A Land of Despair

The More, The Merrier.

"Anywhere." I answered.

"That's okay, I'm not in a rush to go home so I might as well just wait for the bus." She said.

"Please let me take you." I begged, hoping she would give him. I wanted to talk to her again, the last time did not go so well for us and I was hoping things could go differently this time.

Mike was by my side now as we both looked at her, he casually put one hand over my shoulders and the other into his hoodie pocket, "you live in the next town over right?" He asked, when she nodded, he continued saying, "so do we, Tina and I. When he drops us off he can take you home after. What do you say?"

She looked down to her shoes for moment. Contemplating our offer.

"Okay." She drawled out forcefully. I could tell she was not really comfortable with the idea, because let's face it, we were not even friends.

We were all in the car now, me in the driver's seat, Mike in the front and the two girls in the back. The ride started out quite until Tina spoke up.

"Why did you guys invite her to come with us, we had plans." She spat.

Mike turned his body in order to look at her as he gave her an answer. "The more the merrier, right? We will just have to take her with us."

"Take me where? I thought you said you were taking me home...Adam.?" Hope spoke up warily, I smiled internally, at the fact that she specified that it was me she wanted to hear an explanation from.

"And I will take you home, after we take a detour. You said you were not in a hurry to go home so why not?"  Came my reply.

"Oh okay, I guess.. Could you tell me where we are going though?"

"On a spy mission." Mike jumped in with an answer.

Hope gasped audibly which caused Mike to laugh lightly, it seems that he had gotten his intended reaction from her.
"Spy mission?" She asked "isn't that illegal?"

"It's not like it'll be something new for you. You've done it so many times." Tina gave her two cents, not at all amused by the current situation.

"I'm not a spy! And I've never spied on anyone." Hope responded.

"Except for us, yeah." Tina taunted relentlessly.

"Don't worry Hope, Mike tends to exaggerate his statements at times. There's just something we've been asked to check out. No big deal." I offered, trying desperately to diffuse the situation growing between the two parties in the back seat of the car.

"Were you asked by your rebel friends?" Hope asked, though it felt rhetorical.

"It's an organization!" Tina declared to us all, still wanting to have a say.

A heavy silence came over us as once more, and to me, it felt way better than the spiteful conversation that was erupting from the girls.

Before we got to the intersection that led us to the town I was supposed to be dropping my friends, I turned off the highway into a narrow side road. The area was just that of open fields, and patches of barren land on some parts, other parts were ruins of buildings and structures that once were, and from the looks of it, these places we passed with rubble had to have been great places to be.
There was no life to be seen in sight.
You could see the heat rising from the ground on most parts. And it made me glad that our vehicle wasn't something that had plastic tyres touching the hot ground. I'm not really sure how those worked but in this heat, I feared they would have melted.

We drove onward for about two hours before we got to a poster that had the name of a city, bent over to one side, rust covering parts of it so it was hard to read.

The poster only showing the words
"welcome to bunc". 

But for us that was enough because we knew that this was the place we were supposed to be. Mark and the team had ordered us to go to this location to make sure if the intel they had received was correct.
Someone among the higher ups at the organization had told them about an abandoned controller ship, not as big as one of those that hovered, but one of the smaller ones that transported them from earth to the bigger ships and vise versa. If this were to be true, it would come as a game changer for us. We would be able to not only tap some information from the ship, but also get a handle on some of the technology that they used and this would push us ahead in our plans to get the better of them.

We maneuvered through some through roads and were finally before it.
As soon as the car was parked, we all stepped out to get a closer look.

The thing was large and oval shaped, as big as a two story building, a few meters of it were buried in the ground, but it was still all there. It had a black shiny look to it, like that of tough rubber. The surface had small ridges all around the ship. It looked like a big tyre from back in the day.

"How are we supposed to get inside this thing." Tina asked, her eyes never leaving the ship.

My eyes roamed the ship, looking for an opening, "perhaps there is a button." I asked, more than stated

"This way, you guys. There's a door and It's open." Came a shout from the hidden side of the ship, we all looked around and realized that Mike was not nearby, none of us had even noticed him wandering off.
Tina dashed towards her brother, eager to see for herself.

"Uhmm, maybe I should stay here... or in the car." Hope mumbled. She took tiny steps backwards towards the car.

"Don't worry, nothing is going to happen to you if I'm with you." I said with determination, giving her a look that I hoped would show her my earnestness.

She hesitated, but then began to walk towards where we had heard Mike call to us. I waited until she had walked in front of me before going to the other side of the ship as well.