“So let me get this straight, I just got back on my feet and you want to drag me back out there again to do something so stupid it easily qualifies as a suicide attempt.” I snap at him. I've survived enough shit by what I amount to luck that I don't feel like testing how much I have left.

“Yea, because waiting here is probably just as suicidal. You’ve been napping so you don't realize how hard they’ve been trying to crack that doom dome out there. They’ve hit that thing at least four times an hour for the last five hours and it hasn't even budged. They have hit it with just about everything short of a ……” Toby says, only to be cut short by a blinding light cascading through the windows. It lasts only a moment, but it's so powerful I have to cover my eyes and look away. There’s no sound only light, until the entire building shudders for a moment and several people dive to the floor. But the sound of the explosion itself is strangely absent. When I finally blink enough starts out of my eyes to see again, I find most of the people in the room are hugging the floor covering their heads. Outside dust falls from the buildings as the shield crackles with violet lightning dancing across it for a few moments, before it stops and everything goes back to normal, as if it never happened.

“Everyone alright?” Robert asks while pushing himself up.

“That's a new one, guess they got tired of their shit bouncing off.” Toby replies.

“What the hell was that? Was that a nuclear blast?” Karen asks, sounding shaken up.

“No, not a nuke. There isn't a mushroom cloud outside the shield. So that was probably a spell, a big one. But a nuke might be next on their list of things to drop.” The unknown lady points out. Now that I think about it that's probably Sara, seeing how I’ve already met Karen.

As much as I hate to admit it she is right. They are going to be emboldened to pound it harder seeing how they actually did something. And if they drop something powerful enough to break it it could very well go full overkill and flatten the whole damn city as a side effect when the shield actually does give way. So options are find a really deep hole to hide in, find a way out of the city, or remove the shield and hope the US army doesn't flatten the place trying to enact retribution.

“Yea, so my point that attacking the camp is a stupid idea stands double now. Assuming we do somehow get inside and take that shield down WITHOUT getting ourselves murder by cultists in the process. The good old US army is going to flatten that camp faster than any of us could possibly run away.” I say, hoping to convey some sense into these borderline lunatics.

“Or we can get flattened by whatever the demons are doing.” Toby replies.

“Maybe she's right. We might be better….” the man I don't recognize goes to say, only to be cut off by the power of a miniature sun blasting through the windows once again. Everyone who wasn't on the floor already dove down, myself included.

The light winks out of existence, and the whole city shudders from the force of the second impact. This one is slightly worse, and for a moment I fear that the building is going to give out. Thankfully it doesn't, and we're all left scattered about the room half blind. We all wait a moment, then a minute, expecting the next shot to come and rattle our cutoff piece of the world once again. After a minute though, George bursts into the room, interrupting the silence.

“Hey! What the fuck just happened? I thought the whole damn building was gonna collapse!” he yells.

“The good old US of A’s army showed just how good at violence it is.” The unknown man replies to him.

“Shut Up Greg! Now isn't the time for your pacifism bullshit!” George turns and snaps at the man who is trying to pick himself off the floor.

So that's Greg, which means the guy up at the front is probably Seymore. If I'm getting my names and people right.

“Shit, how much do you think that rattled the cultists?” Toby asks while grabbing a pair of binoculars that had fallen to the floor. Completely ignoring George and his jab at Greg.

“Probably too much, they are going to be…” Robert says, only to be interrupted by Toby.

“Beyond pissed? Yea… hold on…. No way, no fuckin way. Oh they are rattled all right! Holy shit we might actually have a chance at this.” Toby says while handing the binoculars to Robert.

I get up and walk over to the window, trying to look out it myself at the camp below. Even without binoculars it's easy to see the well organized camp has turned into chaos. The streams of zombies have fragmented and scattered into the rest of the camp. Meanwhile the blobs of zombies on the outside of the wall have fragmented and are slowly bleeding out into the surrounding city.

“Did the zombies turn on them?” I ask, slightly confused as to how they could lose control so easily.

“Not quite, it's more like they got spooked like cattle. Zombies aren't attacking cultists but are running around and causing chaos. Looks like the cultists are trying to wrangle them back into line but there are a lot of zombies.” Robert replies to me.

“What? Lemme see.” George says, gesturing for the binoculars from Robert, who hands them over. “Well hot damn, if we can slip through that chaos we might actually be able to do something.”

“Assuming we can slip through the zombies.” Toby says.

I for one am still very against any plan that involves getting anywhere near that compound. It's not that I don't want to help, I'd love nothing more than to smash that shield so we can all get the hell out of here. I do however have a slight thing against dieing, and running into a cultist camp full of cultists, zombies, and demons seems like a quick way to get a ticket on the soul train express.

“Hey guys, random thought but, why the hell do we need to go into the camp? Haven't you guys thought about doing stuff to slow the cultist down that doesn't involve walking into their house?” I ask, desperately hoping to steer the conversation away from a suicidal sneak attack.

“Like what? We don't exactly have the means to do anything without getting close and dirty.” Toby replies.

“Um….. uh, I saw a rifle last night. Maybe we can try shooting the crystals from far off?” I ask.

