So there it was, Cole thought. The mysterious outsiders, the big threat to the town, when in actuality, they were trying to save it. Maybe they were going about it the wrong way, but Cole had to admit he was immediately drawn to their mission. It made sense to him. It was logical. It also happened to be nearly impossible.
“And how the hell do you exactly plan to shut down the machine?” he asked.
“The manpower alone…” Zach trailed off.
“Makes no sense,” Root said. “You expect we get all shovelers to stop shoveling? And all enforcers to be cool with that? And then, to top it off, have everyone else in town not notice or not care? Oh, and by the way, keeping it all under wraps from the elders?” He laughed. “Not gonna happen.”
“Yeah, I don’t understand.” Cole added.
“For the sake of transparency,” Tess said. “It’s going to be a challenge, and we don’t know exactly how we’re going to do this.”
“Excuse me?” Root added. “Then why the hell did you break back in and cause this chaos to begin with? You’re telling me you did this all without a plan?”
“We have a plan, it’s just a little light on the details,” Shaw added before coughing into his fist.
Cole jumped back into the discussion. “Wait, you said the town was dying, right?”
Tess nodded.
“So why didn’t you just wait until it died off. Wouldn’t the machine have powered down without everyone? It would have stopped working, right?”
“We thought about it,” Tess said. “But we don’t have the luxury of time. We’re running out of supplies ourselves.”
“And there ain’t much outside of town, anyway,” Shaw added.
“This was our best option. We realize it is somewhat limited.”
“Somewhat limited? Yeah, you don’t say…” Root trailed off.
“We have a group of 31 people-”
“31?” Root interrupted. “We have double that many enforcers alone.”
“I know,” Tess continued. “Shaw and I both come from an operations background. We know what we’re dealing with.”
“And you still managed to just bring 31 people.”
“It’s all we have.” She sighed. “It’s the people that came with us when we first left town.”
Cole remembered hearing murmurings about some group, but at the time, which now would have been a few years ago, they were just rumors the boys shared over meals. Nothing more than scary ghost stories. He didn’t really think twice about them. They didn’t impact anyone any of them knew; it was always a friend of a friend who had parents who knew type of story. He shrugged them off as quickly as he threw down his second helping of crackers.
“Not to dive too deep into the past, but because we were in ops, we had a bit more exposure to different areas.” Shaw said. “Like you, Root. As a repairman, you know a lot about different areas, right?”
Root shrugged. “I ‘spose so.”
“And there were some areas that were strictly off limits, right? Maybe only your superiors or their bosses could go, right?”
Root shrugged again. “Yeah, but I only heard stories, you know?”
“Exactly,” Shaw said. “Stories all have a seed in truth.”
“We have reason to believe there is one area where the power sources converge.” Tess said. “If we can get there, we can turn off the wall.”
“If we can get there,” Cole emphasized. “That’s a really heavy if Tess.”
“We know.”
“Yeah, just past enforcers and who-knows-what-other security. Infiltrate a secret area we know nothing about, hoping we make it through alive. Oh, and not to mention doing that and then getting back here, right?”
“We never said it would be easy,” Tess said.
“There’s a lot of room between easy and impossible,” Shaw added.
“I don’t like this,” Zach said. “Not even a little.”
Before Cole could response, an explosion rocked the room and knocked them all to the ground.