An awkward silence filled the not-so-large room where the three of them sat there.
None of the three of them had tried to take the initiative to open their voices there.
Each of them was still busy with their own thoughts. Steven honestly didn't like this situation. Couldn't the two girls in front of him just take the previous problem as an afterthought and call it a day?
Oh come on Steven was well aware that something like this would happen.
"Don't want to explain first?" asked Fey who this time opened her voice with her eyes focused on Steven as if waiting for the young man to immediately respond and reply to her.
A rough sigh was heard from Steven's lips.
"That's in the past."
The short sentence that Steven replied to made Fey a little furious. She did not like things that were not completed!
"Tell me, otherwise I will always misunderstand you and hate you."
A crushing sentence that made Steven finally have to suppress his ego again. He knew very well that Fey who he knew was quite stubborn compared to Ellie who was still sitting calmly as if she was a shadow between Steven and Fey.
"Do you still remember when on the ship there were some people who suddenly wanted to join us to impose the will to work together?"
This time Steven began to open the conversation with the thing that was still recorded in his head's memory.
For a moment Fey and Ellie seemed to be trying to remember well from the sentence that had just been said.
When Fey and Ellie seemed to start remembering it in unison both of them nodded their heads.
"What's wrong with them?"
"I accidentally eavesdropped that they deliberately approached us so that we could be used by them. I got angry when that unpleasant sentence came out of that bastard's mouth, and that's when I fought with them."
Fey and Ellie's faces showed their shock. She really did not expect that. After all, why would there be such scheming intentions there?
Shouldn't they help each other to easily complete the mission? the mission at hand?
"They were about to finish me off when they realized that I knew their plan, but you came back shortly after finding a new clue at that time, so they postponed their plan, so I chose to split up. I knew my condition wouldn't be able to last much longer."
Fey clenched her hands into fists. She didn't know that at all!
She thought Steven who suddenly said that he would go check on the others was just avoiding them because he got a new clue beyond what they knew at that time.
"You're my first friends here, so there's no way I'm betraying you."
Ellie probably didn't have much impact on Steven's words, because she never blamed him for his attitude. After all, she always thought of the positives of everything that happened, unlike Fey who was easily offended and narrow-minded.
"Sorry," Fey squeaked softly as if the words could only be heard by herself.
Steven gave a faint smile. He heard her!
"I knew you would misunderstand, and I'm sorry I didn't try to set the record straight before."
Fey naturally nodded her head in response to Steven's words.
Without hesitation Ellie excitedly chose to hug both of them. She was really happy to get to the point where they could finally be friends again in completing the mission while they were trapped there.
"Can we call the others back to join us?" Ellie asked when she had released her hug.
Of course Fey and Steven nodded their heads in agreement to Ellie's question.
Everyone who had been waiting on the tree house lawn now began to enter one by one back into the center of their previous meeting room.
Alexi seemed to pay attention one by one to the faces of his new colleagues who had resolved their problems earlier.
"Looks like there's been a good ending," Alexi said with a smile that lifted up perfectly to the three of them.
Ellie shrugged her shoulders softly, with a small laugh accompanying her gesture.
After everyone returned to the meeting room, they continued to plan what they would do when Zone 3 opened up again.
***
It took quite a while for Jet to observe the game in progress on top of the tree that was still supporting his body that was getting used to being above 10 meters above the ground.
If he had remembered the height he had to climb the lowest tree nearby, he might have told himself 'CRAZY' because he never thought that his athleticism could get him to the top of the tree.
The nearly 45 minutes he was there were enough for him to get a good look. He knew that the loud bang would last for 10 minutes, which would occur under two conditions.
The first five minutes there would be a continuous boom with a fairly fast duration in seconds, and ending with the next 5 minutes the boom would take place every 1 minute once a boom.
As for the ship that will land at the base, it will be every 15 minutes. There will be a duration without a boom for 15 minutes.
That means if Jet wants to continue the mission he has to run towards the dock and board the ship when the boom void occurs.
Would he be able to run less than 15 minutes over a distance of 7 km?
He was a little doubtful of his running speed this time, especially since he wasn't an athletic runner that he was sure of, although he himself was not sure of his identity before he was trapped in the game that continued.
His eyes began to pay attention to the distance he was going to travel whether there might be a blind spot that was not affected by the boom he heard.
A large rock was enough to get his attention this time.
To be honest, he was quite annoyed that he didn't have a tool to enlarge the image from a distance. If only he had binoculars or something like that maybe it would make him less frustrated at the moment.
The explosive void had already lasted for 5 minutes, which meant that if he didn't want to waste time he had to get down and run towards the rock that was at a point that he was pretty sure might not be affected.
It was just that his little heart was doubting him.
What if the surroundings of the rock turned out to be not what he thought?
Was waiting back the best answer he had this time?
Maybe!
That's what Jet chose in the end. He wanted to be careful!
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See you next chapter