Capítulo 27: Organization
Emile, Blood, and Jumper continued their journey through the desert. Even though Emile was now walking by himself and had the privilege of speaking, the trek to the Hollow Mountains was no better than before.
In fact, floating all day might have actually been better. At least Emile had the opportunity to zone out as he liked, now he was forced to minimally pay attention to where he was stepping, completely removing zoning out as an option.
A day had passed in uncomfortable silence, uncomfortable to Emile at least. He's been debating whether or not he should speak; if he should ask when they think they'll arrive or what the organization does, questions like that, questions that, in Emile's opinion, should have been answered at the very beginning of his kidnapping.
On the bright side, however, the multiple days of silence have helped Emile accept his new situation. While he still isn't exactly a fan of being taken away, it's already happened. Happened almost a week ago actually and because of that the window to return has long been closed.
Emma knows he's gone. The base knows he's gone. The kingdom knows he's gone. He wondered if they'd send out search parties and what they looked like. Did this world have aerial transportation? Did the Fallen Sky have any transportation that worked in the sand dunes? If they existed then why had they been walking for so long?
These are the types of thoughts that crowded Emile's brain for the majority of the day and the questions he wished he could just blurt out and ask, but Blood seemed like he never wanted to speak.
What was Blood's deal anyway? Are fifteen year olds normally as strong as Blood? That can't be true since everyone at the base was around the same age as Emile and none of them were that proficient in combat. And why was Blood wearing what looked like a royals outfit?
The party of three slept through another night and restarted their day. This time Emile was determined to get some answers.
"So are we like halfway there? Or maybe a third? More than halfway? I guess I'm just asking for an estimated arrival time?" Emile stumbled over his words.
"Do you see any mountains around us?" Blood asked in return.
"Well–no."
"Then we're not there yet."
"I know we're not there yet–just tell me how long it took you to go from the Hollow Mountains to Fallen Sky to begin with." Emile pleaded.
"And why would I tell you that? What makes you think you can speak now in the first place?" Blood looked back to make eye contact with Emile.
"Well you took me for a reason. Jumper calls me Unnamed and you called me new guy the other day. I'm assuming wherever we're going we're gonna be somewhat of equals once we get there."
"Equals?" Blood repeated as he completely turned around and stopped in front of Emile. "You and I will never be equals. You're going to work like a candle. We're going to use your healing as much as we want whenever we want until you burn out and return to nothingness. Equals? I think you're greatly misunderstanding your current situation."
"You know what Blood, what's the problem? Huh? What issue is it that you have with me? Because I remember you taking me hostage and killing my carriage driver, but I'm trying to move past that here." Emile confronted Blood.
"You want to know my problem?" Blood took another step closer to Emile, "My problem is that there is practically no record of your existence! Two months ago we received word that Fallen Sky has a new healer amongst their ranks so we did a little digging, but there was nothing. No birth records, no family name, no parents. At first we thought 'maybe the kingdom hid him for eighteen years because they were training him. Training him to be the best, to be able to survive', but no! You're just as useless as everyone else! So then, who are you? Nobody knows! That's my problem with you! And that's why I think it's a huge risk to take you with us!" Blood stared at Emile, refusing to break eye contact.
Emile looked back at Blood and eventually scratched his chin and looked away.
"That's actually pretty fair… I was a wanderer before I came across–"
"Just stop!" Blood interrupted Emile, "You aren't a wanderer! A wanderer would need to be incredibly powerful to freely roam around and you're not that!"
After Blood finished his verbal assault he stormed off and continued walking in the direction they've been traveling. Emile wanted to say something, he wanted to fix the misunderstanding, but he didn't know how.
He's pretty sure the only reason Warden May believed him was because she spends practically all of her time looking for distractions from her boring job which evolved into an obsession with ancient texts. Emile assumed that Blood would get even madder if he said he was from another planet.
"You need not concern yourself with him." Jumper suddenly spoke up, still waiting for Emile to continue walking.
Emile sighed and walked next to Jumper. They both followed Blood as he now led their party.
"But he's not wrong," Emile said, "I am a mystery."
"A mystery yes, but in our line of work that's preferred. Surely you've realized that his name isn't Blood and mine isn't Jumper. They're our operative codes. Since even we could not gather any valuable intel on you, nobody else will be able to either. He's just upset that you're his replacement." Jumper said.
"Replacement?"
"Yes–he's actually our healer, or atleast was."
"But he can still heal regardless of if I'm there or not." Emile argued.
"That is true, but he's become less valuable. All this time he's been our most important asset. We needed to protect him at all costs because he kept us alive. Now we need to protect you. He's lost his special treatment."
Emile looked at Blood's back in the distance. He couldn't help but feel a little bad for the kid, but it's not like Emile asked to be here. Blood was overreacting, he was projecting his anger at the situation onto Emile. Emile had to constantly remind himself he's dealing with a hormonally imbalanced brat.
"What is it I need to be protected from? What is the organization? I know I already asked, but at this point I am willingly going there." Emile asked.
For a few moments, Jumper didn't answer. The two just continued to walk side by side. Emile was afraid of this happening, if he let it go quiet for too long he would feel too uncomfortable to speak again. He needed to keep the current conversation alive for as long as he could.
Luckily, Jumper did respond to his earlier question.
"It's hard to gauge exactly what our organization is. The three kingdoms officially recognize us as a terrorist group, but we don't do much terrorizing. For the most part we do nothing at all. We occasionally get a mission from our leader and we occasionally get outsourced like mercenaries, but most of our time is available for anything."
"Terrorists?" Emile repeated.
"It's up to interpretation."
"That's not how that works." Emile said, evaluating the fact that he's going to be a terrorist. "What gave you the terrorist title to begin with?" Emile asked, secretly hoping it wasn't that bad.
"We assassinated the Queen of the Rising Tide."
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