Five minutes after the conversation with my folks, Hairo tapped me on the shoulder, interrupting my thoughts.
“Write to your dad and ask him to go somewhere quiet. I need to talk to him alone.”
Dad didn’t answer my message, but soon enough he called. I handed the comm to Hairo.
“Mr. Sheppard…”
“Just Mark.”
“Mark, the situation is critical. You aren’t safe. Alex is going to send you the details of a dependable man. Contact him. He’ll give you security, and without giving your wife any reason to worry.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morales.”
“Just Hairo,” the security officer smiled. “No problem, it’s my job.”
“How much do we owe you for the help?” dad asked.
“Nothing. The clan will get the bill…”
Half an hour later, the sky was fully dark and the flyer landed at the Rocky Mountains. There, by a loud waterfall, there was an inconspicuous hatch camouflaged with fir branches. We waited by it for the others to arrive. Hairo lit a cigar, and when the lights of a flyer flashed in the sky, he gave the signal with his torch.
The cargo flyer softly descended. Its doors opened and a little girl ran out, then the guys and Willy, Hairo’s partner.
The girl turned out to be Ed’s sister, Pollvanna. His grandmother, on the other hand, refused outright to go anywhere. She even threatened Willy with a shotgun.
“She said she wasn’t about to start surrendering at her age and we’ve all gone mad. But at least she let me bring sis,” Ed said as we descended into the bunker. “She didn’t believe me, of course, but Willy managed to find a way.”
“Mrs. Rodriguez is a tough nut,” Willy smiled. “But Hung’s parents are worse…”
“That’s for sure,” big Hung agreed. “They didn’t even want me to go anywhere. They said they’d protect me themselves if something happened. My family nearly had a whole HQ set up. I never thought we had so many guns in the house, and I’ve searched the whole place in my time.”
“Same deal,” Malik added. “Only mine wanted to do the opposite; my dad, cousins and uncles wanted to come with me and hide the women somewhere else. Mom said she was proud of me… Why? For being Alex’s friend?”
“For pulling your family out of poverty,” Ed muttered.
“So your parents all know now?” I asked.
“Your face is all over the news, Alex!” Hung shouted. “Don’t you even check it?”
“We’re catching a lot of attention too,” Ed said. “Like, here’s that team of juniors, the Awoken clan. The class-A Threat and his buddies, damn it. Nether! Did you agree to All hail the hero deliberately? Was that part of the plan, revealing your name?”
“No way,” I shook my head, explained how it all happened.
“By the way, Tissa’s been in the news too,” Malik added. “Some journalists managed to get onto the White Amazons’ island. But she didn’t even comment. Just pulled up her hood and hid inside the Ochre Witch’s I suspected that going public would cause a furor, but so quickly? The boys told me they were watching the news the whole flight over. Snowstorm made an announcement: if there was so much as a hint that the elimination of the class-A Threat involved real-life pressure, then any clan found to be involved would receive a lifetime ban and no rewards for eliminating the Threat.
The Alliance of Preventers held a shared press conference, where Hinterleaf, Horvac, Colonel and others spread their hands amicably and said they wouldn’t comment until they reviewed their play strategy after some of the players were turned undead. As for me, nothing had changed from their point of view; they would still try as hard as they could to eliminate the Threat, but nobody had any personal grievances against Alex Sheppard.
“Alex, kid,” Otto Hinterleaf said, a serene expression on his face. “In the name of all the Alliance, I guarantee that none of our people will try to interact with you in real life. Just keep playing. You’ve been doing a great job!”
The other preventer leaders said the same, with the same fake smiles. They tried hard to change the subject from me to the outcome of the battle with the undead army. But nobody revealed any details, or even answered the direct question of whether anyone in the Alliance had decided to reroll. “All in good time,” Horvac said. “Anyone who decides to change race will have to wait forty-eight hours to reroll. Be patient, there isn’t long to wait.”
Mogwai had gone underground, along with his whole clan. Nobody knew what was happening in Elite, but I still heard something important; as it turned out, after he escaped from me, Mogwai gathered all his clan mates and jumped through a portal to the undead battle site. He and his ’elite’ friends were seen a few minutes before Shazz died…
We lay down to sleep at four o’clock in the morning. Hairo told us we were getting up at six, and flying to school at six-thirty. We didn’t plan to stay for lessons; we needed to get to Alaska as soon as we could to get a capsule ready for the auction.
The boys decided to switch to distance learning too, which made sense. We had to stay together from now on, at least until all this ended.
Without even taking off our clothes, we lay down next to each other on damp old mattresses on the floor. Just as I was drifting off, I got a message on CrapChat. Hello, Mr. Sheppard! I hope your promise of an exclusive is still valid. If so, now is a great time for an interview. The editor has authorized me to offer you three million. Ian.
My answer was short: Agreed. Tomorrow night. Ill send a cipher.
Chapter 13: A Hundred Million— Going Once!
MORNING CAME and my comm beeped out an alarm—the security system back at the apartment
