Reece gave a quick fist-pump. Ground Control was responding to their request for support with a small-scale bombardment of the Order’s base.

“Alright, we’ve locked onto your position. How much time do you need to get clear of the area? We’ll be using precision munitions, so the blast radius will be about half a kilometer. Over.”

“Give us a good five minutes. Over,” replied Reece.

“Copy that, you have five minutes to get clear, starting now. Over,” came the reply.

Reece and Naeva nodded at each other and jumped out of the cab.

“Karina, Ciera...it’s time to go," yelled Reece. "We just called in a missile strike.”

“You did what!?!” screamed Karina, popping her head out from the roof of the trailer.

“Ground Control is going to hit this place with a short-range tactical missile strike and it'll be here in the next five minutes. It’s the only way we’re going to get into the bunker.”

“Fine, how much time do we have?, asked Karina, furrowing her brow in disappointment.”

“About four and a half minutes,” answered Naeva as she did a quick calculation in her head. "Give or take..."

Ciera cursed as she undid her straps and jumped down to the cab’s roof, then climbed the side ladder to the ground. Karina ran to the back of the trailer’s roof and hopped down to the ground. By the time everyone else got to the back, she had managed to open the rear doors and pull out the vehicle ramp. The group quickly secured everything into their escape vehicles and backed off, the trike in the lead.

Karina abruptly pointed to the left, down the length of the building to where the remains of the Zhengzhou sat. Reece squinted and could just make out movement.

“Those are workers over there. I only see a couple of uniforms. The rest are probably just former survivors,” yelled Karina, trying to raise her voice over the over the roar of the wind whipping past them as the sped off.

“Fuck,” spat Reece as he turned his cycle and headed towards the distant figures, who would be oblivious to the incoming doom.

As he got closer, he saw that Karina was correct. There were a couple of uniformed men with guns pointed their way, but everyone else was working on clearing the debris and repairing the building. The guards had obviously heard the railgun, but apparently didn’t have any backup, so they had stayed put. There must have been over twenty people that they were guarding.

Now that Reece and his companions were headed the guard’s way, the uniformed men stood up and took positions between the four of them and the weary-looking workers. The uniforms lifted their rifles, but neither of them fired. They never had a chance. Reece saw a spray of red mist sprout from one head and then the other before both men crumpled to the ground. Reece glanced behind him to see Naeva driving the trike and Ciera standing on her seat and firing the Spear rifle as if it were the simplest thing in the world.

He waved thanks and continued to the tired-looking workers. They stopped the various gardening tasks they were being forced to do and looked up, clearly scared. They didn’t look well-cared for, adorned in worn clothes and covered in dirt and smudges. Stopping just in front of the closest of them, Reece addressed the motley group of what he would call indentured servants, one step up from slaves.

“You all need to get out of here right now. There’s a tactical munitions strike coming into this area. You need to clear the area. Get as far away as you can. It’ll be here in under three minutes. Please, head for the trees,” yelled Reece as he pointed towards the trees at the edge of the bowl.

Most of the people stood confused for a second before they started running in the direction that Reece had pointed, towards the trees. A man and two women did the opposite and started running towards the doomed building instead.

“You’re going the wrong way,” Reece yelled at them. "You need to get clear now!"

One of the women turned and yelled back. “Our kids are in there! We won't abandon them. Help us!”

“Shit! Karina, how quickly can you get them all out?” asked Reece, trying to quickly calculate their time remaining.

The lilitu girl didn’t waste time answering, she was off the cycle and running towards the building almost faster than the eye could see. She began depositing young boys and girls outside of the building in rapid succession and pointing them towards the two small vehicles.

“You three, make for the trees,” yelled Reece. “You won’t make it if you don’t leave right now! We’ll get your kids to safety, I swear it!”

The three stopped when they saw Karina depositing their children outside, thought about it a second, and nodded at Reece before running back towards the trees with everyone else. Karina had brought out five children. Reece took a young boy on his cycle while three more were able to fit on the trike after Naeva got off. Karina carried the last child in her arms and thus encumbered, they all made for the tree-line.

They were almost there when a series of large explosions erupted behind them in rapid succession. A moment later, they were buffeted from behind by hot wind and tiny bits of stinging dirt and sand. They made it into the trees before the bigger bits of dirt, metal, and concrete started raining out of the sky and gouging craters into the ground behind them.

“Is everyone okay?” yelled Reece once they were well within the tree line. Considering the ringing in his ears, he doubted any of the others could hear him.

He looked around and didn’t see anyone seriously hurt or bleeding. Naeva walked up to Reece and gave him a dirty look before looking around at all the people they had just saved from their own hastily conceived attack.

“We could have really used that truck about now,” she said as she chastised him.

“Well, there’s a bunch of vehicles parked on the highway. I’m sure a few of those would work,” answered Reece, thinking quickly, desperate to placate the angry temptress.

He walked over to a dark-skinned man and handed him one of their long-range radios. The man was heavily muscled and clean-shaven, his bald head framing his even darker brown eyes.

“Take this and whatever vehicles you can and head south along the highway. Once you’ve gone about fifty kilometers, try the radio every five minutes. Ask for a man named Angel. Tell him that Reece sent you. He’ll take care of you all,” Reece explained.

“You aren’t with the Order, so who are you?” asked the big man suspiciously, his voice deep and rich.

“Well, I guess you could say that we’re the resistance to the Order,” Reece replied without much thought.

The big man suddenly lounged forward and grabbed Reece in a bear hug. Karina drew her spear, while Ciera and Naeva pulled their guns. They all lowered their weapons when they realized the man was simply hugging Reece in thanks. The man let go and took a step back.

