The Earth After Rebirth

"Hey, what\'s your name?" Kiro pointed at one kid he thought looked strong enough to lead the others out of there.

He looked up once, then mumbled something that sounded like \'Micah\'

"I know it\'s hard, but I\'ll need you to do as I say Micah, you have to take everyone out through that tunnel, follow it until you see the outside. Wait for us there." He instructed hoping he would be in his right mind to take the orders in.

Just then, his phone rang. Electricity zapped through his body when he saw it was Isla. He contemplated.

"Don\'t answer it." Nikolai warned.

"She\'ll never talk to me again if I don\'t." He quickly put his phone on blanket mode, meaning everything else but him would be concealed.

"Hey, what\'s up?" He\'d hoped she\'d forgotten about their previous fight.

"What\'s wrong with you actually, why are you so dirty? Didn\'t you go to a work thing?"

The others stared daggers at him. If looks could kill, he\'d have dropped dead a million times over. Although Kiro knew the phone could backfire, he still didn\'t want to raise suspicion.

"President Scott is quite a strange man if you ask me. He took us to an excavation. I\'m sure still there, that\'s why I disabled most of everything so that the network wouldn\'t be affected."

His friends\' attitude suddenly changed when they realised what he was trying to do. Creating them an alibi incase things went extremely wrong here. They were excavating with Kismet workers, and Isla calling, made her more or less a witness.

"That\'s really not fair, that sounds really fun." She said sulking a little. She had to stay behind after all, being vice president wasn\'t fun either people bothered her with the tiniest of things. Especially because Kiro was almost always nowhere to be found.

"Digging in dirt? I can assure you it\'s no fun." Kiro could see she was in a sour mood, but he didn\'t have the luxury of asking what was wrong, and this call turned into a two hour one.

"We should go to that park next week. How does that sound?" So instead of prying, he gave her something to think about.

"I\'ll think about it." She flushed red.

"Haha please tell me of your answer. I\'ll see you soon, I need to go." His heart was racing three times the normal rate.

He\'d just asked a girl out and it was his first time doing so. He did under these circumstances too, he hoped this wasn\'t something akin to a fetish of his. Because although he was nervous, he was able to calmly say what he wanted to say. That was new for him.

She simply smiled and dropped the call. Kiro breathed in relief. His friends gave a hearty mischievous whistle.

"I didn\'t know you were that smooth." Ishaan started.

"He\'s very stiff usually, I guess my teachings have been getting through somehow." Hiro followed suit.

"Alright enough with the banter, let\'s get back to work." James reminded them.

They managed to remove some of the ruble, the hole fortunately went through the tunnels something they hoped for.

"Okay, Micah as I told you, this will be very hard but you\'re in charge. Take everyone through that tunnel and don\'t forget to wait."

He didn\'t respond at first, as if Kiro\'s words reached him slower than a regular person. He slowly nodded, his head bobbed from his neck, making everyone almost burst out laughing.

"Be very careful. Trust nobody but us. I\'m Ki, don\'t tell anyone alright?"

He nodded again.

"I\'m Shaan." Ishaan followed introducing himself second.

"Niko."

"Fe."

Hiro understood they were trying to hide their real names and using some kind of nicknames or code names. He was already known by his nickname so it was a bit difficult to come up with something on the spot, though eyes were all on him.

It was more pressuring the fact that all of his friends seemed to have came here prepared to give fake names. They introduced themselves faster, so much that his silence was met with awkwardness. He felt like, he didn\'t get their memo.

"Saki." He quickly said, taking the last two syllables from his surname.

James simply said that he was J.

Kiro knelt before Micah, he didn\'t want to meet his eyes so he forcefully held his chin and turned his head.

"If you do well, you\'ll get to go back to your families. This is important." He couldn\'t stress it enough how important it was that he didn\'t stray from the path.

Micah mumbled something about being an orphan, or that he was pretty sure most here didn\'t have families. Kiro promised to build them a proper orphanage, that brought about tears in little Micah\'s eyes.

It was the first Kiro had seen a hint of emotion in them. They previously didn\'t have any light behind them, but this act of kindness from a stranger melted that, if only a little.

Micah nodded, he beckoned the thousands of kids. They didn\'t say anything but formed a line walking towards Micah, who was walking towards the hole.

"You think they\'ll be alright?"

They watched as the last one disappeared inside the hole. They sighed, relieved that they at least did this one thing right.

They left the underground, closing the hatch behind them, leaving things as normal as possible so that nobody would be deployed to go after the children.

"Now what do we do?" James asked, he promised himself he\'d take a backseat and just go along for the ride.

"Well, now? We cause carnage. We bring this place down."