Book Three: Part 2 Herobrine’s Message. Sean Wolfe Fay

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СКАЧАТЬ “It would mean a lot to me if you would just allow me to—”

      “I am your commanding officer, Corporal MasterBronze,” Tess shot back, standing up at her desk and giving him the evil eye, “and I am this close to having you executed for insubordination! Stand down right now!”

      G stood still, his mouth still slightly open, and found himself unable to speak. As Tess had yelled at him, a startling realization had hit G like a train. He merely stood still for a moment as he flashed back to over a month ago, when he was standing in the hallway of Element Castle, enraged and hurt, and he had yelled …

      “Get a move on!” Tess barked at him. “Are you just going to stand there all day? You have no idea how lucky you are that I haven’t already ordered you out in front of the firing squad!”

      G barely heard her. He was making his way down the quartz block stairs, back towards the group of recruits, his mind swimming in a vortex of realizations and guilt.

      Since G had entered Nocturia, he had given barely any thought at all to Kat. The two of them were clearly done and over with, and with far more important things going on, the issue had been dormant in G’s mind for quite some time. However, the last time he had thought about her, he was still under the impression that she was being unreasonable in not getting over their fight, and that she had been stupid to want to break it off in the first place, given how much attention he was lavishing on her.

      Now, though, G found it amazing that, given everything General Tess had put him through since he had joined Nocturia, Kat hadn’t come to his mind sooner. It hadn’t occurred to him for a second, all this time, that the way that he had treated Kat, his former girlfriend and fellow council member, was disturbingly similar to the way that General Tess, the commanding officer of the organization that he had sworn to destroy, had treated him as an underling.

      It felt like a void had opened in G’s chest as memories came flooding back to him. All that time, he had thought that he had been an amazing boyfriend to Kat, and he was frustrated because he didn’t feel like she was putting in as much effort as he was. But now, G could see quite clearly that he had been far too demanding of her, and incredibly disrespectful. She had agreed to go out with him, and continued to make an effort even when things got difficult while still keeping sight of her responsibilities. But he had neglected his duties to the council, only wanting to spend time with her, and was infuriated when she hadn’t done the same.

      And to top it all off, he had only put up with Tess because he had to. Why Kat had put up with him at all, G could only guess …

      G sat down on the stairs for a moment, overwhelmed. He had just snapped at Tess for something that he himself had done before. Because he had done that, Tess was now suspicious of him, and his cover would surely be blown soon. And if he was executed as a spy, not only would Mella and Stull never be saved, but G would never get a chance to return to Element City and let Kat know how sorry he was for what he had done to her.

      G stood up, his stomach blazing with resolve. He knew what he had to do. It was do-or-die time now, and drastic actions were called for. All at once, an insane plan formulated in G’s head, and he knew that he’d have to go through with it. If it worked, then not only would he spare the hostages’ lives but free them as well, along with curing the NPC villagers and escaping the nightmarish Noctem Capitol. If the plan failed, then they would all die.

      G took a deep breath, let it out, and set off down the stairs to put his plan into motion.

      A roar of furious shouting erupted from the base of the cave as Ben walked off the stone brick–block balcony. Even as he walked back inside the command post that had been carved into the cave wall, he could still hear the threats and boos that followed his most recent announcement. He gritted his teeth in frustration. He still couldn’t stand the fact that he’d had to cut the food rations again, but unfortunately there was nothing else that could be done.

      Ben shut the wooden door behind him, yet he could still hear the jeers. Sighing, he walked into the room, which was nothing more than a small cave that had been cleaned up and turned into the head office of the military as long as they were stuck down in the bunker. A few chests sat pressed up against the stone-block wall, and some maps and papers sat on a wood plank–block table, but other than that, the room was barren. Bob was sitting on Ivanhoe, and upon his entry, they both looked up.

      “Sounds like it went well,” Bob muttered bitterly, glancing at the door, which was doing nothing to block out the noise.

      “Well, how did you expect them to react?” asked Ben, a resigned look on his face as he pulled another wood-plank block from his inventory, set it on the ground, and plopped down on it. “I’d be pretty upset, too, if somebody told me that I’d only be getting two slices of bread a day, every day, for the foreseeable future.”

      Bob gave a grim nod. The two brothers sat in silence for a moment. Both of them knew that they had the same thing on their minds. It had been the only thing on their minds since the incident.

      “It’s eerie,” Bob finally said, his voice sounding almost disconnected as he stared off into space, “to think that it’s already been four days.”

      “Yeah,” Ben replied, glancing at the ground. “It’s even more eerie that the two of us are still here and talking to each other, like normal, while … while Bill is …”

      Ben couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence. He had finally managed to stop the waves of nauseating depression over the past few days, and he wasn’t going to allow them to return. They were still fighting a war, and grief had no place in a war. Ben choked back his sob, letting it out as a raspy sigh. Bob was about to open his mouth to respond when, all of a sudden, there was an earsplitting crash.

      Both brothers leaped to their feet, bow and sword drawn, ready to defend themselves as they whipped around to face the source of the sound. What they saw was the door they had just exited through knocked down, window broken and a brick lying on the ground not too far inside the room. With no door, there was no barrier to protect the two brothers from the raging, hateful taunts from the basin of the cave below them.

      Ben let out a growl of fury, which was drowned out by the jumbled chants of protest from outside the door. “This is ridiculous!” he yelled to his brother. “What are they complaining about? Yeah, sure their food supply got cut. Well, you know what? At least they’re safe from the Noctem Alliance for now! At least they’re not dead!”

      Bob sighed in disgust. “And I suppose you want to go out there and tell them that?”

      Ben was about to respond when, without warning, the Mechanist hurdled into the room through an entrance in the back wall, pickaxe drawn.

      “What’s going on?” he demanded. “I thought I heard a …”

      Suddenly, the Mechanist realized that Ben and Bob were in the room, and he stopped in midsentence. He hadn’t spoken to the brothers, except through messengers, since Bill’s death.

      “Well,” the Mechanist said, recovering and attempting to regain his composure. “Is everything all right out here? I thought that I heard a crash.”

      “Yeah, someone threw a brick through our door,” replied Ben forebodingly, gesturing to the wooden door and brick lying in the empty doorframe, through which the boisterous anger of the crowd was still raging. The Mechanist’s eyes widened at the sight.

      “It would seem,” Bob continued for his brother, giving a look to the Mechanist, “that the citizens aren’t very СКАЧАТЬ