𝐬𝐤𝐲𝐟𝐚𝐥𝐥 - gabriel [rim of the world]

∣ 009; s a v e d t h e w o r ld

. *. ⋆

"Citadel, this is Crystal Palace."

They all looked at one another before springing up, running towards the sound.

"What? What was that?"

"Go! What the heck?"

"Citadel... this is Crystal Palace. Do you copy?"

"Hello?" Alex attempted, "Hello? We're here! Over!"

"Citadel, identify yourself. What is your name, ma'am? Over!"

Alex scoffed, frowning, offended, "I'm Alex."

"How old are you?"

"I'm thirteen."

Athena whipped her head towards him, "You're thirteen?"

"Shh!" the four shushed her, resulting in her putting her hands up in surrender. She then turned to Gabriel.

"How old are you?"

"15," he told her.

She nodded, "Okay-- good. Me too."

"Why is that good--?"

"Be quiet," Athena hissed, heat rising to her cheeks-- she needed to learn how to shut up. She focused back on Alex.

"And if you don't mind me asking, who are we talking to?"

"This is General George Khoury at Cheyenne Mountain. Is anyone alive at JPL? Is Dr. Fielding there?"

"There are five of us; everyone else is dead. The astronaut sent us before she died."

"You were sent by Major Collins?"

"Yeah, that's why we came," Gabriel told the General.

"She gave us the key and said something about Excalibur," Alex continued.

"What, you have the crypto-key in your possession?"

"That's right. What do we need to do to get it to work?"

The General sighed, "Nothing. You need to get out of there. I'm... I'm sorry. It's over. There's nothing you kids can do against this thing. Now get out of there immediately-- we're sending two units to pick you up--"

Athena pushed Alex out of the way, enraged.

"Are you fucking kidding me?"

"Excuse me-- "

"We just spent the last day traveling across fucking Southern California and through warzones to get this key here. We biked over 60 miles, getting hunted by those aliens--"

"And a diddler," Dariush interrupted, "Don't forget about the diddler."

"--And you're saying there is nothing we can do when we have everything we need to kill these things? We had no help-- the only help we did have got murdered five minutes after we gave them the key-- I had to run through a burning bus that got exploded right after I jumped out of it! I better get a fucking Oscar after that-- but all we had was each other-- we had nobody else!

"So-- I'm not asking you again-- what do we need to do to kill this shit? If you won't tell me, I'll figure it out myself-- but I'd be very grateful if you'd tell me what to do because if you don't, the end of the world is on your hands, buddy-- "

"All right, someone needs to go down to the basement and fire up the emergency generators. Start them in sequence, exactly four seconds apart. Send you fastest, strongest-- "