BXBX NOVEL Chapter 132 - Got Kidnapped
Del\'d be lying if he didn\'t think that it was boring to work as security. Maybe there would be something interesting such as someone suddenly punching him in the face, and he got into a fight, but something like that didn\'t happen. Instead, he was just there for an intimidating purpose.
The service was over, finally. The bottom of the pot was clean. It felt as if they had just fed the entire slump. The truth was too far from the expectation, though they might only provide two hundred or less from two thousand people or so. The supervising doctor briefed them first.
The doctor asked Del, "Del Moore, is that your name?"
"Yes, sir. That\'s my name."
"So you\'re that kid. Cassandra and Hubert told me a lot about you in the last meeting. I\'m impressed about what you\'ve done in the front line. You\'re pretty selfless, aren\'t you?" The doctor, whose name was still unknown, said.
"Excuse me, doc, but who are you, if I may ask?" Del asked.
"Me? Oh, my name is Joshua Bennett. But most of these people here call me Joshua. I\'m Hubert\'s junior, if you ask. Anyway, guys, let\'s start the debriefing, I want to hear the reports from all of the starts, let\'s start from the cooking team. Emir, would you kindly explain?"
"Thank you doc. We have served around 187 plates. Most of the feedbacks are good. For further assessment, we might need a bigger pot later to feed more people, doc." He showed the bottom of the pot that had been scraped clean of food. Emir was a 10th-grade student. He was the youngest of them all.
"Great, I give the 10th grade an appreciation for doing its job nicely. Now, I want to hear the reports from the medicine team. Daniel, can you give me the debrief?"
"We have given the same amount of supplements as usual. Twenty boxes of supplements were donated and six boxes of medicines were also used too. I think we had enough, but the overall condition of the slump begins to improve, that\'s all."
"Good. Lastly, security team, how\'s the situation, Mira?" Del asked.
"Nothing out of the ordinary. Del helped a lost child, and that\'s all," Mira said.
"Ok, great. I\'m glad to hear that. Del had proved to be useful, and I like it. Anyway, is that all, or is there anything that you want to add for evaluation in this volunteering session?" Joshua asked.
"Yeah, when will Del get his TMV uniform? He looked out of place with us, I\'m not going to lie," Daniel suggested.
"Next Monday. We will need to order one from the regional HQ first. And Del, don\'t worry too much about it, Cassandra has filled in the details about you. Overall, we are expecting you, Del," Joshua added.
Del just nodded. He expected this kind of treatment, especially since he was working with Salve Group. Why would a corporate entity not provide the best for its shareholder? Del wasn\'t a tiny shareholder either. He might be the moderate kind of shareholder, not too high, but not too low.
Sadly, not everyone had the same reaction as Del did. Daniel rubbed his head in confusion. Mira dropped her jaw, and the other students looked suspiciously at Del. Del had faced so much that the kind of reaction wasn\'t too surprising for him.
"How—?" Mira still couldn\'t believe it. She knew that Del was a contractor and all, but expecting her supervising doctor to know him was not something that Mira expected. She only expected Del to be someone that used to be working as a contractor, not someone that important that her supervising doctor would know from his senior.
"Dude… who are you?" Daniel asked.
"Me? I\'m just a contractor, that\'s all. Well, used to be, to be exact."
"I meant, Mrs. Gable isn\'t exactly someone that you can meet every once in a while, much less having her introducing you. That woman is a high-ranked member in MSVI, how could she possibly know you?"
"Excuse me?"
"She\'s a surgeon, medical volunteer, researcher, combatant, former special force personnel, and a member of a prestigious family. How could a person like you know her?"
"She\'s that prestigious?" Del asked.
"Yeah."
The volunteering activity stopped, and they packed their equipment back into their backpacks. Del checked whether there was something that he left or not. There wasn\'t any, so he carried his bag on his back and walked alongside the others back to the academy.
However, just before he was going to leave his tent, a disturbance happened. One of his juniors was searching for something, Del wasn\'t sure what he was searching for, but his cold sweat told him loudly that the student was missing something very important.
"Is there anything wrong?" Del approached him.
"Yes, did you see my friend? She was going to the toilet, but it has been a while," the boy answered.
"Is that something that is wrong? She might take her time," Del said.
"No, she said she only wanted to pee, but it has been too long," the boy said.
Del decided to calm the boy down by helping him to find his friend. "Alright, where was the last time you see her? Do you have any idea where she might have gone?" Del asked.
"Follow me."
The boy led Del to an alleyway located right behind the volunteering tent. The mud in that alleyway smelled like piss. The people also smelled like rotten rats. The house smelled like damp wood and fungus. There was no public toilet either. Did she just piss in the ground or something?
The boy continued walking, and Del followed him from behind. Eventually, the boy led him to a small building which was the public toilet. He would lie if he said that the public toilet didn\'t stink like hell. "This is the place, but I didn\'t find her. Do you have any suggestion on where I should look next?"
Del observed the perimeter. The same rule was applied, which made things harder. Everyone looked suspicious by his standard. The homeless people were smoking on the side of the road with their dirty clothes. The women were looking like a mugger, and so on. How could he find anything suspicious?
"Do you think something happened to her?" Del wanted to confirm something.
"I think so? Slum is shit. All sorts of criminals are nesting in here," the boy said.
"Let\'s start asking around, then."
Del approached the people on the alleyway one by one. He asked whether they saw a girl wearing the same clothing as the boy, which was the TMV uniform. Most of them answered by saying that they didn\'t know the girl.
He didn\'t give up on trying, though. He kept searching for any sign of that girl whose face she didn\'t even know. He was looking for a sign of violence, blood, or anything that resembled any criminal activity. For what he understood, the slum had a big chance of kidnapping.
"Why would you leave a girl alone in this slump? Goddamn it," Del said.
"I was packing the medical equipment, but she insisted to go there alone," the boy protested.
"Damn, she\'s an idiot."
In the midst of confusion, Del finally gave up. He didn\'t find any sign of violence. The girl must have gone somewhere else that the boy didn\'t even know. However, he suddenly found something suspicious. Two men were walking alongside with a girl, the girl looked scared and she was wearing ragged clothing, but Del didn\'t think the girl matched the description.
"Is that our girl?" Del asked while pointing his hand at the girl.
"YES, THAT\'S HER! LISA!!!" The boy shouted.
It wasn\'t a wise move, those men panicked and they ran away. Del and the boy ran after those two men. Del was furious. Why would his junior shout? Now he had to run after the girl alongside with him. He could just put two on the back of their head and be done with it, but that option became unavailable now.
One of the men pulled a pistol out of his pocket and began shooting at Del and the boy. "WATCH OUT!" Del acted as a meat shield for the boy and protected him from the gunfire. Two bullets struck his ballistic shield spell. "Are you ok?" Del asked the boy.
"I\'m fine, dude, we\'re going to lose her, they\'re getting away!" the boy shouted.
Del casted a flying spell and he flew towards the direction of those men, leaving the boy behind. He shot his AK-74M towards the direction of those men while avoiding any friendly fire with the girl. Those men were also using the same ballistic spell as Del did.
"You got to be kidding me…" Del continued following those men until they arrived at an entrance to a some kind of building. Del got bombarded with rounds and he took cover behind one of the buildings.. "I\'m going to need heavier weapons here."