Magnice gave him a sharp look.

“You’ll understand in a bit.”

He fiddled with the item more, rearranging and pulling a few things out before putting one tiny piece in.

“Understand?” Slooky threw up his hands in exasperation. He shook his head with a scoff. “Understand what? That useless piece of–”

Magnice leaned over, snatched his arm out of the air, and slammed the end of the device into it, not only to get him to quiet down.

After a moment, it whirred.

“Urgh!” Slooky groaned out.

Clink.

The second Magnice lifted the device away, Slooky held his arm closer to himself, cradling it. Taking the outer covering off of the cylinder, Magnice jiggled it with a smug expression. Inside the glass was a small shiny item, no bigger than a tooth.

“Think you’ll thank me later?”

Slooky stared, between his stinging arm and the tiny thing Magnice was tipping out of the canister, into his palm.

“What is that…?”

Magnice laughed, unfolding one of Slooky’s hands to then leave the little thing with a blinking red light there.  It was funny to him how their horrors were opposite. Slooky hadn’t made a big deal over the lynch string trying to cut off a part of him, but here he was, horrified over something so small that had been inside of him.

“Your tracker.”

Shocked, Slooky couldn’t find the words, his mouth falling open, rising to close, only to open once more. Magnice turned to everyone else who wore similarly shocked expressions, holding up the device he’d put together.

“Who’s next?”

Arms surrounded him in an instant, without hesitation.

After all was done in removing each of their trackers, Magnice entrusting Sarah to take his own out, he then held out his hand to them all.

“Watches.”

Taking them off immediately, flipping them onto the waiting palm, Slooky and Bue spoke simultaneously.

“What for?”

They glanced at each other and then focused back in on what their comrade was planning to do next. Watches ended up in Magnice’s hand in a pile.

“There are trackers in these, too.”

At the silence, he glanced up, seeing mild confusion spreading like fire among them.

“What? You never took it apart?”

“No?” Exel’s brows lowered, his eyes narrowing.

“What is with you? Do you just not worry about breaking things?” Slooky asked, tilting his head.

Magnice blinked quietly for a minute in the silence, as everyone waited patiently for his answer to that.

“But I can fix it if I break it?” he replied with apathy, not one ounce of concern. If anything, he was mildly bewildered by the question itself.

“Never mind. Forgot who I was speaking to.”

“You’re one to talk,” Magnice shot back at Slooky. “I recall many things have been broken by you.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not like I purposefully start taking my things apart. I don’t have a death wish. Half of my stuff could kill me if I break it the wrong way!”

Bue nodded vigorously, eyes widening. It had nearly happened before. Maybe not death, but it was close enough, at least in her opinon.

“Bue?” Sarah called hesitantly.

“Remember when he set one of his bombs off early?” She jumped on the opportunity to expose the traumatizing incident. Though she’d kept it quiet for quite a while, been told to do so by Slooky, it was hard to keep it in.

“Hey!”

His cry for her to stop was too late.

Exel glanced up from studying his tracker, rolling it between his fingers. He scowled, recalling how he’d gone in first after that faulty signal.

“When you two were supposed to give the all-clear… and it wasn’t?” he bit out carefully, trying to contain his own emotions on the matter.

“Yeah.”

He stalked over to the bag, the one Magnice had put the bandages in along with everything needing to be left behind. Flicking his tracker into it hard enough to crack both it and a watch, he sighed loudly. That had not been a good day. At all. It wasn’t one he liked being reminded of.

“What about it?” Sarah asked calmly, not fazed by Exel’s mood change.

Bue took no more time in ratting out what happened.

“He tried taking it apart to use just a part of it. Thought he could use it twice. That’s why it went off early. It nearly exploded in his hand.”

Every pair of eyes focused on him. He shrugged, looking off to the side with his eyebrows raised high.

“Well, I didn’t know it was going to do that.”

"Well, now that that’s done,” Sarah gestured to the bag, purposefully ignoring the turn in the conversation, and looked to Magnice, who nodded his confirmation. “Then, let’s go.”

She pointed, away from the Facilities, toward a darkening stretch of mountainous land without any lights decorating them.

“We’ll follow the mountain line, not too high, not too low.”

Without any question, they picked up their bags, ready to move on. Lott hauled Magnice up again, this time letting him perch atop her shoulders, with a better vantage point and ease in holding on.

“Someone needs to get Slooky. He can’t use that leg yet,” he pointed out from above.

Taking offense at that, the man in question wasted no time in standing up, setting his foot down on the ground as if nothing had happened to it.

“It’s not that–”

The second he put weight on it, he hissed out a breath before hopping in place a few times to regain his balance. Magnice sighed, not even looking over to see that which he already knew would happen.

Sarah grabbed Slooky’s arm, steadying him.

“I got you.”

Despite his annoyance at the recent recall of a memory, existing thanks to a horrible mistake, caused by that person, Exel offered to carry him instead. Sarah, with Slooky already hopping up on her back, nodded to his shoulder and the mess of shallow wounds there. She offered him a smile.

“He’s not that heavy.”

Exel nodded traded that for taking the lead of the group. Lott followed him, then Sarah, bookended by Bue at the rear. As they started walking, Slooky couldn’t let it go to rest.

