The War We Know Nothing About

Four

I already knew the mission would fail.

  I had heard it in the recording before being pulled into the ocean of my memories. Though I'd finally witness all of it. I wasn't sure if I was prepared for what I might see.

  Caja, Ezra, And I all crawled into the vents. Ezra was in the front, I was in the middle and Caja was behind. We watched the keepers below us walking in pairs as they always did. We kept quiet, listening to the instructions given to us by 043.

It felt like hours of crawling but finally we had made it to the spot.

"Now we just wait.." Caja whispered.

"Mhm... how long-?" I asked but Ezra shushed us both.

  Something was off with him. In the last few days he seemed a bit too quiet and for a bit too long, he always stuck to himself but I assumed he was just awkward and shy or something.

But maybe there's another reason.

I realized he wasn't in the audio recording I had heard from this mission.

Perhaps he was the reason that it was a failure.

I watched the rest play out...

Ezra was the first to jump down when it was safe. Once we were all down, we all looked around, we could see the hallway that lead to the elevator in view down the hall.

"Let's go." I said staring to jog ahead, Caja followed me but Ezra didn't.

"Ezra? Are you coming with?" Caja asked.

"What's going on?" 043 interrupted on the intercom.

Ezra looked at us in an almost guilty way, before his expression changed to a slight smile.
"You're surrounded."

"Get out of there." 043 said.

"GET OUT OF THERE!" 043 shouted again.

I cursed under my breath before grabbing Caja's hand.
"We have to go! Now!"

We ran, shoving out of the way of a guard.

"The elevator should be just around the corner!" Caja shouted.

Alarms began to echo through the halls.

"They know we're here! How much farther!" I shouted as we ran.

"Keep going!" 043 shouted through the intercom.

"We're almost there! Hurry!!" Caja yelled.

We sprinted as fast as we could. We heard the sounds of gunshots.

"Go go go! We have to g-AH!" Caja was hit, she screamed out in pain.

She was shot in the leg.

"I've been hit!" she told 043, then looked to me,  "Keep going! Don't wait for me.." she had fear in her eyes.

"I'm not going to leave you!" I helped her up, half carrying, half dragging her along with me.

"We have to get out of here, 043, where should we go?" I asked him.

"To the left there should be a door, it's a stairwell, take it down and head to the second floor..." he explained.

I did as he said, I headed to the stairwell, carrying Caja at this point.

  He instructed me through the back hallways that lead to the kitchen in which we went to the pantry and headed down.

043 tended to Caja's wounds, he then looked to me.
"Where's Ezra?" He asked.