“And what the hell would that accomplish?” George asks in a demeaning tone.

“Maybe they're fragile? We could also try to do something with the zombies, since now we know we can spook them.” I reply, ignoring his attitude.

“Lucy is right. We just assumed they would be tough to crack but what if that's not the case. We were on an arbitrary time limit before, but now we have at least an hour or two to work with. We should back up and explore our options. A suicide run might not be needed if we can cause enough delay for someone on the outside to figure something out. We have other options now, we should explore them.” Robert says, taking the fire out of George’s argument before it even starts.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Uh, well I mean, not running to our deaths is cool. But will we actually be able to do anything meaningful to slow them down without going all in?” Toby asks.

“Karen, Sara, could you two go work with Seymore to work on getting this place more defensible. I want us to be able to hold out here for a little while if we have to retreat. Me, Greg, Toby, George, and Lucy are going to discuss how to better deal with the cultist problem.” Robert says.

Sara lets out a sigh and mumbles “At least he isn't running to his death anymore.” While Karen utters no words but gives annoyed side eye evenly split between me and a nearby chair, as if telling me to sit down. Yea, I probably should sit down, jumping to the floor certainly didn't do my bruising any favors. But first I should get my wallet before I forget. I walk over to the conference table and swipe the faded blue and worn nylon wallet before shoving it into my pocket. Hopefully it doesn't leave my person again, because it would be a pain in the ass to replace all my ids and credit card.

When I turn back around to go sit down in one of the fancy conference chairs, I catch George staring at me out of the corner of my eye, tense like he's ready to jump at me at a moment's notice. Yea, this guy is gonna be a problem. Unfortunately I can't afford to pick a fight with him right now, in group fighting would waste what little time we gained. I sit down as Robert finishes erasing the whiteboard, promoting George to also sit down, Greg to sit up straight, and Toby to walk around to the back of the room.

“Alright first order of business, let's all think of things we can do to slow down cultists.” Robert says while writing the first three ideas on the board. The first two are what I suggested, shooting the crystals or spooking the zombies some more. The last one was their original plan of sneak in and destroy the shield generator, but it has a nice ‘last resort’ notation next to it.

“Could we maybe find a way to distract them? We could set a fire near their base, close enough that they would have to deal with it. Don’t know if it would slow down their plan but it would definitely waste their resources.” Greg says after a moment of thought.

“Not a bad idea if we need to draw their attention while doing something else.” Robert says while writing the idea on the board.

“We could….. Going back to sneaking in. We could do it and do less… overt things against them so they don't figure us out, at least not until we’ve already left.” Toby says.

“Like what exactly?” George asks.

“Well, if the layout is anything like the southern bunker, there should be quite a few out of the way storage rooms. Someone might be able to slip in and nick some nice stuff we can use against them. Or even better, start a fire that they don't notice until it’s too late to easily put out.” Toby replies.

“Could work if we actually need to go into the camp. We could easily make it look like an accident too. Any more ideas?” Robert replies.

“What about the local police station? Might be some good stuff their we can scavenge, assuming the cultists haven't looted it yet.”

“Does anyone even know where the police station is?” I ask, only to receive a chorus of no’s and head shakes.

“Well, let's keep it on the list as a possibility. But doesn't look likely. Anything else?” Robert asks.

Someone spouts something else off, but I don't hear what it is because I'm too busy thinking about something slightly more important. The police station got me thinking, what happened to the southern bunker? We can’t see it from here because of the giant ass stadium between the city center and suburbs, so we have no way to tell if it's been captured or not. No, it couldn't have been, dad would have blown up my phone telling me to go save my idiot siblings and neglectful mother. So, if I assume the bunker wasn’t compromised like central or captured, where the hell are all the damn soldiers.

Bunkers are supposed to be staffed by a fair amount of professional soldiers, they also have large armories with reserves of weapons. Because worse case scenario, a man with a gun is a man who can fight back. So why haven't we so much as heard a peep from down south? Unless…..

“Hey, have any groups of cultists gone towards the southern bunker?” I ask, interrupting whatever argument Toby and Greg were having about strapping grenades to zombies, I probably don't want to know.

“Uh, shit, don't know, I didn't pay that good attention to them once they got near the stadium, I was too busy watching the ones around here. Why?” George responds in a condescending tone. They’re all looking at me now, eyes locked on in anticipation of whatever new convoluted monkey plan I’m dragging into the room.

“I’m just wondering what happened to the southern bunker. I haven't heard or noticed anything from that direction.”

“It probably got done in like the central one. Fuck, I hate thinking about it. All those people running to their deaths.” Toby replies.

“I don't think so. So my dad works at the weapons factory onto he edge of town. If he couldn't contact my mom he would have probably texted me to go save her and my siblings. But he didn't, which make me think they were already safe or getting to safety.” I reply.

“That's a little flimsy, but I see where you're coming from. The problem is we don't know if they captured or destroyed southern after this shit kicked off. Unlike central which was clearly taken over from the start.” Robert replies.

“I mean, she might be right though. How many groups have we seen go that way? A few right, I remember a particularly big one on my watch. What if they’re trying to capture it, but can't get in?” Greg asks.

