New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 768 Hitting The Road

"What if we can\'t stop them?" she asked, nervousness leaking through her voice.

"Stop. Don\'t think like that already. We can do this. We have to. We\'ll be fine."

Alex rubbed her back a bit, trying to comfort her, and kept looking at his reflection on the polished doors.

\'If we fail, so many people will die. We can\'t afford to fail.\'

The fifty floors down felt longer than usual, the two of them standing there in silence, Alex rubbing Kary\'s back as she looked at her feet, deeply lost in thought.

There wasn\'t much more he could do. If there were a magic phrase, he could tell her to make her feel better, he would say it.

But life didn\'t work that way. They had the weight of many human beings on their shoulders, and if they fucked up, people would pay that price dearly.

When the elevator reached the ground floor and the doors dinged open, Kary took a deep breath, slapping her cheeks lightly.

"Alright! We got this!" she lied, her cheeks red.

Alex smiled.

\'At least she wants to have the right mindset,\' he thought.

Slowly, the pair walked out of the elevator, approaching the front doors. The receptionist had already told them a chauffeur was waiting for them outside.

They knew instantly which vehicle they were hoping into when they saw it.

The sizeable suburban SUV, matte black, with windows tinted and a mean-looking push-bar on the front, looked anything but something you would use in a city. Passersby were already looking at it with a mix of awe and fear.

It looked directly pulled out of an apocalypse movie.

A familiar mercenary was waiting for them outside the vehicle, standing next to the doors. The same one they kept crossing paths with on Jack\'s properties.

He saw them and shook his head disappointingly.

"You kids need to find a better way to spend your time. I swear to god, whenever I pick you up, you are either in trouble or heading towards it. I guess this time is the latter. I should have called in sick…"

Alex could tell he was only half joking, as his face showed some of his true feelings. And he wasn\'t happy to be there.

The last time he had met them, he was forced to carry a kid, knocked unconscious, into a private para-military facility, where they were still keeping him captive illegally.

Seeing Alexander\'s face had never resulted in a good encounter yet. And he was starting to grow tired of it.

\'Man, I\'m getting too old for this shit. Why didn\'t they take one of the newbies? Did I have to be the one driving?\' he complained internally as he let the pair into the truck.

He closed the door behind them and peeled off toward the northern shore of Montreal.

They had a meeting point where they would gather the rest of the people going to the mission, and he had been ordered not to be late. Tardiness would be penalized by a pay cut.

The mercenary spoke into a closed channel radio without talking to the passengers he was carrying.

"Red one here. I have the lions. Everyone got their quarry?" he asked, putting the radio to his mouth.

Soon after, a voice came back in response.

"Blue one here. I have the clergyman."

"Yellow one here. Skeletor secured."

The mercenary vehicles identified each other, all replying that they had their quarry with one funnier name than the next.

And from what Alex was counting, only two people were missing.

That\'s when their driver took to the radio again.

"Alright, then. It\'s time to meet up with Bear and Reaper. Then we drive north. Buckle up, boys; I doubt the mission will be fun this time. Red one, out."

A symphony of mercenaries\' replying echoed for a moment before the radio became silent again.

That\'s when Alex decided he couldn\'t contain his curiosity anymore.

"Reaper? Isn\'t Jack a bit old to give himself that code name?" he asked, a chortle in his voice.

But the mercenary momentarily looked at him in the rearview mirror before bursting into laughter.

"Buahahahaha! Mr. Boudreau! The Reaper! Buahahaha! He wishes, kid! You got this all wrong! Buahahaha!"

Alex wasn\'t sure how to react to the laughing. Was the man laughing at him or from something he said? What was so funny he felt the need to guffaw like this?"

Alex waited for him to calm down before asking his next question.

"Then who is the Reaper? Did Jack get someone new to be there?"

The man took a moment before replying, unsure he should reveal this. But he decided since they were going to meet anyway, there was no use in hiding the identity of the person called the Reaper.

"Mr. Boudreau isn\'t the Reaper. Mr. Boudreau is Bear. He wouldn\'t be a civilian if he had Reaper\'s kill count. A person like that rarely leaves active service. At least, that holds true for men…" he said before staring forward.

A shiver ran down his spine a moment later, and he shut his mouth.

It didn\'t take long for the truck they were in to meet up with others similar in appearance. And soon enough, they looked like a president\'s convoy, with so many black trucks following each other.

Alex could see them behind him and in front as he frowned.

"Isn\'t this too conspicuous? As a civilian, I would dare say that a convoy of black SUVs with tainted windows and push-bars in front would seem very weird to any passerby."

"No one cares, kid. Aside from kids, no one looks at trucks like ours when we drive around. It\'s why we do it. People tend to keep their eyes on themselves when they see a vehicle that looks like this.

"Too much to lose, now what I mean?" he said, rambling his explanation.

Alex couldn\'t understand why people would look away from them. They were so jarring.

But he didn\'t want to look ignorant, so he nodded his head emptily.

It didn\'t matter. As long as they got to the area safely, he couldn\'t care less.