Lilian and I do a running crouch to the other edge of the cargo net. It would be stupid to scale it and then have to climb across. I head up first and can hear Lilian right behind me, she struggles a bit as the net swings and shakes below me, but she keeps up. Once we are halfway up six people run out from various places along the ground. Wyatt is able to stop two with swift hits to the head, they go down hard. Jeff is fighting with one, and I have to say is putting up a good fight even with his injuries.
“Let’s go!” I shout to Lilian and hear a string of curse words with every movement. It actually makes me smile. Once we get to the top, I help Lilian onto the beam. “It’s a ten foot jump, you have to take a running start.”
“You act like you’ve done something this stupid before.”
“Yep.” Is all I say before I take off across the support beam and launch myself onto the rope climb support.
“That’s all you girl, I’ll catch you when you come back.” She laughs.
I grab the flag and go to put it in my bag, but as lam, I have a thought and move it to my sports bra then make a show of closing and securing the bag on my back before running and jumping back.
“You were right we are surrounded, how are we going to get out of here with the guys? Wyatt isn’t fast enough to get up here and Jeff can only hands one person at a time.”
“T can handle several at a time, here, you take the bag and wait until we clear a path, then we can all run together.” Let’s see who takes the bait.
We move down and Lilian stays out of reach with both my backpack and hers on her. I jump in and start helping Wyatt clear out a path, there are only about ten people left and he’s knocked a few of them out.
Once we get a couple more subdued, I call up to Lilian.
“Get ready! Jeff flank her right, I will take her left then Wyatt can watch our backs. 3. 2.1. Go!”
Lilian drops down and starts to run, Jeff runs to position on her right side, I follow up on her left.
Wyatt grunts like he got hit and I risk a look back and see someone barreling at Lilian’s back. I move to intercept him, but his momentum is too much
and all three of us go toppling head over feet. The guy grabs both backpacks and takes off hooting and hollering to his friends. Lilian moves to get up and chase him, so does Wyatt.
“Let it go, let’s just get back to our side before time runs out, we only have 2 minutes.”
“But, it doesn’t matter if we don’t have our flag.” She whines as she stops moving.
I open my eyes wide and say again, “We should get back to our side before time runs out.”
“Ah!” Jeff says and jumps up to wrap a sympathetic arm around her gently guiding us to our corner, but she starts to dig her heels in. Then Jeff looks
over his shoulder, “Would you please?”
The next thing I know Wyatt has Lilian in a fireman’s carry and we are slowly jogging back to our side while the other team is still having a party in the center. I don’t even think they checked the bags yet. We all step over our line, just as the buzzer goes off. There are cheers and boos from the crowd.
Warrior Nickolas walks to the group holding our bags, while medical staff goes to tend to the injured people.
He held out his hand to the leader of the group. The leader opened one of the bags and rummaged around in it. Then he flips it over and dumps it
out, no flag. He moves to the second bag, and you can see the looks on the faces of his teammates change to worry.
He wastes no time dumping the bag and finding no flag. Warrior Nickolas looks over at us and Jeff looks right at me smiling as does Wyatt who caught on.
Lilian looks confused, then I pull the flag out of my sports bra and wave it around. My team and the crowd goes nuts. I have never heard it this loud in the arena before. The vibrations of all of the voices are rumbling the ground we are standing on. My team all hugs and we are laughing, Lilian is pissed I didn’t tell her, but I had no way to and not give it away.
