District 42-Chapter 245: What happens next?

Rat was pointing to Casper’s face with a gun. The soldier was kneeling on the ground, with both arms so weak that he couldn’t lift them.

Mountains of corpses could be seen spread on the ground and various buildings burnt in the background behind the criminal.

Casper was wearing the black mask he got while in Halden. It was cracked just like Canute’s mask once was.

"You shouldn’t have had let me go away. You should have had stopped me. Vick’s life wasn’t as meaningful as all these other innocent lives, was it?" Rat spoke.

The White warrior couldn’t see his face, nor his eyes. However, he could still feel the disgusted expression on them as they kept focused on him.

Casper tried to say something in exchange. Whatever the thing. However, he couldn’t. No sound was coming out of his mouth as he looked to Rat and shouted at him. He was panicking, desperate, feeling impotent.

"You don’t need to justify your decisions or try to lessen your guilt. You know very well what you did, White warrior." That serious behavior was contrasting with the usual playful character that Rat was. "You did with all this district the same thing you did with your old troops, with the Yanke Forces, and Ana. You failed with each one of them differently, didn’t you? You are a deserter, a coward, a powerless person that had the luck to rise to the top once. Now, it’s time for you to be gone as well, so your friends won’t need to curse your name anymore every day!"

The trigger was pulled, the soldier didn’t move, he just looked intently at the bullet coming on his eye as slow as a turtle. It seemed like the time was trying to drive him crazy, going 4 times as slow as it usually was.

That bullet remembered him of that time. That time when the truck came rushing into the scholar bus. He was the only one to notice since he sat beside the window and looked through it instead of sleep like the others. The truck’s speed seemed to be as slow as that bullet.

Before it could strike Casper, a loud knock noise sounded and he woke up with his head in pain.

...

The soldier lasted some time to finally get up from the bed. He was dizzy and stumbling. The pale lights of that room made it even harder for him to get his thoughts together and pay attention to what was going on around him.

He walked towards the door. Someone was knocking hard on it.

The soldier opened it quite pissed off and faced Ivar looking at him.

"You delayed too much, hehe." His grin was back on his face. Casper saw that strange gleam of excitement in his eyes.

"I mean... I was sleeping, so..." The soldier rubbed his face.

"Vick, she is awake now. Everyone is gathering to see her. Move on."

After hearing that, the White warrior nodded his head and then slammed the door again, going back to his bed to get some of the clothes he needed to wear.

In no time, he was already out there and searching for the others, trying to guess where her room was.

He walked briefly through some of the corridors, looking to all doors and searching for some nurse available to answer his questions. However, all of them were in a rush. The Healing Center was busy as always, at least on these days. It was terrifying even to look at the corridors filled with lots of injured people.

The structure of that place wasn’t prepared for so many people getting harmed so seriously, which made it get overcrowded. A lot of people who got stabilized needed to be transferred to other unities, some others died on the corridors while waiting for a room where they could be treated.

Far away, Casper saw Rurik standing in the corridor. The Suicidal Aesir was looking to all sides and his eyes focused on the soldier once he found him. Apparently, he was looking for him.

"She is here, in this room. Although all of the others are inside there as well, you can enter. It is a big room." He opened the door and Casper entered right away without saying anything.

Vick was laying on the bed in the center of the room. Around her, Leonel, Eva, Susie, and the Aesirs, except Canute, were standing and looking at the door.

Once Casper went deeper into the room, Rurik followed him.

The Princess was now with her skin rather pale than yellowish. She seemed to be weak. Even her eyes weren’t moving as fast as they could, probably because of her dizzy mind.

The atmosphere inside there was heavy, making it harder even to breathe.

Although she was better than before, there was something off.

Casper and Rurik were positioned beside the bed with the others. Everyone stayed silent for a moment.

Vick was the first one to say something, which surprised everyone there. The woman was dejected physically and mentally as well, so it was unlikely that she would speak.

"That’s my fault, isn’t it?" She held the sheets that were covering half of her body, squeezing them tightly.

After what happened, the only conclusion that she could get was that she was the reason for the mission to end up as a failure.

If not for her being fooled by her schedule and going to that floor, nothing like this would have happened.

"Your agenda was hacked somehow, Your Highness. It was not your fault at all. Also, even though you should be fully aware of what you put or not on there, sometimes your father or the butler change it without your consent, so it’s just natural that something like this would happen." Ari pointed, trying to calm her down.

Ivar nodded his head. He didn’t seem too concerned about what was going on with the Princess at all but wasn’t going to play against them either.

The Sgails were silent. They knew that it was a huge mistake to let others do things on her agenda. Also, it was very difficult to hack the network of the Castle, which left them thinking about it. However, they kept their mouth shut to not worry Vick too much.

"Even if it was a mistake or not, nothing will change this fact. If I wasn’t there, then you all would be able to get Rat today. Since I was there, it wasn’t possible. And that’s it."

She had the usual cold eyes as always and her tone was assertive.

"But--"

"No, Ari. I said that’s it. No more arguing."

The Aesir lowered his head and kept quiet, crossing his arms.

Ari felt the need to defend her against herself. He usually wouldn’t do it, but Canute would. Since his friend was hospitalized because Ari couldn’t do anything for him, he felt the duty to do so.

"Today, Eskil and Canute got seriously harmed. Leonel nearly died. And the others struggled until the end to get the mission fulfilled. There are no excuses anymore. We failed completely... And that’s it!"

Her struggle to keep talking even though she was so weak, added to her bitter words, made all of them get more dejected.

No one could stay with their heads raised, nor say anything in return.

"If something happens from now on, it will be the fault of everyone here in this room, including me, particularly.

"You all chose my life instead of the life of dozens of thousands of people. You had the time to ponder, the will to conclude the mission, the sense of duty, but you didn’t do so."

The realization started to befell them once she showed to the group what was the reality of things.

No matter what good intentions and reasons they had, in the end, they gave a shot while blindfolded.

Now, the Castle was under threat and they didn’t know from where it would come. It could be just a bluff of Rat at the time, or then he was planning something big.

Either way, they choose the hardest path, though at the time they were supposed to be the most reasonable ones.

"Now... What happens next? Can someone say it to me, because I can’t think of anything by now?" Behind her cold and frustrated tone of voice, Casper could sense a young lady that was on the verge of collapsing on tears and despair. But only he noticed it.

Again, they didn’t have any words to give to her.

Vick’s anger wasn’t exaggerated at all. She wasn’t being selfish, on the contrary, she was thinking about the lives of her folk.

"Now that I am here, alive, but Rat is out there, what happens next? I being alive really make a difference in the end?"

Casper closed his eyes, sensing her words invading his mind and remembering him of his mistakes.

’Maybe the nightmare I had a while ago wasn’t just a nightmare in the end... But a premonition.’