Across the Wildlands (Book One: The Wildlands)

Episode Fourteen- The Meeting and Debrief

Stifling a yawn, Alex dragged her feet and stumbled half-asleep through an open door. She wiped the sleep from her eyes, her vision adjusting slowly to the room in front of her.

A long table stretched the length of the room, over a dozen chairs tucked neatly beneath its edges. Figures occupied a few chairs, though the number was still more than any amount of people she had met recently.

Alex tripped over her own feet as she tried to focus on the faces of the people sitting in the chairs. Her thoughts scrambled as Ace rushed past her.

"Wakey, wakey," Ace whispered, leaning in close to Alex. He took a seat at the far end of the table. Immediately upon sitting down, Ace leaned back and propped his feet up on the table, crossing his legs over at the ankle.

Childish, Alex thought with a scowl.

She scouted out Cicero and claimed the open seat beside him. She spread her hands out on the table in front of her, examining her fingers in an attempt to settle everything running around in her mind. Curious eyes drifted up, looking discreetly at those she didn't recognize.

A woman and a man sat close to each other a few seats across from her, and another lone woman sat tapping her long and manicured nails on the table. The strangers didn't appear as interested in her as she was in them.

Edric, Greg and Daniel crowded the other end of the table, patiently and quietly waiting for everyone to settle in.

Once the final chair was filled, Edric cleared his throat. "I'd like to think you all already know why you're here so I don't have to talk too much," Edric said, already puffing on a cigarette. He tapped its ashes into a small container by his hand.

"Not really. You pulled us out of an abandoned city just a couple days ago and haven't said a word since," the man sitting across from Alex said. His voice was deep, and he laced his words with a hint of anger.

Alex eyed the man who talked and the woman beside him; both unfamiliar faces to her. She could only guess they were a Keeper and Designation duo.

The woman beside him nodded in agreement, thick braids falling over her shoulder at the movement. Alex noted how much they looked alike. Both had sharp jaw lines and deep, brown eyes. They even had the same nose—small and curved just in the middle. Their dark, brown skin was complemented by the matching shades of olive green shirts they wore.

"I know, I know. We haven't been the most forthcoming in our reasons for you being here." Daniel stood up, taking over for the not as well-spoken Edric. "You just have to understand how difficult it has been to find you guys. The Code has barely hung on. With only a few members left, we don't have as many resources as our predecessors did. We've only now managed to get the means to track a few of you down."

"A few?" Rollo questioned, raising a brow. "Only a few?"

"We want to help more, but we don't exactly have the manpower to search far and wide," Daniel answered.

"And you want us to help?" Rollo pushed. She looked agitated; everyone did.

They had all been left out in the world, forgotten, and suddenly the very people that left them out needed their help.

"The Achilles murdered us," Edric said, dropping his hand onto the table a little too loudly. Alex jumped in her seat at the noise and grabbed Cicero's hand without even thinking. "They found the Code, and they killed almost every single person they found conspiring against them. None of you were 'abandoned' as you so much like to claim. You Keepers were trained by the best, created to be the best. There was never any danger to your survival. But you three—" he pointed at Ace, Alex, and the man sitting across from her respectively, "have the thing they killed all those people over."

Alex looked down at her arm where she had injected the jammer into her skin. She thought about the sensation of thousands of electrical shocks all throughout her body, how each shock had been a nanite shutting off.

Although Cicero hadn't told her much about his training, or even the Code, she knew the nanites were important—they had a virus inside them. A virus they could upload into the system at a Center to shut down everything. How, though, she did not understand. Neither did Cicero. That was something they had in common. The ending to their instruction manual had been ripped out when everyone in the Code died.

The only thing she knew was that she didn't want to be the one to do it. To save anyone. She just wanted to save herself and keep those she cared about alive. But, she still wanted all the information she could get.

"What are they, exactly?" Alex asked.

"The Achilles runs their Patrolmen through a grid—like thousands of tiny branches breaking off from the main trunk of a tree. They're all connected, working from the main core at one of their Centers. The Code made the nanites to start a virus in the tree, killing off all the branches. Without their Patrolmen, they're nothing. They wouldn't be able to kill whoever they want or control everyone however they want to," Greg explained.

"Couldn't they have just shot up these 'cores' while they were working for the Achilles? They were all workers with them anyway, right?" Ace questioned.

"They worked outside the Centers. By the time they constructed the nanites, the Achilles discovered them. They hid the virus, and then they protected it with what little time they had." Greg looked at Cicero, solidifying his point.

"And you think we're all, what, righteous superheroes?" Ace asked.

"Aren't you?" Edric added, his face void of any humor. He pointed to Rollo with the end of his cigarette. "You guys have inhuman senses and abilities," ashes fluttered as his cigarette moved to Ace, "and you guys are partially robotic. What's not heroic about that?"

"I don't know how you can say that without cracking a smile," Alex said. "It sounds crazy."

"It is crazy," the man across from her said.

"Sit on it for a while, I'm sure you guys will change your minds soon enough." Edric stood up, wordlessly dismissing the meeting.

He disappeared from the room with Greg and Daniel close behind him.

Alex noticed the woman on the end of the table had vanished.

"Brin doesn't talk much," the woman across from Alex said. "I heard her Designation died, and it really messed with her. Something like that would mess anyone up, let alone a Keeper. I'm Gianna, by the way, and this is Jonathon."

The others presented their names, and Alex introduced herself last. 

"What do you think about it all?" Alex asked after giving her name.

Jonathon shrugged his shoulders. "We don't know yet, but we have little choice other than to stick around and find out. No one's tried to pull anything so far. I can't say it's any less safe than what's out there."

"At least there's air conditioning in here," Ace said.

"Yeah," Jonathon gave a small laugh, "there's that, too."