Leg 12: "Cannon has a Smokey"

It was an arduous trek, indeed. We travelled for what seemed like days. It was difficult from the heat, which seemed to boil the water from our body and form salt crystals over our skin. Our team kept reminding eachother to push fluids, but I couldn't drink anymore, it was so bloody smoltering. There was no recon mission this time, no, just pure rucking. We had our gear, eachother, and an innate thirst to dominate. We had all of the ingredients needed to conquer. 

We saw ahead a large cave, maybe manmade, and about five stories high. As we approached, we realized that it was, in fact, manmade, and by an advanced civilization. The architecture was so simple that it had to be advanced, with unworldly bright, blinding lights on the sides of this tunnel we knew this was far from our rudimentary LED/flourescent lighting systems that we were so familiar with. There was nowhere to go but through the tunnel, and our team silently hoped that our training had prepared us for what lied inside.

It sounded like a crack of lightning, and was loud enough to be. The sound was continuing and getting even louder. It had to have been an extremely high-voltage capacitor, since the cracking was continuous, and I could see the hairs on my arm shooting erect. The sound was now close, and unnerving. Around the corner, there was a large metal object, the size of a house, coming straight for our squad. 

We hit the deck, just like in our training, and barely avoided the high-velocity, massive machine. The whoofing of the trailing air pounded on our faces. We turned around to observe the floating metal machine and realized that what seemed to be pure electricity attached it to the overhead tunnel and allowing it to hover. I quickly realized we were far from anything made by humans in this century. We looked at eachother, and both realized we were questioning where, and when, we truly were.

Several more metal machines passed through this endless tunnel, all of different sizes and speeds. One that passed us was fairly small, with a large man on it with a very burly beard. It brought me back to a series of books had read in my childhood, but the name slipped my mind. All I was thinking about was the squads safety and the mission, a victory yet to be quenched.

We eventually made it to our next checkpoint. Everyone in the squad was still with us. I had been with so many squads with so many missions, but not every member made it in the past missions. We felt accomplished, but knew we were not even halfway done with our mission. Another day, another path, but still one goal. We thought we had overcame some hard endeavors, but they were trivial compared to what was ahead.

Team N.A.D.S. over and out.

Christine and Josh

P.S. Squad name order changed due to popular request (N.A.D.S. vs. N.D.A.S)