Lance's Weakness

Just as Lance ran out of breath and thought he was going to die, a voice was heard in his ear:

"Mission Success. Teleportation in Progress."

The familiar weightless feeling engulfed Lance as he suddenly felt onto the smooth floor of the IE station, coughing and gasping for breath.

They were back in the same room that they had been in for the initial briefing. Except Entsy, the rest of the team members were also on the ground, coughing.

Bits of sand was being sprayed on the ground from their coughs. Meanwhile, the door opened as Donovan entered with a stoic expression.

"Get into your seats. Now!", he said, in a strict tone.

Somehow, all of the team members felt that they were back in school being shouted at by the teacher. They quickly scurried back to their seats and obediently waited for Donovan to continue.

"You. Get up.", he said, pointing at Lance.

Lance nervously stood up as Donovan had a very serious expression, as if he wanted to hit Lance across the face.

"What kind of a captain are you?! Why didn't you run to the tent to see if there was something to help them?", he asked, shaking with anger.

Lance was a bit startled. "I thought about that. But they were sinking too fast. There was no time."

"And the best thing to do was to jump in with them knowing that there was nothing you could do? And don't say that you could have used your power. We know that you had already burnt all of your energy."

Now, Lance became uncomfortable. Of course jumping in had been the most foolish thing to do. He knew it meant suicide. But he had still done it with the full knowledge that it would be futile.

"I couldn't live with myself knowing that I left them there to die. I needed to do something, and at that moment that was all I could think of. To jump in and then hopefully figure out something."

BANG

Donovan slapped the table in the center, cracking it in half. Circuits were exposed to the air and electricity crackled just like the atmosphere in the room.

"War means making tough decisions. If you lived, you would have able to avenge them. What would jumping in accomplish? YOU NEED TO LEARN TO SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD! YOU CANNOT LEAD ANYONE WITH THIS WEAKNESS!!", he said, practically screaming the last sentence.

The door opened and Attok hurriedly rushed inside. Seeing the table broken and Donovan's spit flying everywhere, he first hurried to hold him by the shoulder and pull him out.

Caught off guard, Donovan couldn't resist before being towed out. Attok had shot a strange look at him, and he understood why on turning around.

The rest of the team had fallen to the ground and were only now getting up. They were holding their throats as if they had just been suffocated.

"What happened to you guys?", he asked, puzzled.

"How did you not feel that?"

"We felt a pressure weighing down on us!"

"It felt like someone was strangling our throats!", came the replies from Yu Yan, Yu Ying and Darius. Entsy only looked at Lance with incredulity.

Lance had no idea why he hadn't been affected. A voice came in his head, interrupting his thoughts.

"Lance, this is your master. I'm teleporting you to me. Say that Attok teleported you out for something."

Lance quickly said, "Guys, Attok is teleporting me cos he..."

His sentence trailed off as he suddenly vanished, leaving only a fading visage where he stood.