“Nothing we could do about it. No way they won't have a small army trying to get in, we just couldn't do anything about that. That's not including the time to walk over there through the city, which they are currently looting. I don't think that's a good idea.” Toby says, in what I suspect is an unusual moment of logical clarity for him.

“That's a no go, but the information is good to have on the table. Anyone else got anything?” Robert asks.

“Hmm, tangent to the spooking the zombies. What if we tried to disrupt their control over them completely?” George asks after a moment of thought from the entire room.

“What, like send the damn things feral again?” I ask, somewhat disturbed by the idea, and making no effort to keep it out of my voice.

“Yea, exactly. Those things go nuts, it will be a lot worse for the cultists than for us.” George replies, giving me an incredulous side glance.

“The biggest problem with that, I suspect, is the control method is probably in their base and well guarded, given how integral it is to their plan. At that point we might as well gun for the shield generator.” Robert replies.

“What if we go for both at once?” Greg asks.

“Not a good idea, splitting like that would make us even more likely to fail.”

“Honestly let's not think about going into the base. We have already established that that is a death sentence any way we take it. We can probably fuck with them enough from outside if we get creative enough. Think, we got lots of abandoned shit and buildings laying around. How can we use it to absolutely fuck the cultists day?” I ask, surprisingly promoting a new round of thinking from the group. Except for George, who instead turns to look at me with a distrusting gaze.

“You seem really intent on keeping us away from that base.” He says to me.

“George…” Robert goes to chastise him, only for me to answer instead.

“Yea, because it's a fucking cultist base! I prefer staying alive.” I snarkily reply.

“Knock it off both of you. George, stop antagonizing her. We’ve already established she is not a cultist. She is however the most powerful person in this room, teenager or not. And the last thing we need right now is you trying her patience.” Robert chastises George.

“Speaking of power, I know it's normally private information, but knowing what spells and other magic you have available might be good to know. If you're willing to share that is.” Robert says to me, pivoting the conversation away from a clearly fuming George.

That… is actually a good question. Do I want to share my magic and spells? From what I can tell, most defenders don’t openly flaunt their magic, spells, etc, unless they want to draw attention. Big name guys are super secretive with what they have because they kind of are high value targets in a way. So they need to keep tricks up their sleeves just in case. But me, I’m pretty sure I don't want to draw undue attention to myself. Being able to make crystals that let non magic users cast spells will draw a lot of attention. But at the same time, we are going to need those kinds of advantages to get out of this mess alive. I’m not going to reveal everything to them, but I’ll start with the basics I guess, and if I need to use more later, then I’ll tell them as I go. Obviously, I’m going to keep the fact that George is kinda right and that I’m actually a demon to myself. Getting that shotgun shoved in my face once is plenty enough.

“Hmm, alright. I can tell you about some of them I guess.”

“Anything helps.” Toby replies.

“Alright, first, you've seen the crystal floating around me. This one helps with mana regeneration, but I can also make two more. One that does healing and one that does stamina.”

“So why don't you have them yet? Limited to one at a time or what?” Greg asks.

“I haven't gotten around to making them. I got this ability literally yesterday, or maybe it was actually Saturday. Either way I haven't had enough time or mana.” I reply.

“Next, I have a minor healing spell, a ‘haste’ spell, my only damage spell, a screech attack that can disorient or damage, and flying magic that's too expensive to use right now.”

I finish listing off my magic, and they all stare expectantly like I’m going to provide more. But they don't need to know about manasurge, mimicry, the spell crystals, or my skills. Toby finally responds after a moment of silence.

“That's it?”

“Yes that's it! I got this shit like a week ago, and I’m a healer! Don't expect me to be running around blasting shit like a maniac.” I reply

“Well, the healing will probably come in handy, but hopefully not. As for flying, can you do any, like at all? Even a small amount like jumping onto a roof?” Robert asks.

“Yea, I could probably jump up to a roof or something if I have enough mana. The problem is I need to recharge, and fairly soon actually.”

“Really? Alright yea, you did heal yourself. Just two more questions, the haste spell, I take it it makes you faster?” Robert asks.

“Yea, or anybody I cast it on, though it's not super powerful because I’m so new.”

“Fair, and the screech attack, how effective is that?”

“Hmm, I can do a fair bit of damage on full blast but that's expensive. The second mode disorients whatever it hits which has been fairly effective so far, so I consider it way more mana efficient.”

“Good to know, now what do you need to regenerate your mana?”

“A room alone, and some food.” I reply, which gets me a raised eyebrow but nothing else.

“Toby, show her to one of the kitchenette, then one of the offices. As much as I want your input we’re going to have to keep planning without you. We’ll catch up once your done, how long do you think it will take?”

“Four to five hours for a max charge, but I stop part way if needed.” I reply as I get up and head towards the door to follow Toby.

“OK, good. Go for two hours then, I don't think we can afford to wait any longer.” Robert replies as I walk out of the room, then the discussion within resumes.

I got a lot on my mind as Toby leads me towards the kitchenette, which I assume is where their supplies are. But the biggest thought bouncing around my head is how over my head I am, and how totally screwed we are.