The pistol landed on the table with a thud. Everyone eyed it before Drew began talking, "The queen had already been injured when I fought her. If she had been at full speed, I probably would have died. Whoever emptied the magazine into her probably did." He looked at the other four, "That said, we didn't find a body or even a trace of a body, and the Spider couldn't have eaten it that quickly. She may have cocooned it and stashed it away somewhere; we didn't search around too much."
"Could they still be alive?" Sarah asked.
"It's unlikely, ma'am," Katie answered, "If they were able to empty an entire magazine into the spider, and she was still able to fight through Drew's attacks for a while, then survival...I don't think that's possible."
"I think we should send another group out to raid some of the close vending machines. With careful rationing, that should last us a week or two." Sarah's words were met with incredulity.
"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but did you say you want to stay here for another two weeks?" Drew asked, looking around the table to gauge everyone else's opinions. Katie looked as confused as him, while Juan refused to meet his eyes. Mitch looked between Drew and Sarah but kept his face relatively impassive.
"That's right, IT2," Sarah emphasized his rank, "We're going to stay here until we are properly relieved of the watch."
"Sarah," Drew emphasized her name, "No one is going to come for us. If they were going to come, they would have been here already. The phones are dead, and the power still hasn't come back on. Heck, the backup generators that should have kicked on immediately didn't even work. If they were going to come for us, they would have done it days ago. The only thing that sitting here is going to accomplish is to give the dungeon time to spawn more monsters and make our eventual escape that much more difficult."
"Petty Officer Michalik, you are dangerously close to insubordination." Sarah stood up, trying to intimidate Drew by physically looming over him.
"Quite frankly, ma'am, no, I'm not. I swore to defend America from threats both foreign and domestic. Look around you. We aren't helping anyone in here. Our jobs, my job? It doesn't exist anymore. There are no more computers to monitor, no more risk of being hacked. You guys? You're supposed to be coordinating the intelligence efforts of the commandant. You can't do that here. You have nothing to report, no one to report it to. But there are bound to be a lot of scared people out there, and our oaths require that we render that aid. You most of all, because I promise you that there are injured people out there, and if you sit here safe in this little room, you are refusing to help them." Drew had stood up in the middle of the speech, glaring down at the shorter woman.
"Ma'am, I think Drew is right. We need to get out of here," Katie stood next to Drew as she looked at the Ensign. Juan and Mitch stood up as well, supporting the two more senior enlisted.
"We can't stay here. Drew's right, the longer we let those monsters grow, the worse it's going to be," Juan offered.
"We can't put up much of a fight on half rations of potato chips and soda. We need supplies, and this place is just going to become more and more of a death trap."
Sarah looked between the four of them, her mouth opening and then closing again.
"Look, ma'am, our responsibility, our duty, isn't here anymore. And I for one have no intention of abandoning that duty. If you feel like you need to stay here, then I understand. But I'm not going to be coming back here, and your best chance of getting out of this place is going to be with us."
"I could order you to stay." Sarah's voice was soft, the fear in her eyes obvious.
"You could ma'am, but that would be an order to abandon my duty, and I'm not at liberty to obey unlawful orders." Drew's voice lost the edge that it had previously. He understood that she was afraid, afraid of the darkness on the other side of the door as well as the gore, the blood and other viscera he had arrived in earlier. "Don't worry ma'am; we'll keep you safe."
They all nodded, and Sarah folded. Drew walked over to the cart to get it situated, while everyone else gathered up the few items they would be taking with them. Katie had stopped after the three men left the table, whispering something to Sarah that Drew intentionally tuned out.
Having the least amount of work to do, Drew considered how best to utilize his time. The confrontation with Sarah reminded him that the two youngest members of the team, Juan and Sarah, hadn't had the conditioning he had out in the fleet arresting drug runners and human traffickers. Making his way over to where Juan was picking through the things on a desk, "Hey, we haven't really had a chance to talk. How you holding up?"
"Hey, Acho. Honestly? I'm glad that we're finally getting out of here. But man, I thought se fue al garete[1] for a bit there." Juan tipped his head up towards Sarah to indicate he was talking about the conversation earlier.
"Yeah, me too." Drew leaned against the desk, looking at what Juan was putting away. "This whole thing has been a bit of a nightmare."
"Yeah, I was thinking about that. You know the bible?" Juan asked, and Drew nodded, "Well, you don't think like…this whole thing was Armageddon? Like, the rapture happened, and we didn't get picked, and now we're in hell?"
Drew laughed slightly, "I'm not super religious anymore, but I think there were a whole bunch of signs that were supposed to happen before the rapture. I'm pretty sure that this isn't God's handiwork."
