Chapter 153: No Choice

Will turned to face the irate Ryan, who did not look impressed, and he had no reason to be. Will was supposed to be beside the Queen, and he was up in the ship, and Ryan was unaware of what Will and Bob were doing.

"Wait, let me explain! I have a very good reason for not being with the Queen!" Will said, putting his hands up to stop the fuming Ryan that was glaring at him from the center of the room.

"You have five seconds to explain yourself, Will. Ashia is not me, and you can not pull the same games as you did before; you are putting everyone at risk with this stupid behavior of yours!" Ryan said, but now Will looked like he was getting angry.

Will knew that they didn't have a lot of time, and every second that was wasted here was one less person saved. Will strode forward and grabbed Ryan by the white robe, and pulled Ryan to his face.

"When do I ever do something as dumb as this will out the reason, Brother?! What is wrong with you all?! SkinWalkers are HERE; remember them? The ones that WE let get away?!" Will said, practically shaking Ryan to death as he did, but Ryan left him.

"No…" Was all that Ryan could get out as he remembered the horrors that they had gone through before trying to hunt this creature down.

"Yes, now listen. We are too late again, but we can still save some of them," Will said, and that shocked Ryan out of his momentary pause of unbelieving.

"Save?! You need to ask the Queen…."

"WHAT?! You want me to go down there and stand where the focus is? Maybe I should just interrupt her in the middle of talking to the Queen that is obviously being controlled? Use your fucking head, and you need to get down there the moment she asks you. For now, you will have to direct the groups and have the men help move everyone over to the clinic and get Messia," Will said, but Ryan shook his head with a hard no and pushed Will back.

"Drag me into this if you must, but you will not involve the Queen's wives in this. Where what you are doing is right or not in your mind or not does matter. You are directly violating the Queen, and you will not take others down with you!" Ryan said, and Will shook his head, but he knew that Ryan was right.

"Fine, but we need to hurry; I will be back very soon, but keep an eye on the Queen and don't let her go in the Hive. The SkinWalker can't touch her, but it could get the other to do something to her," Will said, and then slipped into the Drift, and Ryan was left with his head in his hand and a headache.

Will appeared by Tok and handed him the Crystal display tracker.

"Target that location, but don't hit Bob with the beam; he is down there with the tracking bugs. I will get him to run around the area that they are in and the beam that area once you see a full circle, okay," Will said, but then blew away as he entered the Drift again and headed back down.

Down was the wrong word for it; the Path was only one direction, forward. You did not choose your Path, the Path is yours, and it is the one that you are meant to walk.

This is why Will knew that he had to be here, the Path guided him, and the Queen had given him this power. This was not something that Will could fight, he was the blade, and the Path wielded him.

Bob was already on the third cell and was pouring sweat when Will reappeared. Will looked around at all the bodies haphazardly tossed around and sighed.

Will started to slip in and out of the Drift to collect the bodies faster. The speed he moved at was almost hard to follow.

"What took you so long?" Bob asked as he noticed Will.

"Ryan." 

"Ah… so, you're just trying to get enough people in on this so she can't kill us all? You know there is usually a simple way to fix that, right. It's called cutting the head off the snake, and then the rest of the body can't follow if there is no head," Bob joked, but Will didn't reply. 

Will was running the bodies into the center of the chamber as Bob grabbed that last body from the wall. This was going too slow, and Bob was starting to worry that this wasn't going to work, but then Will spoke up.

"Head back to the first room, and run a lap around the body piles, and then Tok will grab them, and then keep doing that. I will do this, but you need to run, man, we don't have much time," Will told Bob, and he nodded, handing Will the Door-Stabilizer.

The two separated, but Will went into the Drift; there was one more place that the Path needed to take him. The SugaBee Queens Eggs needed to be saved, or this wouldn't matter; the SkinWalkers couldn't be allowed to have these newborns, or they would all be in a lot of trouble.

[Ashia's view]

"So, after that, I was able to bring the eggs back by dropping the Tracking Bug Bob left on me with the eggs. Then went back to release the rest that we got," Will said, but I was still confused.

"How did you get fifteen hundred people up here in that amount of time?!" I asked, not really sure how I should be reacting at this point.

"The Path helped me release them all fast, and we would have got more, but I was trying to get them all before it started to move. The moment it started to move, I let Bob finish his last circuit to mark the bodies, but then I pushed him into the center, and he was taken with it," Will explained.

I just put my hands over my face and took a deep breath in.