Hurricane // Danger Days (Book 2)

30.

"General, we found something!"

"Wait, really?" Alien almost yelled into her communicator. "What is it?"

"It's a hotel," Volume told her from the other line. "Or, at least I think that's what the word for it is, that's what the sign says. It's gigantic! It has five floors, and each one has, I dunno, twenty rooms in it?" He asked Volt, who was with him, then he said "No, it's actually more like thirty! This is awesome!"

"Destroya," Alien gasped. "How is that even possible? Yes! Yes, that's it! That's where we're moving!" She jumped from her desk (which had been returned to its rightful position in her office yesterday, after Grenade had been released) and made to run to get Cola. "I'm gonna go tell the others!" Then she ended the call.

🌩

Volume was grinning like a maniac. "We did it, babe! We found the new Nest!"

Volt and Volume crashed together, hugging. When they parted, Volt stood on her toes and kissed Volume. Then she said, "Why don't we go inside and explore?"

They did just that. The lobby was a lot smaller than the Nest's main room, and the ceiling was lower, but it was still fairly large. There was a counter near the front, and a few tables and chairs scattered around. There were several doors and hallways leading to other places, which they were going to go into, until they noticed that there were two people sitting behind the counter, looking terrified.

The two people looked fairly young, and looked almost exactly alike, except one of them had pink hair and the other one had blue. The blue-haired one coughed, then whispered to the other one, "Uh, Vamos? What do we do?"

"I dunno, Vaya," Pink-hair replied. "They don't look BLI... should we say hi?"

At that, Blue-hair hopped over the counter and strutted over to Volt and Volume. "Hey! I'm Vaya, and that's my twin, Vamos, at your service! And what are your names?"

Volt and Volume looked at each other, then turned back to Vaya. "Uh, I'm Volt," she said, then gestured to Volume. "And this is Volume. Do you live here?"

"Hell yeah!" Vamos said, walking over to them. "It's just us though. Oh, and Vinyl."

"We hadn't had company in forever!" Vaya told them.

"It's awesome to see some friendly faces," Vamos agreed, "especially ones with such good fashion sense! I love your hair, by the way," Vamos told Volume.

"Thanks!" Volume grinned. "Well, uh, we don't want to intrude or anything, but... well first I should ask, do you know about the Nest? Or General Alien?"

They both gasped. "Of course we know about her, dummy!" Vaya laughed.

"She is so badass!" Vamos gushed. "I have a poster of her in my room! I've also got a Poison one. He was awesome."

"Our room," Vaya corrected.

"Yeah, whatever," Vamos sighed, annoyed.

"Well," Volt started, "The Nest is running out of space, and we were sent here to scout for places we could expand into. So obviously when we saw this place, we told Alien about it..."

"Wait," Vaya said, "you mean, she's coming here? And staying?"

"Yes! Yes, of course!" Vamos jumped up and down in excitement. "Oh, and we'd love the company! It does get really lonely, Vinyl doesn't talk much."

"We can show you around if you want," Vaya proposed.

"That would be awesome," Volt smiled.

🌩

"So they actually found a place for the Nest to move?" Storm asked in disbelief, back in Alien's office.

"Apparently," Alien grinned. "I'm really excited about that. Volume certainly seemed excited too. I just hope there isn't anyone else living there—well, no one hostile, anyways."

"It's going to take a long time for us to move everything, General," Cola advised. "And some people are going to have to stay here."

"I know," Alien smirked. "I'll let everyone know. Or better yet, I can tell them about the moving bit and you can tell them about the staying bit." She winked, and he rolled his eyes.

Storm laughed. "So when are we gonna start moving?"

"We can start right now if everyone wants to!" Alien told him. "I'm gonna need some time to plan things first, ya know, I actually need to go there, and whatever. But! Yes, anyone can start moving whenever they want."

"Yeah, Ren and Revenge really want to," Storm said. "They obviously aren't used to sleeping in a room that crowded."

Suddenly, Alien's communicator went off. She looked at the code displayed on it. It was unfamiliar. She was confused; she never got calls from codes she didn't know. But it was coming from a Killjoy communicator, so she answered it. "Hello?"

"General? This is Rev's mom. I'm in the Lobby."

"Oh, hi!" Alien said. "Uh, what's up?"

"I'm about to forward you a transmission that I just got. It's not Killjoy tech, so you wouldn't have picked it up. But here's the thing: It didn't come from BLI territory. It came from the Northeast, the part that BLI didn't conquer."

"Wait, what?" Alien scrunched her eyebrows. "I thought they took over the whole country."

"So did I until I heard this message. I told Rev, and they said to send it to you, so I did. Anyway, that's it. I just wanted to let you know."

"Okay, thanks. Bye," Alien ended the call. "Guys, we've got news. There should be a transmission here..." she trailed off as she sat down at her computer.

Storm and Cola stood behind her. There was, in fact, a transmission there, from the same code that had called her. She opened the file and let the audio play.

"Hello. If you can hear this, you are in the territory occupied by Better Living Industries." There was a lot of static, but the words could be picked out if one focused on the deep male voice that was speaking.

"Hold on..." Alien whispered. "I know that voice..."

"I'm not sure if you are affiliated with the Industry or not, but I'm sure that if you are, you'll disregard this message. But whether you are or not, I'm here to report on the condition of the United States of America.

"After the war, as I'm sure you know, the country's economy fell into disrepair and most people were poverty-stricken. So, of course, we didn't have adequate resources to fight a war with. But the Northeast had the highest concentration of Killjoys, and others who were willing to fight. And so, the Industry failed to claim the areas north and east of Ohio, West Virginia, and Virginia.

"However, the country hasn't been doing well on its own. To deal with the economic crisis, the government established a socialist system, which soon fell into outright communism. People who have worked hard their whole lives for what they have are forced to share it with those who haven't worked a day in their lives. And there's censorship, too. Anything that could possibly offend someone, curse words, harsh opinions, and even tattoos, piercings, and bright hair colors have been prohibited. And one more thing: none of us are allowed to travel over the border into Industry territory. I know it seems ridiculous that anyone would want to do that, but... you'd be surprised.

"If you're a Killjoy, you're probably furious right now. I get that. But I'm not telling you to come over here and start a revolution. I'd prefer to speak some sense into the officials rather than knocking it into them.

"But I do have one thing I have to say before I end this message: If you know the whereabouts of an eighteen-year-old girl named Elizabeth O'Reilly, or just El, please show her this message and tell her... tell her that her dad misses her. Very much." The man choked up a bit before the message ended.

Alien was hyperventilating. This can't be happening. I- I can't believe it!

"Al, are you okay?" Storm put his hand on Alien's shoulder.

"Yeah, I'm great," Alien said. Then she looked up at Storm with a huge grin on her face. "My dad is alive!"