Chapter 39: Planning
Miles walked back to the group, mentally counting his steps before hopping at the twelfth step, finally reaching them.
Morgan had a mix of relief and confusion on his face as he stared at him.
"So..."
"I found a way."
Nodding before the man finished his question, Miles quietly began giving the vice-principal his findings. The man’s face, and the faces of those around him, kept shifting as he went on.
In the end, he could only whisper incredulously.
"Are you sure?"
Miles answered with a simple nod. He didn’t blame them for their surprise; the theory had sounded ridiculous even to him the first time he’d thought about it.
But when faced with such mounting evidence, it would’ve been stupid not to test it out. The hallway anomaly, the one that had twisted the world so vividly around them, could be bypassed by such a simple loophole.
It certainly made him wonder if the same could be done for the principal, and that Bloody Mary. Unfortunately, he didn’t know nearly enough about them to find any obvious exploits.
Morgan placed a hand on his shoulder, patting it before whispering.
"Thanks. I mean it. You put yourself at risk for us."
Miles didn’t know what to say in response, so he defaulted to nodding. It had been the quickest, surest way to get it done, so he did it. That was all there was to it.
The man turned to face the crowd, looking particularly in Grimm’s direction.
"There’s a way out now. Head back in. We need to settle on a plan before leaving."
The crowd moved back in, Morgan following after releasing his shoulder. Miles entered last, a bit relieved to leave the winds behind him.
---
They all gathered around Morgan, close enough to be able to hear each other’s whispers. The man in question knelt over a simple layout of the first floor, drawn crudely on a piece of paper. Light from his flashlight illuminated it.
Morgan looked up from it.
"Our goal is to get to the cafeteria. But it’s far too vague. The cafeteria is large, open, and has windows that likely broke in the storm."
Circling a portion of the edge of a box representing the cafeteria’s kitchen, he continued.
"What we need to do is get to the storeroom. It’s where the food is, there aren’t any windows there, and it has a ventilator connected to the emergency power supplies."
He glanced at them.
"Any questions?"
The crowd remained silent, and the man gave them time to think.
Miles had already considered it. The storeroom was likely where Jayce and whoever was with him were huddled up. They wouldn’t stay out in the open.
"What do we do when we get there?"
Chloe asked, eyes glued to the map below, an anxious look on her face. Morgan shook his head.
"There is some food there. That’s a start. Miles also said something about a pylon being present; maybe we can get some answers there."
He shot Miles a questioning glance, to which the boy replied with a nod. In fact, he was beginning to have suspicions that the way out Jayce talked about had something to do with that pylon.
That much seemed to satisfy Chloe, as she didn’t ask anything else.
Morgan gave the crowd another scan before turning back to the paper.
"If there’s nothing else, then we can proceed."
He drew a line between the gym door on the layout, all the way to the portion of the cafeteria wall he’d circled.
"The path towards our objective is relatively straightforward. Out the gym’s corridor, past some lockers, through the main hallway, and finally the cafeteria. We don’t even need to touch the right wing. The main problem here, however, are..."
"Ghouls."
Ryan finished his sentence for him. The man tossed him a nod.
"Right. There’s no telling where they might show up from, or the density with which they’ll appear. This wing has been mostly quiet so far, but that might not be the case for the main hall or the cafeteria. So..."
The man went into detail about his proposed formation. Given the fact that the left wing only consisted of a dead end and the gym, it’d be hard for anything to sneak up behind them.
He planned on concentrating those able to fight in the front, so as to be able to handle direct assaults without cracking.
"What about those other ghouls? The strong ones, what do we do if they show up?"
Brandon asked this time, eyes focused on the map. Morgan nodded, as though he’d long considered that already.
"The only safe way to deal with those is taking care of them before they get close."
He looked to Grimm.
"Can you do that?"
The boy shrank a bit under the sudden focus on him. He tightened his grip on his rifle before speaking.
"I need to be able to see it. It’s dark out there."
"We can have people hold the flashlights for you."
Grimm nodded simply in response, letting Morgan breathe a sigh of relief.
"Alright, that’s settled then."
There was still more. What would they do if something else happened on the way? Would they retreat to the gym, or keep pushing towards the cafeteria? What if they encountered a new anomaly, or a horde they couldn’t beat? What then?
Miles kept those questions to himself. They’d be here the whole day if he were to list every one of his worries; some things just had to be decided on the spot.
Morgan folded the paper below him before standing up.
"One final question. We’re about to head out, where we will most likely have to fight our way to the cafeteria. If you have any skills that you haven’t told us about that can help us, now is the time to do so."
He paused before adding,
"I’ll go first. I’ve already told you about my [Hunter’s Instinct] skill, but I also gained a skill called [Cold Resistance] after killing a ghoul. Everyone that’s killed one got the same skill, right?"
Miles, Chloe, and Ryan nodded. Brandon just grunted, while Grimm looked to the side.
"That’s it from me. Are there any others?"
A hand rose up, one Miles traced back to Mia.
"I can strengthen myself using my skill."
Miles clearly remembered her not saying anything about skills back when Morgan had been asking. But it had been rare, so he doubted it was limited to just that.
Before Morgan could reply, another voice spoke up.
"One of my abilities helps with aiming, and the other explodes my bullets."
Grimm. Although that much had been rather obvious from their time in the illusion, Miles hadn’t imagined the boy would come out and outright say it.
Not allowing Morgan to react, Miles decided to throw his hat in the ring, even if vaguely.
"Mine allows me to control my mental state."
Morgan nodded slowly, looking at Miles as though coming to an understanding of his own.
It explained the way he’d escaped the illusion.
With that, the powers of all seven—eight now considering Ryan—remaining skilled people were known.
The Vice principal finally spoke.
"It doesn’t change much then. We’ve wasted enough time, let’s get going."