Upon a river, a floating hover boat moved downstream. Despite the hover boat being over two meters wide and five meters long, it was barely causing any disturbance in the water. Not that it would have stood out, since it was fully cloaked with stealth technology. Even in broad daylight, people could not see the boat.
A small metallic object fell from the boat and into the river. The moment it hit the water, the object transformed to an aquatic drone, scanning the riverbed and sending the imagery back to the boat.
Seated in the hover boat, Duma pondered the recent string of orders. He had to admit, he was a little confused. First of, he had been emphasized upon how important the search was, and how he must go above and beyond to find the targets. There was even a nice bonus waiting for him plus a 30% bump in funding, which meant that the higher ups were serious.
However, all the personnel who had been assigned to this case, the people he had been working with, were all pulled out, except two. Of the two, one was an expert machinist, and the other was a very well known detective. Even the people he was reporting to had changed, now he had one new supervisor.
They had further been instructed that, should they find the targets, they are not to alert them, but pass the message back to the supervisor and await further instructions.
The silver lining was, with these changes came new information. They were most likely looking for two people, possibly three. Since they had found a med bay on board the escape pod, then it was very likely that the two or three people aboard the pod had survived.
The best that Duma could figure out was that the targets were somehow important to the higher ups, but they did not want any of this ending up in a paper trail. Everyone present understood that secrecy was a requirement, so they could only ponder about such matters in secret.
At the moment, the trio were scouring the river with drones, hoping to find a clue over the whereabouts of their targets. They'd been at it for days, and by now, they were beginning to get antsy.
There were five settlements downstream to where the pod had landed. The closest one was Pinewood settlement, while the one of farthest to them was Hard rock settlement. Among them, there were even smaller settlements such as the Forest view settlement.
As professionals, they had already began observing the various settlements in the area. However, without any form of identification, it was practically impossible to identify who was what in these settlements, unless you interrogated the residents. Unfortunately, that was not an option since doing so would alert the targets.
Meanwhile, as Duma continued pondering and coming up with ways to identify the targets, several kilometers away from where he was, there were a group of twelve children playing. They were all around ten to twelve years old.
Given the time of the year, the guavas were in season. Their settlement had quite a few guava trees all over the place. Like most kids who'd grown up in the countryside, they were excitedly throwing small stones at the guavas, hoping to get one.
The kids were making such a ruckus, but they were also having a great time. The cheering when a person made the shot, the jeers when the missed. Perhaps this had been inspired by the competition that had happened several days ago. Suddenly, every child wanted to be like Tim, making shot after shot.
By now, the hunters were already deep in the forest, not expected to return until several more days had passed.
As the kids continued with their stone throwing, there was one particular fruit that was high up in the tree. Try as they might, none of the kids could even come close to hitting it. Interestingly, the guava was just the right kind of yellow, not too ripe and not too young either. In short, it was such a temptation.
From down below, all the kids wanted the fruit, but none had managed to get it.
Kevin, one of the older kids, could not take it any more. He grabbed the tree trunk and started climbing. Seeing this, others also wanted to climb, but there was one tree and one fruit. Since Kevin had already pioneered, the others chose to watch on.
Step by step, Kevin climbed that tree like an agile monkey. As one of the older kids, he had done this several times, so now he was showing off. It therefore did not take long for Kevin to be close to the top of the tree.
Unfortunately, being that high up, he was running out of branches to leverage on. Despite coming so close, Kevin realized he might just have to give up on the fruit. There was no way he would do that.
He had seen his older sister climb trees, and when a fruit gave her trouble, she would break off other branches and use them to whack the troublesome fruit. Kevin decided to do just that.
Soon, a nearby branch had been broken off. Wielding it like a club, Kevin proceeded to brandish the branch against the fruit. The swing was too violent. Kevin had forgotten that he was up in a tree, and when the branch came down, there was no stopping it momentum. Unfortunately, Kevin did not have anything he could use to leverage against the momentum of the branch.
Before he even knew it, he found himself tumbling down the tree, hitting every branch on his way down. Due to this, the boy landed nastily on his ankle, twisting the delicate bones of his ankle.
On account of the super intense pain Kevin was feeling, he started wailing and crying out loud. He was still just a boy, and this kind of pain was foreign to him. The others kids crowded around him, some fanning him, others comforting him. Of course, there were those who decided the best option was to get an adult, and that was what they did.
Getting to the Rae house, which was the de facto hospital, the children explained what had happened. At that moment, Claire was busy with someone, so she could only delegate, and who did she delegate to?
Alma, being held by hand by one of the kids, followed after them, with a worried look in her face. It was time to put those medical skills she had to the test.