Earth's Revolution

~9~

We took off running, adrenaline fuelling our strength. We were finally here! The trees opened up onto a gorgeous and massive lake, icy blue. Next to us, I saw a grand expanse of mountains, the tips rocky brown. Once I imagined there must have been snow, but now in this heat snow was a rare thing to find. The planet had truly suffered from climate change, and now it would fight its final blow, solar storms.
My eyes fell upon a small boat, floating in the water. Someone was there. We approached the edge of the lake cautiously. From close up, I noticed this person also had a mask on.
"Hey there! You two! Come here, put these on." The stranger from the boat handed us a couple of masks, "The base is this way."
They helped us onto the boat and then took off towards an island near the center. "I'm Jacopo by the way, I'm a Walker."
"Yeah, we figured," I laughed nervously.
"How many Walkers are there?" asked Maria.
"At the moment, we must be near 20-30 in our base. In the world? Thousands."
"Thousands?"
"Well yeah, how do you expect to perform a hack like that. We need people for that."
"True enough I guess."
"You came to the base where the leader is."
"The leader? Of the Walkers?"
"Yeah, though each sector has a leader, we have the main leader."
"You mean the guy in the mask?"
At that he laughed. "There are a lot of us "guys in masks". But yeah, the one from the dream. I'm guessing you two found this place from the dreams, am I right?"
"Yes, how did y'all do that?"
"Well firstly we already knew you would be prone towards our group seeing as your parents were originally part of the organisation. Most importantly though, your soul was already "chosen". We just needed a little dream altering technology to pass on the message."
"What do you mean by "chosen"?"
"Well it's hard to explain but to put it simply, some people are born Walkers. Or they are like 99% likely to become one, even without really officially joining the group. Maybe it runs in the blood? I'm not sure. Think of it as how some people are born witches or wizards in Harry Potter. It's something that touches people in odd ways and doesn't necessarily run in families."
"Wow, so are we Walkers?"
"If you had the dreams, then yes. When we reach the base you will be entered more officially. Each of us are scanned and given an ID, but in this base most of us know each other by name."
"And you are Jacopo right?"
"Yes correct," he smiled, "I don't know your names however."
"I am Maria and this is Leah."
"Nice to meet you Maria and Leah. We are almost here."
The boat was approaching the edge of the island and I could see more people watching us from behind trees.
"Don't be scared by the way, the guards have guns but that's just to keep us safe. We expect that the government will retaliate in some way but maybe they are busy with saving the population right now."
He jumped off the boat and attached it to a pole, before holding out his hand to us and helping us out onto the ground. "It's this way," he said, leading us between the trees. We followed him, passing next to the guards who greeted us with a wave, one of them saying "Hallo". I wondered then, was this base Norwegian? Or were there other foreigners like us?
I gasped in wonder as the trees opened up and I finally saw it. The base. It was a beautiful fortress with huge stone walls, and a flag bearing the Walker logo was flying proudly from a tower. It wasn't enormous, small enough to hide in the trees of this forest, and I noticed it wasn't built on a hill like most Medieval forts were, so it's sole purpose was camouflage, not intimidation. As I looked closely, I realised people were carrying furniture and supplies into a trapdoor open on the outside.
"Welcome to the base," said Jacopo, "As you can see, we aren't going to live in it like before, it's too dangerous with the solar storm on the way. We're moving everything underneath where we have a sort of underground base. Before, our technology room and our labs were there, but now we've made space for a proper camp. We had a lot of spare space down there anyway, I'm pretty sure older civilisations had intended it to be some sort of apocalypse-proof base." He laughed, "I guess it is now though, isn't it? Damn, I'm sorry about my incessant rambling, let's go inside," and he walked towards the trapdoor.