The Ultimate Rescue

Chapter XV

SEAN

Music: Speed from Salamander 2

"So, what's next on the list?" I ask Sam and Avery once we've taken flight again.

Sam pulls up the map on the hovercraft's monitor, and the two skim over it for a few seconds before answering. "Hmm... I'm not sure," Avery replies, contemplative. There are four locations left on the map: One in Alaska, one in Missouri, one off the coast of New Mexico, and one in Nevada. A small box in the lower left hand corner of the screen shows we're flying over Minnesota.

"Me neither. Mackenzie could be at any one of these locations, and with each one we check that she's not at, all we're doing is wasting time," Sam adds, sighing.

"Sam, remember our secondary goal," Avery tells him. "We also want to keep the illuminati's spread contained as much as we can."

"You're right," Sam replies. Right then, the Google Chrome browser on the hovercraft randomly pops up, showing an entirely black page with the word "WARNING!" in red, blocky letters flashing repeatedly on the screen. Looking more closely at the screen, it appears to be obscuring a news article-looking page, and there's an "X" in the upper right hand corner of the page to close out of the warning screen.

"What's this? Does the hovercraft have its A.I back now?" I ask hopefully.

"No way. That would've been too quick," Avery replies, bashing any hope I had.

"Yeah, and plus, that's not even on the flash drive that's currently in use," Sam adds. He pulls up the progress bar to check how much more is left on this flash drive to reupload, and it's showing that 74% of the files have been recovered. Sam continues, "This is just how the hovercraft notifies me of important events in the world for some reason. I really need to look into reconfiguring it so I don't get these notifications; they're annoying as hell sometimes."

Sam closes out of the warning message, and he and Avery read over the article together. I try to read along with them out of curiosity, but I'm not able to make much out because Sam and Avery are blocking me from having a good view of the text on screen. Shanna and Elle join us while they're reading. Heath, Luke, and Skylar are having some kind of side conversation, and Mia's once again isolated herself near the back of the hovercraft. I think I speak for everyone when I say I'm super worried about her. She hasn't even opened up to me or Shanna about how she truly feels, and I just know it's going to keep eating her up until she eventually snaps. Every time I've thought about talking to her, either Mia doesn't let me have a chance or Shanna tells me not to. I take a brief look in her direction before turning my attention back to the others.

"Whatcha got there, guys?" Shanna asks.

"Holy shit..." Avery mutters. I can tell from how shocked she sounds that whatever the article's about is not good. "New Mexico just got invaded by a swarm of illuminati soldiers. Apparently the invasion happened out of nowhere, and now the whole state is being held hostage." New Mexico was one of the remaining places on the map of established illuminati locations, so this peaks my interest.

"News reports say that the soldiers seemed to have come from the coastline," Sam adds. "Since that's one of the places on the map, we're gonna have to make a brief detour there to see what we can do about it."

"What's going on?" Heath calls out.

"New Mexico just got hit pretty hard with an illuminati invasion. We're stopping there next to try and do something about it," Avery replies. Heath nods, gives her a thumbs-up, and goes right back to conversing with Luke and Skylar. Sam sets our next destination to the New Mexico spot on the map, and the hovercraft reorients itself and takes off in that direction.