They were all crouched around an overturned platter of mashed potatoes and another food with a similar texture but wildly different in taste. Once everyone had had their fill, they got up and continued toward the back.
Manny stopped the group and motioned toward a door with his eye tentacles. “This would be it.”
Gill walked up to the freezer and gave it a once-over. “Isn’t this just a freezer?”
Manny shook his head, his tentacles swaying. “Only to the uninitiated. Most of the entry areas are disguised so cadets won’t waste their time trying to get in. We were using broom closets for a while, but instructors quickly found out what teenagers use closets for.”
Manny opened the freezer. Past the threshold was a portal that breathed cold, fresh air out at Alex and the rest of them. Even if she had been able to see, she probably would have assumed this was a freezer. “All right, let’s go.”
Alex and Gill went first since they were the ones who could see best. They stepped through the portal, which was unlike the first portal Myrddin had sent her through. There was no disorientation or anything like that. She merely walked through it and was somewhere else.
The somewhere else was a long hall much different from the glass corridors of the Wasp’s Nest. These halls were bare and not crystalline. They looked as if they were made of simple wood and stone. “What’s with the lack of magic?” Alex asked as she peeked through her blindfold.
As they walked, Manny explained the reason. “These are meant for quick transit. The whole Nest uses a large amount of energy. When they were putting these halls together, they figured just building them would be an easy way to keep from wasting energy.”
Gill ran his hands across the walls, collecting cobwebs. “And no one ever made a plan for using these in case of an evacuation?”
“If I’m honest, Myrddin isn’t the humblest man in the realms. He never thought anyone would have the gall to attack the Nest. And as we’ve seen tonight, that meant we were not running tight enough security.”
Brath tapped his knife on his dragon anchor. “I’ll say.” He chuckled. “You’d think the place Myrddin spends most of his time would be better defended. Doesn’t look good for the Resistance, does it?”
Alex turned to Brath despite not being able to see. “Wait, are you saying Myrddin is here?”
“I mean, he might not be here right now, but he usually is. From what I’ve heard, the dragonriders are his pet project, after the MERCs.”
“Well, why doesn’t he just blast these orcs out of here and stop all of this?”
“Beats me. Trust me; I wish he would too. Walking around in the magical back alleys of the Nest with a bunch of kids isn’t my idea of a good time.”
Alex almost regretted having engaged Brath, but he was right. It wasn’t a particularly great idea, and it also didn’t do much to make her trust Myrddin’s foresight. Why would he have left this place so poorly defended?
Gill pulled up his visor HUD and scrolled through a map, trying to find out where they were in the Nest. “Come on, guys, talking trash on Myrddin right now isn’t going to help any of us. Let’s just focus on what we can control. We follow this for a while, then turn right and hit the stables.”
Alex and the rest of them moved through the dark hallway in silence. It was welcome since Alex was finally able to be alone with her thoughts. She had been trying to roll with the punches since the invasion. Truthfully, since she had arrived at the Nest. It wasn’t getting any easier.
Myrddin had made it seem like she would be safe—as if her mother and father didn’t have anything to worry about. Alex had been at the Nest for less than a week, and she was already fleeing for her life, with Myrddin nowhere to be seen.
Crap, Alex thought. Did my parents respond?
Alex opened her HUD and checked for messages. Her parents had responded almost instantly. This wasn’t the time to answer, but Alex promised herself she was going to make it through this if only to speak to her parents again.
Gill raised his hand to signal to the group to stop. “Wait. I see heat signatures up ahead through the walls. I want to check and see what they are.” Gill looked down at his map. “Oh, no. Those are cadets. They’re hiding. They’re not too far from here.”
Alex didn’t wait for him to say anything more. “We have to go help them. We can’t just leave them there by themselves.”
Brath forced his way up from the back of the group. “Weren’t you the ones who were saying we had to focus on getting to our dragons and that it was the adults’ job to figure out how to save the cadets?”
“Yeah, but that was before they were only a couple of feet away from us,” Gill countered. “I thought it was stupid to try to fight our way through half of the Nest to get to them, but these guys are right here. It’s a considerably smaller risk.”
Sometimes Alex hated the way Gill talked. He sounded like a walking computer program. She wondered if he was even capable of feeling anything. The way he had handled killing that orc was positively cold, even though he had been right.
Jollies shimmered from pink to red as she flew up to Alex’s face. “We can’t leave them behind,” she pleaded.
Alex swiped her finger across Jollies’ face. “Dude, don’t even worry about it. That was never an option. We’re supposed to be training to be heroes, aren’t we? Might as well start now. Take us there, Gill.”
Gill nodded as he turned his attention back to his map. There was a little bit more light in the hall, so it was easier to move around. They must have been off the
