and held up the water for him again. Once he’d calmed down a bit he assured me he was okay now, and other people probably needed me. I eventually stood up, knowing he was right about being needed elsewhere, and looked at him as he tried to give me a weak smile.

“I’m so proud of you. You saved a lot of people even though you must’ve been in so much pain. I’m glad you’re okay. We’ll handle everything else, just focus on resting up, okay?” I said softly as I turned to leave.

Behind me was a girl I recognized as Melissa. She looked to be around Jake’s age, and had a bright smile on her face. “He’s a hero in my book,” she said as she approached the seat I’d just left.

Jake sat up enough to turn his head to see her, causing him to wince in pain. “So are you. You saved more people than I did from the blast, and I saw you run off to protect the gunners from any more casualties after. Incredible,” he remarked as his cheeks blushed, betraying his feelings.

His praise caused her to blush in return. She turned to me, “Can I take this seat for a while?”

“Yes, she has work to do,” he answered for me.

I echoed his yes and smiled at them before walking off. It was nice seeing him get a crush like a regular boy his age. It made me happy.

Isabelle had been waiting for me to finish talking to Jake. She approached me and started to brief me on all the information she’d gotten so far. The fire had been put out by the rain, and a total of eighteen people were confirmed dead, bringing our total numbers down to sixty-eight members. The house crew had been working on collecting all of the bodies and getting a full head count to make sure no one was missing, and those were the numbers they left her with. Eleven dead from the explosion, seven from the group of gunners that first engaged the soldiers. Twenty more injured, but most weren’t life threatening. All in all that left us with just under fifty people able to fight at the moment. If something happened now we’d be in grave danger of being wiped out.

The numbers bothered me greatly, but I was still thankful it wasn’t worse. We really could’ve been wiped out if Melissa hadn’t shielded most of the people with strong fighting abilities, or if it hadn’t been raining. The rain had greatly boosted the attack power of both Lucas and Trey and without it we might’ve lost. Something as fickle as rain being the deciding factor felt like too close of a call. I’d had way too much confidence in our abilities. At the end of the day, we were still just human.

Isabelle and I regrouped with Lucas and Alex after she was done briefing me on what she’d learned and the four of us went to the back of the facility to assist the house crew with bodies and cleanup. It was a big job, and one that weighed heavily on the soul. These were people we’d spent a long time with, and we had more in common with them than anyone on the outside world could understand. Yet here we were carrying their bodies off to be cremated. We were forced to place their bodies in the same pile as the enemy soldiers, and though it felt wrong to do it was impractical to separate them. As it was, they already took up too much room, and it would take a long time to run all of them through the incinerator.

As we were finishing up with the last few bodies from the two fights the pile grew too tall to stomach. We were staring at the proof of the death toll and it made it all too real. So many people had died on both sides all because one man refused to talk until it was his own life in danger. As we turned off the lights and locked the doors to the now horrid sight of the incinerator room I couldn’t help but let anger seep into me. It filled my bones until every inch of me was crawling with it. All this violence was senseless, was it really so hard to just talk things out and admit their wrong-doings?

I silently hoped Barrett was miserable in his prison cell. He’d fashioned it for people like us, yet there he sat, helpless. I hoped he was cold, wet, hungry, and terrified. I hoped Isabelle’s words had affected him as deeply as they had me. If we were lucky he’d come around and see the error of his ways. He’d really fight for us when it came down to talking to whoever the hell was in charge of him. I wasn’t holding out too much hope that the cowardly man would really change, but it would be a nice break from the cards we’d been dealt thus far.

The clean-up took longer than I’d imagined. The aftermath of the battle was worse than I’d first thought, and after the rain ceased and the sun finally showed itself for the day the heat rose with it. We spent most of the day sweating our asses off as we cleaned up the gruesome scene. Alex had to bow out of the effort and go inside to rehydrate, still far too weak to risk working up a sweat and losing more water. Several of the uninjured members took it upon themselves to help us fix things up in his place, and we were done before nightfall.

Alex spent the remainder of the day watching over the governor’s cell, ensuring no one tried anything. After a big meal to replenish our energy from the exhausting day we got everyone together in the dining hall. We congratulated them on their victory first and foremost. Then we moved to the more somber news of the names of everyone who died in the fight. We shared memories of those lost and took a moment to honor their sacrifice.

Finally, we briefed everyone on the plan to have the governor contact the real leader of the operation that created us, and try again to negotiate for our freedom. We begged them all to leave him alone, and ensured them that he wasn’t a threat in his current state. Alex warned them that if the governor died it would put us in a much worse position, and those that we lost would’ve died for nothing. This seemed to reasonably deter everyone from any temptation of taking their anger out on Barrett, but we still found it necessary to have one of the people on night watch that Jake trusted watch him. We knew now that their anger could be unpredictable, and didn’t want to make the same mistake we had with Cam. We then excused everyone to get some well earned rest.

Safe in our bed at the end of the night, Alex and I held each other tightly, all too aware of how easy it would’ve been for one of us to die like the others we lost. It was something that really made us realize how precious each and every moment with each other was. We talked for a while, whispering sweet nothings to comfort each other until exhaustion came for us, and forced sleep upon us.