The Eternal Winter - Chapter 12 - Meeting (Patreon)

                                                         Alexander North

The wendigos continue chasing us down the hall until we finally reach the stairs and lock the door behind us before jumping down them. However, the sound of the door being torn off of its hinges screeches through the staircase even as we reach the stairs of BF3.

“What are we going to do?” he asks right after finding the third floor hallway right on the other side of the door blocked off by a bunch of wreckage seemingly from the floor above.

Seriously? What could’ve possibly caved in the damn floor!?

I hurriedly look up again to find the wendigos quickly climbing down the stairs towards us, just for a soldier to jump up from the floor below in front of us, followed immediately after by two more. Then several other soldiers begin to climb up the stairs.

After a glance at the rankings of the three soldiers that jumped, I find that they’re all captains.

Both Phillip and I let out sighs of relief at the sight of them, but I step forwards to join them as the wendigos jump down the last of the stairs straight at them.

Each of the three captains catch one and use their own momentum to pin them to the floor, and I do the same before stabbing my knife straight into the skull of the wendigo. Once I lift my head again, I find the captains simply cutting the heads off of their three wendigos before sending me an odd look.

None of these soldiers have their helmets on, which makes sense considering that they were probably inside before this all began. And we normally wear our armor without our helmets when going about our duties in the base.

And thanks to that, I immediately recognize the three captains as the captains of the AH22 squad, which is Phillip’s squad, the AR 21 squad, and the A1 squad.

I turn to look at Phillip, who clearly recognizes several of the soldiers who had climbed the stairs after the captains, before looking down the stairs to see a quite a few more soldiers still climbing.

While I’m still looking at the soldiers climbing up the stairs, one of the captains – the captain of Phillip’s squad – approaches me and asks, “Are you a symbiont host?”

I turn back to him with a frown hidden behind my helmet, but before I can say anything, Phillip quickly comes over and puts his arm around my shoulder while saying, “Nah, he’s just a really skilled fighter!”

The captain narrows his eyes at me, only to look at the arm around my shoulder and relax a little. He then walks away without another word.

Yeah, I don’t think he believes him. But he does at least seem to trust Phillip’s taste in friends.

Which makes sense considering how intrusive Phillip is when it comes to researching anyone he becomes friends with or even so much as gets to know.

“Where were you going?” the captain of the A1 squad asks after approaching me from behind somehow without my noticing, startling Phillip in the process.

I shake off Phillip’s arm as I turn around to answer, “We were originally going to head down to the lower floors to look for the commander.”

Phillip suddenly takes over from there with a rather peeved off expression on his face, “But while we were traversing BF1, we found a couple of soldiers stuck on the obstacle course with four of the berserk monsters and two of the quieter ones trying to get at them. And while we were trying to figure out how to help them-”

I frown at that.

“-one of the soldiers noticed us and pointed us out to the other one, who quickly tossed his fucking gun at us to make us into a diversion for the berserk monsters!” Phillip finishes while crossing his arms and nodding at the dead monsters at our feet.

The captains share a glance before Phillip’s captain asks, “Do you know which squad they were from?”

Phillip looks confused for a second, only to shake his head and say, “No. They were too far away, but if I were to see them again, there is no way I wouldn’t recognize them!”

The captains turn their gaze towards me as all of the soldiers finally reach the top of the stairs and stand at attention, each armed with swords that are making me really jealous right now.

I shake my head in agreement with Phillip, so the captains look between themselves.

“Looks like we’ll have to take disciplinary actions after this is all over to deal with any other soldiers who might’ve gone astray a little during this,” the captain of squad A1 mutters, to which the other captains nod their heads in agreement.

After a few seconds of silence, two of the three captains begin to head back down the stairs with the A1 captain declaring, “Alright, we’re finished up here. Let’s continue going down!”

The soldiers that I can only assume are from his squad and the other captain’s squad follow after them, while the ones in Phillip’s squad stay behind with their captain, who looks at me and says, “I don’t really know what you’re hiding, but Phillip trusts you. For now though, I do need to know where your squad is.”

I narrow my eyes slightly at how he didn’t even ask which squad I was in, only to remember that he probably already knows who I am, considering my crest. After all, not including dad, I’m the only one with this crest.

Without mentioning my current I’m-no-longer-human situation, I answer, “Sergeant Withers was pierced by a shard and turned, while the rest of the team managed to get into the base through the secret entrance. I, on the other hand, couldn’t make it through and had to dig through the outside of the base into the ventilation shafts to get in the base.”

The captain narrows his eyes at the last part and asks, “How did you get into the ventilation shafts? They’re supposed to be too secure for someone to do that.”

“It’s because this shaft was poorly maintained to the point that the metal making up its exterior was rusting,” I answer him while standing at attention.

The man stares at me for a few more seconds before sighing and muttering, “Gonna have to make sure those idiots do a better job of maintaining those if we get out of this alive.” He then looks at the seven or so soldiers around us, just to look back at me again with a more relaxed look on his face as he reaches his hand out and says, “It’s a pleasure to meet you, second lieutenant North. I am captain Archibald Ruthers, and I am the captain of the AH22 squad.”

I accept it with a nod before he continues, “For the time being, until we manage to regroup with your squad, you will be a part of my squad. Is that acceptable?”

Without any hesitation, I nod my head. And after he sees that, he nods back and lets go of my hand.

“Let’s catch up with the other squads,” he says while starting down the stairs after the others.

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