I entered the garage and luckily didn’t see anyone. I ran for the desk that I knew had a lockbox full of keys under it. There was a person cowering behind the desk when I got there.

“Hey! Open the lockbox! Now!”

The cowering woman looked up at me in fear and shakily placed her hand on the scanner, unlocking the box, and opened it for me. I pushed her out of the way and grabbed every set of keys in the box and tossed them to the group of kids.

“Put those in your pockets,” I ordered as I stuffed several sets into my own pockets, “that way they can’t follow us.”

They did as I said. I ran to the closest truck that looked big enough for everyone to fit and ordered them to climb in. I jumped in the driver’s seat as they loaded up and turned the vehicle on. The hover-jets kicked into action and the vehicle raised up off the ground. As soon as I noticed all the kids were inside I slammed my foot on the accelerator, the truck launched towards the garage door which I opened with the click of a button. I could hear bullets hitting the sides of the truck as we flew out the opened garage door and straight through the fence, tearing it down due to our speed. I turned towards the woods and headed towards the bunker.

“How’s everyone doing back there?”

“I-I think we’re ok,” Sakura’s voice responded, “just a… little shaken up I guess.”

“Good. Anyone know how to take care of injuries as bad as my arm? Because the bleeding needs to be stopped soon,” I didn’t look back, the trees were flying past and I was barely avoiding them at this speed but didn’t dare slow down while we were still so close to the facility.

“Yeah, I’m coming up,” the voice of a boy I didn’t recognize responded.

Soon a scrawny dark skinned kid climbed over the seat and sat in the passenger seat. I had seen him in the pit and at the induction but I didn’t know his name.

“There should be a first aid kit under your chair,” I said as I quickly glanced at him then back out the windshield.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shove his hand under the seat and grab for the kit. He found it and brought it up into his lap and opened it. I noticed we were close to the bunker and made a quick right turn so that we would end up in the small clearing. As soon as we were in the clearing I stopped the vehicle.

“Orlan, go to the bunker and get Xander and Ryker. Don’t forget the duffle bag of supplies,” I said as I glanced back at the scared faces of all the kids, the boy nodded and jumped out of the truck, “ok, do your thing kid,” I said as I looked over at the boy next to me with the first aid kit.

He nodded and used a pair of scissors he had found in the kit to cut the right sleeve of my shirt off and reveal the bullet wound in my arm, a few inches below a scar I had gotten from a bullet on my last mission with Omega Squad so long ago. I frowned at the memory and shook my head to get myself back in the moment. The boy pulled a small bottle of alcohol from the kit and instructed me to lift my arm. I did as he told me and he poured the liquid over the wound. I winced as the wound started to sting. Once he was satisfied with the cleanliness of the injury he grabbed a needle and thread and slowly started to stitch the wound closed on both sides of my arm.

“Aidan, what happened to you?”

I glanced into the back of the truck again and saw Xander and Ryker staring at me.

“Got shot while escaping. Not a big deal,” I said as I shrugged, which resulted in a sharp smack on the shoulder from the boy who had been stitching my wound shut, “nothing that hasn’t happened to me before.”

Xander nodded in understanding and Ryker sighed, he seemed to still be grasping the way Chronos and the Phantom program operated.

“Tell me where we’re headed and I’ll take over driving so he can finish your arm,” Xander said as he jumped out of the truck and came to the driver’s door.

“Get in the back,” I said as I looked at the boy who was still trying to stitch my arm, “we’ll finish there.”

He sighed but let go of the needle and handed me the spool of thread then got out of the passenger seat, which was quickly snatched by Ryker. I climbed in the back as Xander got in the driver’s seat and took the vehicle out of park and headed towards the road.

“Head towards the city, David said there will be an ACR safehouse that we can stay in while we wait for some members of the ACR to pick us up and take us the rest of the way to their HQ.”

Xander nodded in response and slammed on the accelerator, speeding off towards the road so that we would have an easier and safer time getting to the city. The scrawny boy went back to tending to my arm.

“What’s your name?” I asked as I looked at his face, he looked very focused on what he was doing.

“Tyrell Kader,” he answered quickly, “don’t distract me otherwise I won’t be able to do this right.”

I sighed and looked around at the kids who were all packed in the back of the truck with me. They all still looked a little scared but looks of relief were slowly replacing the looks of terror I had seen earlier.

“Everything is ok now, after we get to the ACR I’ll make sure that we get you back to your families… if they’re still around at least, and only if you want to go. If you’d rather stay with us and the ACR nobody will force you to leave.”

Several of them nodded or responded with a simple ‘ok’ others glanced down at the floor, I assumed they were the ones that knew there would be no family to be returned to.

