The Medical School

Chapter Twenty-Seven

It's one hell of a morning in the Map Room. I have about ten minutes of peace and quiet while visiting my friends in the hospital, and then WHAMMY! I'm hit with a tidal wave of chaos a few hallways away.

Deli and Zed are in an argument about lunchmeat, Redhead Kate has dyed her hair red as promised, Blonde Kate and Charlie are flirting, and Shaun is picking up a stack of papers that he had knocked onto the floor.

And I'm just standing in the Dentistry Academy section trying not to lose it.

I think we would do better with the Leaders here every day, but I think they chose to leave so we can figure out how to work well together, which is something that we will need to do when we leave. So far, we're not off to a real great start.

I wait two minutes, and when people still haven't calmed down, I decide that I've had enough.

"SHUT IT!!!" I yell loud enough for the entire Meeting House to hear me. "Do you guys want to bust the Conquering, or not?"

Everyone stops their conversations, and looks up at me. There's an awkward three-second-long silence, and then Shaun moves to stand by my side.

"Bren's right," he says. "We need to get a move on."

Still, nobody speaks or moves. I realize that they're waiting for instructions.

Thinking quickly, I manage to come up with, "Alright, so the Medical School Spies already know about the planned Mass Breakout and that we're going over there, so let's figure some stuff out and radio them to finalize some...er...stuff."

There's another silence, and I'm beginning to wonder if there's some airborne virus in the room that's caused everyone to go mute.

"Not very specific, but works for me," Charlie says. "Let's start with the route to Greensborough."

I smile at him, and we all get to work.

Shaun pulls out the route that other Spies have used in the past, Charlie raids the Internet for train departure times, Deli finds pictures of train tickets, and then Zed uses Photoshop to get the date and other stuff accurate. The tickets are for one designated trip only, so we'll have to get to those trains in time or else we're in serious trouble.

Both of the Kates are on bus duty, making sure that the lines still exist, or if there are any more practical routes.

I'm put in charge of the long-range walkie-talkie, communicating information to the current Spies and making sure that everything is going to work out at their end.

Figuring out how to use the damn device is an adventure all in itself; after a few minutes of yelling at the device, Zed kindly informs me I'm supposed to let go of the big red button when I'm done talking.

I let the Spies know that I'll be talking to them for the next few days, and I tell them everything that we know for sure at this point. They give me pointers on how to fake our way onto the trains and other miscellaneous advice.

I make an attempt to write down what they say using actual words, but they talk so fast it quickly turns into something resembling shorthand.

The day's activities pretty much follow this format:

1. Finalize aspect of journey at the Safehouse.

2. Communicate aspect of journey to Spies.

3. Spies tell us aspect will not work.

4. Argue with Spies.

5. Lose argument.

6. Tweak aspect of journey.