Chapter Eighty-Five: Hide and Seek
Chapter Eighty-Five: Hide and Seek
Kentares IV, Draconis March Federated Suns, August 10th, 3018
"Can we play Hide and seek?" David asked his father after they had finished cleaning up the leftover food and trash from their lunch up in the mountains.
"Sure." His dad said, filling him with joy.
"I want to hide first!" David announced, "You have to count to a hundred and twenty before you can come find me."
"Alright," David's dad chuckled, "I'll be over here counting."
David giggled to himself before running off into the trees. He was going to find the best hiding space ever!
He followed a small trail that he made out through the woods, following it as it spun and wound further up the mountain.
After a couple of minutes of following the trail, David stopped to catch his breath. Looking around, he saw the trail continuing to curve upwards, and forgetting that he was supposed to be playing with his dad, he decided to go exploring the rest of the small game trail he had found.
"One hundred and eighteen, one hundred and nineteen one hundred and twenty." I counted out loud just in case David was listening. "Ready or not, here I come." I started with a nearby search, and made sure that there wasn't anywhere that he could easily disappear.
"David," I called. "I'm going to find you" I wandered out of the clearing we had eaten lunch in, grabbing my carbine and slinging it around my back as a security measure.
I eased my way around, following the small boot prints until they vanished into a small game trail that I couldn't go through.
"Dammit." I sighed quietly. "I'm going to have to go around." I grabbed a notebook out of one of the pockets on my pants and jotted down a quick note of the current landmarks I could see, and the general distance away from the clearing I was.
Grabbing my satcom, I dialed Mathis and waited for him to pick up.
"Everything alright, sir?" Mathis asked.
"Yeah, just have the Drones keep a closer eye on me, David and I are playing Hide and seek, and may be gone for longer than projected."
"Copy that Sir," Mathis responded. "I'll have a couple more drones out and covering the mountain in fifteen minutes or so."
"Good to hear." I replied. "I'm moving on up the mountain now, I'll drop you a line if we need help."
Hanging up, I clipped the satcom to my hip and began the trek up and around the general area that the trail had led to.
David was having the time of his life, he was climbing a tree to get a better view of the trail up ahead, and he saw a whole castle up ahead!
Shimmying down the tree as fast as he could, he took off in the direction of the castle he saw up ahead. Running through the trees, he gasped when he reached a slight opening in the canopy and the buildings he saw up ahead.
"This is awesome!" He yelled as he ran to the buildings, ready to go exploring. "I told dad we would be explorers."
He reached a really big fence, and decided to look for a way through it, finding a small hole in part of the concrete barrier and squeezing through it.
"It really is a castle." He muttered to himself as he saw the outside walls and the inner buildings.
He tried to find a way into the building in front of him, but it was sealed shut. And so were the rest of the buildings.
"How do you get into a castle?" David muttered to himself as he drove his little brain hard for ideas. "They climb into the tower," he said as an idea struck. "But I don't have Rapunzel with me."
He wandered around before seeing what he could do. There was a set of stairs on the outside of most of the taller buildings, and while he couldn't reach them, he could move things to it in order to climb up them.
Pushing a really heavy trash can, he finally was able to reach the stairs. And pulling himself up, he finally took some deep breaths. "I'm super strong." He reminded himself before combing up the stairs to the top of the building.
I was maintaining a jogging pace as I finally found a way into the thick trees and brush that had blocked my way previously. And, now that I had clearance and could see some footprints and where David had probably been I could pick up my pace.
"David!" I called as I ran through the trees, "where are you?" I stopped to make sure this was the direction he had headed in.
"David!" I kept up my calling, just in case he hadn't heard me the first couple of times. While I did have a GPS tracker on him, I didn't want to use it yet, and was going to be trying to find him the old fashioned way.
"Ahh," I yelled in pain as my foot fell into a hole that was about thirty centimeters deep. I immediately sat down. Being careful to not put any undue pressure on the leg in case I had broken it instead of simply spraining or straining it.
"Alright Mark," I muttered to myself. "Ease the leg out, and then diagnose." I pried my leg out of the hole, and winced as pain spiked through my left leg.
"Well, it's not an open fracture." I muttered to myself, "But that doesn't mean all that much." I checked to see if there was any swelling happening. "I'm going to have to call Mathis." I said to myself. "I'm not in my twenties anymore, and this kind of thing sucks." I grabbed the medical pack attached to my waist and used parts of it to make a makeshift splint. "I'm going to have to keep looking for David though." I said to myself. "Mathis won't even know where to begin the search."
"Yes!" David gave a small fist pump as the door in the roof opened on the first try. "Nobody ever locks the doors on the roof." He cheered to himself and then frowned. "Except for dad, that is, he always locks all of the doors."
Grabbing the small flashlight that his dad had given him to put on his own belt, David turned it on and shone it into the stairwell. "This is so cool." David began to make his way down. "I wonder what kind of princess lived in this castle." He continued down the stairs while talking to himself. "I bet she was like Melissa." He nodded. "Yep, she was really pretty, sometimes mean, and a really good friend." He walked over to the nearest hallway. "There's so many doors." He stated.
"Where would I put treasure in my castle though." David thought to himself. "The bottom of the castle duh," He did what he saw his dad do all of the time and smacked his palm into his face. "That's the safest place to keep your treasure." Instead of continuing to explore this floor, he went to the stairwell and began making his way to the basement.
"I don't think this is a treasure room." David said when he reached the basement. "This is just a room full of computers." He huffed. "This isn't a castle at all." He got upset, and whined a bit. "Dad!" His brain finally remembered what he had forgotten. "I need to go find dad, I forgot we were playing hide and go seek." With that said, he rushed back up the stairs, and heard and saw a VTOL coming in for a landing in the clearing that he and dad had eaten lunch in.
Running down the outside stairs. Why were they made out of metal anyway? He squeezed back through the hole in the wall that he had found and ran back through the trail, only stopping when he saw his dad sitting down and doing something to his leg.
"Dad!" David ran up and gave his dad a big bear hug. "I found a castle but there wasn't a princess and I don't think it was really a castle at all and."
"David." His dad's voice cut through the noise of his brain. "You can tell me about your adventure later, right now I need you to go back to the clearing and bring Mathis to me ok."
"I can do it dad." David saluted with a smile on his face. "I'm super strong." And he was off to the races once again.
"I thought you were the one who was supposed to stumble into lost factories and stuff." Mathis laughed as he grabbed the other end of the stretcher I was on. "Not little David." He gestured with his head to the redhead fast asleep on dad's chest.
"What can I say?" I shrugged as much as I was able to. "Adventure and fun runs in the family."
"I'll have Adamina send some of her new students up to catalog the find." Mathis said. "You're probably going to be on bed rest again."
"It's probably just a strain or sprain." I told him, "A break typically has a more painful throb to it, this is more of a pervasive ache."
"Well, don't self diagnose yourself too early, because I know a doctor that will enjoy messing with you if you're wrong."
"Hale can cuss me out herself later." I scoffed. "She's the one who trained me in more than just basic emergency first aid after all."
"This was fun dad." David interupted for a moment before he snuggled into my chest even more. "Let's do it again next year."
Author's note: Sorry to my discord people. I didn't intend on writing anymore today and yet my muse makes a liar of me apparently. (Well, that and my four year old decided to throw a tantrum at my parents house and so I had to take him home early.)