"So, do you think that means God isn't real, that if we die like that guard did, we just gonna cease to exist?"
"I don't know if there's an all-powerful being out there, Juan, but from what I was told during the tutorial, Humankind immigrated here. Maybe the blue boxes are God, finally talking to each of us on an individual level. As for death, I don't know about you, but I don't plan on finding out in the near future." Drew clapped the younger man on the shoulder, "Don't worry about it, as long as we stick together, I don't think there is anything here that the five of us can't handle."
Drew looked over at Mitch and the two exchanged a nod. Katie had finished talking to Sarah and the two women had split up to finish getting ready. Drew frowned to himself before walking over to Sarah. "Ma'am?"
She turned around and looked at him, and he could see the faint redness in her eyes indicating that she had been crying before she looked away. "Look, I just wanted to say I'm sorry."
"No, it's...it's fine. You're right; we can't stay here." Sarah didn't meet his eyes as she picked through her desk.
"I'm terrified too, you know. The darkness out there? It scares me more than I care to admit. Heck, it almost killed me once already, and you saved my life. I never properly thanked you for that. So, sorry, for not doing that earlier." Drew paused as he looked at her, "I know you can handle this, and most importantly. We need you; I have a feeling we're all going to bleed a little bit before we get out of here."
"Thank you IT2…Drew." Sarah sniffed but didn't look up. "I don't know what we would have done if you hadn't shown up."
"You would have figured something out; you're a smart woman. Me showing up just makes it a little bit easier." He smiled at her again and then turned to leave. He didn't have anything to pack up, but he rearranged the duffles on the cart.
Juan and Mitch each took a fire axe, while Sarah would grab the cart. Katie would be in charge of the lights and making walls for the ranged folk to duck behind if things turned dicey. Buffs were reapplied, and after double checking that everyone had everything, they left the safe room. Sarah locked the door and flipped the magnet from "Open" to "Secured." When she turned around and saw everyone looking at her strangely, she shrugged. "What? It's not like we'd be able to get back in without breaking the door anyway, might as well let anyone who comes know that we aren't in there. Now let's get going before we get ambushed by goblins or whatever the heck is out here."
"Aye aye, Ma'am," Mitch said before doing an about face, leading the way towards their egress down the hallway. Following him was Drew and Juan side by side, then Sarah, with Katie and the Knight bringing up the rear. Juan's Earth elemental was following behind him.
They passed the point where the ice storm had gone off, Sarah having to maneuver around the pits in the floor.
Juan whispered to Drew, "You did all this?" His earth elemental seemed to be inspecting one of the pits, poking it with a stubby rock hand.
"Uh, yeah," Drew said, scanning the area for any sign of a creature struck by the spell, hoping to find some evidence of the shape he saw moving in the darkness here.
"Dios mio," the Puerto Rican whispered, crossing himself while looking around at the rubble.
Forging ahead, Drew glanced back at Katie and Sarah, who were having some trouble getting the cart over the uneven terrain. Katie helped her pick the cart up for a moment after concrete rubble got stuck in one of the wheels. He nudged Juan, who was staring at the damage, and they moved forward. They were almost to the stairs now.
Catching up with Mitch, he said, "I'm not going to be much help in the stairs, it's too small an area for me, so I'll only be able to cast my weakest spells."
"Which of course means that's where we're going to get attacked, doesn't it?" The ever-hungry man said with a grimace, but he glanced back and gestured for Juan to join them.
"Yeah, probably. What do you think? Send the elemental in first? See if it can see anything?" Drew asked.
"You're just going to sacrifice the little guy?"
"Better it than one of us."
"Yeah, I guess." Juan gave some instructions to the elemental, and it wandered forward towards the door. The girls had caught up again, the knight bringing up the rear.
"Checking the stairwell with the elemental," Drew answered Katie's raised eyebrow at the unplanned stop.
With a nod, Katie leaned against the wall. There was a sudden sharp whistling sound and then a loud clatter as something impacted the wall right next to her head. With a cry of pain or fear, she immediately collapsed. Drew and Juan immediately sent two fireballs streaking into the darkness around them.
"Kill the red mages!" The shout was followed by a strange snapping sound. Drew and Juan both dropped to the ground, a blast of cold energy flying into the air above them as Drew cast a cone of cold. Sending the bolts off course, a short wall appeared between the group and their attackers, Katie giving them some cover from the sudden attacks.
"What's going on?" Mitch shouted from where he too had fallen to the ground.
"Ambush," Drew said, throwing a glowrock over the wall like a grenade.