Hegemon

Weapons Check

“The Bones may be centered here, but that doesn’t mean everywhere doesn’t know what is really going on.”

“So what, they’re all just going to drop everything and come?” Jasper asked, giving the paper back.

“What put you under the impression that they wouldn’t? These people are our family, despite the fact that we don’t know them. It’s not like we have Runners who won’t do anything for each other.” Jasper paused.

“But why are you calling them here?” he asked. “We have orders, orders that you accepted, to stay out of all of this.”

“The fight’s coming to us whether we like it or not, and I certainly am not surrendering on behalf of the world,” Cecil said.

“What will the Leaders do?” Leah asked. Cecil picked up more papers from the floor and put them with the pile in the crook of his arm, looking at each and staring the marks down before nodding and moving on.

“They probably already know,” Cecil said, “Since they monitor these things, but they’re not unreasonable. I would be surprised if they did anything, to be honest.” There was a silent pause. More papers rained down.

“And are people coming then? All of them?” Kira asked.

“Most of them. There are Runners who are unknown, but still have the same goals, so there’s no telling if they’ll come here or not.”

“Cecil, we don’t have the room or the arsenal to host an entire world of Runners, plus whoever else may show up,” Daniel said, handing him more papers, most of which were scraps of old parchments. Some were even torn pieces of the papers Cecil had sent out.

“We’re not fighting here,” Cecil said shortly.

“Then where?” Alex asked. Cecil was looking over all the papers before turning to walk back to his study.

“I don’t know yet. Not here. It’s too close to the people in the town. They need to be safe, like the Leaders said. It’s not like I’m just going to put them in danger. We’ll probably cut them off at the edge of the forest,” Cecil said, spreading the papers out on his desk. They overlapped, but from what they saw, most of the symbols were generally the same. They couldn’t read them, but from what they’d heard, the answers were probably all yes.

“That would put you at my house,” Jasper said. “In the fields.” Cecil looked up for a brief moment, then sighed.

“Right. Sorry, never mind—“

“No. It’s fine,” Jasper said, and then looked at Daniel, who nodded as well. “The field is almost the perfect spot anyway; there aren’t any hiding spots or trapped doors anywhere.”

“Perfect,” Cecil said.

“So, how are people, like, getting here?” Leah asked.

“Well, they’ll probably meet here, and they we’ll meet the rest of them at the house,” Cecil said.

“We could just tell them to meet at the field?” Alex suggested.

“But the entire weapons arsenal is here,” Kira said.

“Right,” Alex said, nodding.

“They’ll end up here anyway,” Cecil said. “Here is where the message came from. So I suggest you all get ready for a lot of people getting here in a short amount of time,” Cecil said.

“How many Runners are there?” Kira asked.

“Not as many as there are Bones, that’s for sure. Two, maybe three hundred at the most. Most people in our world don’t really let themselves enter into the job of being a Runner. The safest rout is to go the way of the normal life. Eventually, the numbers of people who did choose to be Runners add up enough to make us a reasonable force, but most groups of Runners are only two or three people, not four or five, like us.”