Free Web NovelChapter 14: Back in Valoria
Back in Varolia
(The Desert)
Wind swept sand all over the desert as the sun hammered down on the ground without mercy.
All the squads except Team D had already arrived beside the hole where their whole journey started. The doors they came through were completely gone, just leaving a memory in the teenagers’ minds that they existed.
Some of candidates were in groups, chatting about how thrilling the killing experience was for them.
While other boys and girls were alone flirting with each other, speaking erotic things into each other’s ears that surely made many of them hornier than they already were. Who could blame them, this was the only chance they got to talk properly since meeting each other and gladly, they were using that chance to the extreme.
Unlike the others, Kendal the pink-haired girl wasn’t conversing with her age mates. She stood near the driver of the army truck.
"I don’t get it, our team finished three floors hours ago, why should we bother waiting for Team D?"
"It’s protocol, we are obliged to wait for them so that we can have something to report."
The driver sounded completely pissed off, even though he kept a friendly front.
"Fuck, can’t you label them dead or something? It’s not like we will ever need them."
She never gave up trying to enforce her views on the matter.
Team B, which was led by her, was the second to finish three floors earlier, the first being Team A. So it was only fair that her already firing morale had drastically increased.
The driver paused for a second, like he was thinking about Kendal’s words. He was tired of waiting too, given he was here under the sun the whole time, but after his subtle pause,
"Still can’t do it."
He continued.
Just as he finished speaking another door opened a few meters before the massive hole. White light spilled out onto the desert ground.
The moment Kendal saw the door she started walking towards it with an angry face and wrinkles on her forehead. It wasn’t a good look for her but she didn’t seem to care.
’I will show these bastards they can’t keep a queen like me waiting here.’
Jennifer was the first one to come out of the door, her face looking pale like she didn’t sleep for a whole week. Her uniform was burnt in random places.
Conversations started to die down among the groups, even Kendal stopped walking. The feeling that something terribly wrong had happened clung to the air.
Upon seeing Jennifer, the driver walked towards the door with a surprised face too. Not in hell did he ever anticipate something like that would happen. He expected them to come out hurt but not burnt like that.
Sabrina came through second. Her uniform was burnt too but her face gave off a traumatized vibe, like she had lived through something she wasn’t ready to speak about.
Murmurs and gasps started to spread through the crowd. Little did they know they hadn’t even gotten ahold of everything yet.
Leo and Jake came last, Leo helping the armless Jake move properly despite the large surge of numbing pain he felt in his body.
That right there was what knocked the ball out of the park. The moment the teenagers saw Jake armless something in their guts twisted violently with fear.
The driver rushed towards Jake, his eyes betraying the fact that he had a lot of questions for them, but seeing how troubled they looked made him pull himself back.
Click!!
The floor door closed behind them, then vanished into thin air. All sad eyes stayed on them as the crowd parted ways for the three to pass through.
"Let’s get to the truck nice and slow."
The driver muttered as both him and Leo helped Jake into the front seat of the truck.
Everybody wanted answers and fast. Some of the teens wanted to ask Sabrina, but her gothic attitude spoke otherwise, so they turned to Jennifer who seemed much more stable.
"What happened?"
Kendal was the one that gathered enough courage to ask.
Jennifer hesitated a little, her mind racing to find the words that would explain what they passed through. After gathering herself she finally opened her mouth to begin talking.
But just as she was about to start another shout from the crowd interrupted her.
"How come there are four of you instead of five?"
Tears filled Jennifer’s eyes in an instant, like there was a switch in her eyes that controlled how tears flowed. Memories of how traumatizing the attack was covered her whole mind like graffiti.
"He is gone, I can’t believe Ken is gone."
She kept repeating the words over and over again.
But even with that, none of the people seemed to care about her feelings, they kept pressing harder to get the answers they wanted like she was a thief at an interrogation.
Luckily the driver and Leo had already finished putting Jake in the truck.
"Everybody shut up!!"
The driver shouted, bringing silence to the area.
"It’s not your place to ask questions. If you fail to follow my rules then I will mark you as failed for today’s exam. Now everyone should go inside the truck and I don’t want anyone talking!"
The driver’s threat brought everyone back on track. There was no better way to scare teenagers than with failure. So while everyone stayed silent and curious, they got into the truck and started their journey back to the HQ with one candidate less.
When they got back to HQ they didn’t go back through the same door they came out from. They went to a back door that had a crew of medics waiting for them.
Fast as they were trained to be, the medics laid Jake on a mechanical stretcher as they pressed a drip onto him to help loosen him up.
The other three members of Team D were taken for medical attention too.
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After twenty minutes
Click!!
Bandaged Leo went into a waiting room that the doctors assigned to him. The smell of medicine and sterilized objects welcomed him, just like he remembered from the hospitals back on Earth.
Inside there was Jennifer who had her hands bandaged.
"Finally, I was tired of being alone."
She began as Leo closed the door behind him.
"Haha, don’t worry. We are together now."
Leo muttered as he sat down on a waiting chair like those you would find at an airport, half of his body bandaged up.
Jennifer’s cheeks turned pink at the words. Pretty weird that injured Leo seemed smoother talking to women than normal Leo.
"So how are you holding up?"
She changed the subject.
"Ahh."
Leo sighed, laying his back on the chair as relief settled in.
"I’m good, they found some internal injuries, but nothing I couldn’t handle."
He replied.
He wasn’t lying about the handling pain part. On Earth he lived most of his life in pain, it was either the consistent headaches or stomach pains. All in all, in some weird way he had gotten accustomed to it.
"How about you?"
Jennifer looked at her bandaged arms with a smirk on her face.
"Muscle strains from using my skill too much for a continuous time, they said it will heal off in days."
Click!!
The door quickly opened, the two teens’ eyes widened expecting Sabrina or even Jake to come in, but instead two men walked in. Both wearing black sunglasses along with black suits with a Pegasus logo on the chest mixed with golden army aesthetics.
"Is this Leo Hamany and Jennifer Sending?" freeweɓnovel.cøm
One of them asked with haste.
Leo looked at Jennifer first as if he was asking whether to say the truth or lie, then after seeing the confirmation in her eyes he turned back to the men.
"Yes, we are."
"We are from the Horsemen. The Founder requests your presence at the castle.