“You…” he started. “I’m not a feather, okay? Why is nobody on my side? First Lott, then Magnice, now Sarah…”

“I am,” Bue supplied.

He glanced back at her. In the light of the moon, he gave her a grin, letting go of Sarah’s neck to give her a fist-bump.

“Nice to meet you, by the way.”

“You too,” she replied. “Your avatar is…” She’d noticed earlier, but his in particular wasn’t very flattering. It was something she’d gotten used to, but seeing him in real life was different. “Too bad you can’t change it,” she muttered under her breath.

“…what?”

“Your avatar looks like trash.” When he didn’t reply right away, she clarified her words only the slightest bit. “Looks nothing like you.”

“That’s… a good thing, right?” He asked, wary, eyes narrowed as he tried to glean the right information from her words.

“You’re more appealing in real life.”

“Oh, thank goodness. You actually are on my side. I feel better now.”

Bue grinned, chuckling a bit along with the others. Even Magnice, exasperated, laughed once at the sheer unpredictability of Slooky's words.

As they disappeared over the next rocks, the five blinking lights in the bag, left behind with some watches, grew distant behind them.

They were on the move for a few hours, until they stumbled across a deep and tall cave, not visible by any of the Facilities in the distance. Slooky and Magnice were set down carefully onto the floor while Lott ventured a short distance away to collect a couple of rocks for them to sit on. Reaching in her bag, Bue produced an infinity light. Glowing a warm yellow color, she set it on the floor in the middle of them like a campfire. Their shadows rose high along the walls.

Lott returned, granting Magnice a rock in which to sit, as he began poking through his bag again, now focused on Exel’s shoulder, despite protests that it wasn’t anything bad. Unlike their uniform pants, coming apart at a tiny seam, there was no line that drew across the shoulders, forcing him to unzip down just far enough to free his arm of its sleeve.

Visible on his neck which was now exposed, were the lines they all had, from Fallacy. Thick dashed lines drifted down from his jaw. At the base of them sat a few achievement mark circles, decorating his collarbone and the skin right below it.

Bue sat down, cross-legged, staring at the light in front of her.

“Why did they send assassins in Fallacy? Why not kill us in our pods?”

Exel was the first to respond, his brow furrowing from the stinging sensation as Magnice cleaned the wounds carefully, pulling out a few shards embedded in his skin.

“If we were carried out without injuries, it could be written off as an accidental death inside Fallacy. Killing us in this world would leave marks. Harder to explain. Higher chance of worry and panic.”

She nodded. Then, she glanced at Sarah.

“What about Captain? When do we go get him?”

Anticipation and curiosity filled their faces. All but the Vice-Captain’s. She didn’t respond right away. Only one of them was the first to put it together, realizing what was really going on.

“Sarah’s the official Captain now,” they said, their voice certain.

“What?” Bue spun to the speaker, surprised.

“How do you figure that?” Exel retorted.

“Does anyone know anything about them?” Slooky spoke again, this time in question. He looked around at them, at the growing uncertainty in their gazes. He drove home the toughest questions. “Does anyone know their name? Their location? Do we know anything?”

Around the group, their eyes caught one another in the silence. It wasn’t hard to answer those questions. Every answer was the same.

Every single answer.

No.

They knew nothing.

Slooky sighed, looking down to the ground, the one to break the quiet he created.

“My guess,” he said slowly, gaze travelling up and over to Sarah, who was leaning against the wall. “Cap said not to come.” Her eyes flicked to his the instant he said it, confirming that which he already guessed. “Tell me if I’m wrong.”

They all looked to Sarah, mixed emotions clear across all their faces. Sarah looked down, unable to refute his claim, unable to tell them their trusted Captain had said to leave them behind.

By the time three seconds had passed, they all knew the truth. Exel let out an irritated half-laugh with his exhale. Lott’s expression didn’t change. She merely crossed her arms across her chest, thinking hard. Magnice continued to stare at Sarah, as if hoping it was a lie. Bue’s brows furrowed heavily as she shook her head.

“But why?!” she exclaimed belatedly. “Why would they do that?!”

“What did the Captain say, Sare?” Magnice asked quietly.

All the attention drew back to Sarah, who hesitated.

“That… that it was too far. Too late to come get them out.”

Too far.

Too late.

They all let it sink in, their minds diving into dangerous waters, wondering what it meant.

“Well, Sare, uh…” Slooky sighed. “Captain.”

The impact of that one word, uttered with such serious conviction, was palpable. That growing tension among them seemed to intensify as the air itself was too afraid to move. Stillness overtook their bodies. Sarah’s eyes widened as she was addressed in that unfamiliar manner, with a title she didn’t want to take on.

She took a breath in, but couldn’t reply.

It just didn’t feel right to her.

“Do we follow your predecessor’s wishes? Or do we defy?”

She knew what Slooky was asking. They all did. 

It was whether they should disregard their Captain’s orders, going to find them anyway, or play hide and seek, being fugitives, and plan their next moves without any consideration for their leader.

Taking a moment to think over the options, the rest of them held their breath, hopeful and concerned by whatever choice she was about to make.

Sarah came to a decision, despite not being all too optimistic about how it might end.