“Thank you, you just basically saved us from slavery," announced the man gratefully, explaining the hug. "They said they would protect us if we worked for them, but then the nature of the arrangement became clear. When we tried to leave, they murdered one of us as an example. We traded our freedom for the appearance of safety. Let me tell you, it wasn’t a good trade.”

“He’s right,” added one of the women who had run back for her children and was standing with a little boy and girl. “I’d rather risk my life and the lives of our children than watch them grow up in servitude to those people or be sacrificed for one of their experiments. So, thank you. Thank you all so much. You’ve given us our lives back.”

While Reece certainly reveled in the praise he was receiving, an icy cold feeling ran up and down his spine. If it hadn’t been for Karina, he would have ended up accidentally killing all these people, including the five small children. His mood turned dark and he just shut down to the people’s queries. The girls noticed something was wrong and took over speaking with and guiding the people towards the vehicles.

“Wait a second, please” called out Reece as the people filtered out of the trees.

They all turned to look at him with admiration in their eyes.

“I need to apologize. I recklessly called in that missile strike and nearly got all of you killed. If it wasn’t for Karina here who spotted you all, I most definitely would have,” he told them as he indicated the lilitu girl at his side. “So, look... I’m sorry. I’m incredibly grateful that we were able to save you all, but I’m not sure I deserve your praise. That’s all I wanted to say.”

The big dark-skinned man came back up the hill and put his hand on Reece’s shoulder. Looking Reece right in the eye, his face softened into understanding.

“Look man, I get it. You made a mistake,” consoled the man sagely. “But you know what? You did everything you could to undo that mistake, and you owned it. You could have let us all leave without saying anything, but you didn’t. Hey, maybe you got lucky...”

The man paused, studying Reece, perhaps to see if his words were having an effect before he continued.

“Or maybe this was all supposed to happen this way,” he added. “Either way, all you can do is learn from it. As one of the people you nearly killed, let me just say this. I forgive you. Now, forgive yourself, and let’s get the Hades out of this place before more of the Order’s soldiers show up.”

“Thanks for that,” replied Reece, truly grateful at the man's wise words. “Perhaps you’re right. However, you’ll all have to go on without us. We need to go back and make sure this place is burned to the ground so that the Order doesn’t try and rebuild here again.”

“Okay, okay. I understand. I can see that this is something you need to do,” said the man as he extended his hand. “By the way, my name is Chosen Sarpong. It’s a pleasure.”

“You too,” replied Reece as he took the hand and shook it. “and I’m Reece Danielson. I appreciate your words and will try to take them to heart.”

“That’s all I ask,” replied Chosen. “Oh...and take care of yourself. Now, I have some people to see to safety. And again, thanks to you all. I mean it. Don't sweat the mistake. It probably would have been better than to live our lives as slaves anyway. Remember that.”

Chosen left with a wave and followed the rest of the workers and their children past the smoking crater where the semi’s cab once was and toward the road leading up to the highway. Reece left the relative safety of the tree-line and joined up with Naeva and Karina on the hill sloping down into the bowl-shaped terrain’s bottom. Ciera was a short distance off using the scope on the Spear to scan the area. Naeva and karina both looked up as she saw Reece approaching.

"You okay?" asked Karina.

Reece merely nodded.

“Well, we knocked,” said Naeva, changing the uncomfortable subject and lightening the mood. “Should we go ahead and let ourselves in?”

“Yeah, I think it’s time,” replied Reece absently as he took in the sight of the smoking crater where the bunker and semi had been.

"Thanks," he told Naeva, knowing she had his best interest in mind. It was time to focus on something other than his near-catastrophic mistake.

He examined the scene below. Somehow, the trailer was more or less intact. It had been thrown back by one of the explosions over ten meters and was laying on its side. The bunker door was still partly in place but had been warped outward by one of the blasts. The roof of the bunker had been completely blown away and Reece could just make out the top of a concrete entryway within the crater.

The small group took their vehicles back down to the area and readied their weapons. Reece let Ciera keep the Spear and opted for Aika’s katana, considering the close quarters they would most likely encounter within the bunker. He also grabbed his twin pistols and tucked them into his belt, just in case.

Karina was the first to crest the small hill that the bunker’s entrance had been built within. She looked down into the smoking hole and frowned. The rest of the group joined her and investigated the hole as well. Reece saw what had made her unhappy. The concrete entryway led to a concrete stairway leading down to another thick metal door. If that wasn’t bad enough, the stairway was half-full of concrete rubble, metal rebar, dirt, and debris.

Karina let out a sigh and with her spear in hand, jumped down into the opening. By the time the other three made it down, she had already traversed the rubble-strewn stairwell and was using her considerable strength to force the metal door open. She had braced her back against a flat piece of concrete and was pushing with both her feet against the door, below its handle.

Reece could hear the groaning of the metal as it slowly gave way under the lilitu’s considerable strength. Then, the door abruptly gave way with a screech and Reece could hear the clanging of the crossbeam as it bounced farther into the dimness beyond the doorway. Karina readied her spear and used it to push the door the rest of the way open. As Reece’s eyes adjusted, it looked like a second large entryway, though this one had multiple hallways exiting it.

Once Karina was inside, the rest of the group followed her in. Emergency lights glowed enough that they could make out several objects in the gloom. They looked like storage lockers. Several crates were also piled near the metal door, awaiting removal. A couple of moving carts sat against the far wall, near one of the two hallways leading further into the bunker.

“Shall we split up?” asked Karina, looking directly at Reece for an answer.