Between Gates (The Gate Chronicles Book 1)

Chapter 10: Missions

Nari walked into Andrew’s office.

“Here to report on my mission, sir.” She stared at the walls, heart thudding in her chest as she waited for him to acknowledge her.

He looked up and smiled. “Nari! You made it back.” His shoulders slumped, and his eyes seemed to become a little less weary as he motioned for her to sit down.

“Yeah, I did. And I only had a little bit of danger too.” She settled into one of the grey cushioned chairs in front of the desk, staring at the blue sculpture, exhaustion creeping in on her. The monotony of the grey room was not helping her stay awake either. 

He grinned. “Good. That’s what I was hoping. Of course, a little bit of danger might also mean very little information.” He pushed aside his papers, leaning on the desk as he always did.

“I took the risks I needed to in order to get information. I found out what they were up to, but your brother never gave specifics. I had to get the information to you that I did gather quickly though, so I couldn’t stay with them another day.” Nari shrugged, smiling at him for a moment before going back to fiddling with the grey shirt she wore. Grey... Like everything else here. It was such a boring color.

Andrew nodded. “What information did you get?”

“First could you bring me up to date on what’s happened during the three days it took me to get back to West Base?” Nari shifted in her seat, tingles erupting up her spine. 

She had a terrible feeling about what had happened while she was gone. 

Andrew made a sour face, then confirmed her suspicions. “East Base fell. Amory and his crew took it two days ago. They had far more agents than we realized working to bring East Base down.

"We didn’t do anything to help by informing East Base. I think Amory counted on the message getting sent to East Base about his escape. I should have thought of it, but…” He dropped the thought.

He sighed, shaking his head and fiddling with the pen sitting on his desk. “Anyway… The only other thing that makes this situation impossible is that Indri discovered that Amory took our half of the Book, and he took the Wand of Winds. Without either of those, we have almost no hope of defeating him." 

Rifling through a stack of papers on his desk, he pulled out scrap paper for notes in case he needed it. "What news did you get from Amory’s group? Please tell me you have good news. Anything to fix this grim situation?”

“Nothing to fix the situation, I’m afraid. I knew they were planning an attack, but my communication equipment got wet because it rained unexpectedly, and it wasn’t working. It still isn’t working. But you couldn’t have gotten reinforcements there quickly enough anyway.

"By the time I caught up to Amory and found out what he was planning they were just a day’s travel from East Base, and I had no way of slowing them down. If I burned their supplies or something, they’d just keep going because they would starve if they didn’t…"

She hesitated, staring at his desk's glass surface and her reflection in it for a moment before continuing. "So nothing I did would help. Besides that, you told me to remain hidden.” She folded her hands in her lap, looking down at them.

If she had done something - come out of hiding and intervened - would she have been able to stop the take-over?

Andrew nodded. “You did fine, Nari. You did everything you could. It isn’t your fault that East Base fell. Do you have any other news?”

“Yes. Amory is planning on overthrowing you and creating a whole new system for the MBC. He didn’t say what or how he would do it. Everything he said was vague. So you probably know more than I do about what he’ll do.” Nari muttered, a blush flooding her cheeks as she realized just how useless her information was to Andrew.