“How far away is this ACR you keep mentioning?” Kai asked as he scrunched his eyebrows and looked at me, “and what even is it?”

“The ACR is a group that is trying to fight against Chronos. As far as I know it’s the only organized group that knows about Chronos’ existence at the moment.”

“And… we’ll be safe there?”

I looked in the direction of the new voice. It came from a young girl, probably the youngest person in the group, in the very back corner of the space. She had long black hair with several bleach-blond streaks. I frowned when I looked at her because her dark skin had splotches of white… she has the same condition that Jayda had. I had to look away because I could feel my mood drop at the thought of my old squadmate.

“Yes, we’ll be safe there, it’s probably the only place we’ll be safe for a while.”

“How far away is it?” Orlan asked quietly, “the ACR I mean.”

“I’m not sure… I’ve never been to their base of operations before. I had never even heard of them until last night,” I answered as I glanced at the boy, “but someone I trust more than almost anyone in the universe trusts them, so I know they’re good and that we’ll be safe there.”

“Makes sense,” another girl said as she crossed her arms and looked at me suspiciously, “but… how do we know that we’re safe with you? I mean, you were one of THEM.”

I sighed and raised my eyebrows at the girl.

“What’s your name?”

“Chloe.”

“Well, Chloe, whether you feel like you can trust me or not you’ve got no other choice but to stick with me,” I said as I looked at her, “unless you want to end up right back in that pit, only this time there won’t be anyone there to save you.”

She looked like she was about to make a snarky comment but then thought better of it and looked away, muttering a quick apology as she did so.

“Anyone else got something they wanna ask?”

Most of the kids shook their heads no. Others just shrugged indifferently. A few muttered ‘no’ or ‘nope.’ I nodded and then looked back at my arm, which was now fully stitched. Tyrell was wrapping a bandage around it and looking at my other bullet scar with furrowed eyebrows.

“How many times have you been shot?” He asked as he finished wrapping the bandage and looked up at me.

“Way too many to keep track of,” I answered as I shrugged, “got bullet scars all over my body, I’ve done a lot of things in my ten years with those people… been in a lot of bad situations.”

“Got an estimate?”

I sighed as I thought about all the times I had been injured throughout my time as Phantom, “twenty or thirty, maybe.”

His eyes widened in shock at my response.

“H-how… how old are you?”

“Seventeen as of a couple months ago.”

“Hey, Aidan, do you know where exactly this safe house we’re headed to is? We’re about thirty minutes from the city now,” Xander said from the front of the vehicle.

“No, but there are directions in the duffle bag, hang on,” I answered as I grabbed the duffle bag and pulled it into my lap and opened it.

I dug around in the bag until I found a slip of paper that had directions written in David’s handwriting on it. I passed the paper up front and Ryker took it so he could help guide Xander to the safe house.

“Oh, look in the top pocket of that bag real quick,” Xander said suddenly, “I grabbed a few of your things from the bunker earlier and put them there… I thought you might want them.”

I scrunched my eyebrows and unzipped the top pocket. I pulled out the items that were in it and instantly clenched my jaw as I saw the pictures I had hung on the wall years ago. I stuffed them back in the pocket and glared up at Xander in the rearview mirror.

“You went snooping,” I said matter-of-factly as I glared at him, “you should never have seen these, let alone stuffed them in here.”

The teen blushed slightly and looked away from the mirror.

“I… I know… I’m sorry. I was just curious.”

I sighed and calmed myself down. It wasn’t that big of a deal, so what if he saw the pictures, I shouldn’t be surprised, they were pretty out in the open.

“It’s fine… don’t worry about it, not that big of a deal,” I muttered as I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the wall, “if anyone needs something to eat or drink there’s food and water in this bag. Don’t take too much though, there’s a lot of us and I’m not sure if there will be food and water at the safehouse so we need to conserve this if we can.”

I put the bag in the middle where most of the kids could reach and then leaned back against the wall again. Now that my adrenaline levels were back to normal I felt a lot of pain that I wasn’t feeling before. My side stung where the bullet had skimmed it and my arm felt like it was about to fall off, I also had a pounding headache.

“Anyone see any migraine meds in there?” I asked hopefully.

“Not sure… there is a bag of pill bottles, let me check,” I heard Orlan say, followed by the rattling of pills shaking around in bottles, “yep, here ya go.”

I opened my eyes and took the bottle from the boy, then the bottle of water handed me afterwards. I dumped two pills into my hand and closed the bottle before tossing it back to him so he could put it away. I put the pills in my mouth and swallowed them down with a gulp of water.

“Now, I’m gonna try to take a nap until we get to this safe house, nobody do anything stupid,” I said as I closed my eyes again.

Soon I felt myself drift off into sleep.