The Always War 100-197

Once they realize there is no one around, they start walking around and field. The grass in the field is almost shoulder-high and the dirt is actually rubble from buildings that had been destroyed a long time ago. The three of them head toward an old aircraft radio tower in the distance. They climb up the bird-dropping infested ladder of the tower to get a better look at the surrounding area. All they see is open land, with a grove of trees and a river in the distance. Gideon soon realizes that they should be in Shargo and that the whole city, along with the military headquarters, were destroyed a long time ago. He gets furious as he points out where buildings should be and where underground fuel tanks are at. Once Gideon calms down, they went back to the plane to get parts to make a homemade bowl to get fuel from the fuel tanks to their plane. Once they got enough fuel to make it back out of the war zone, they head back to friendly territory. Just before they reach the boundary, the plane gets taken over by their own military. It lands them at the main headquarters for their military. Uniformed men and women escort them to General Kantoff's office, who is in charge of the entire military. After making small talk for awhile, they get down to business. After General Kantoff listens to what Gideon and Tessa are saying about the war zone, he decides that they are crazy and need to be taken away. Dek knocks out Kantoff with a jar of cigars and they sprint out of the office so no one could catch them. After awhile Tessa sees guards running down other hallways. She questions Gideon about why they are not chasing after them. Gideon then hits the railing and a computer appears out of wall. It shows a map of the entire facility and where the guards are at. In the center of the the building there is a dark area. This is the control room for the military. No one is allowed in this room, as it is all controlled by computers. They decide to head there. Once Gideon distracts the guards by sending them to another part of the building, he punches in a code and they all go into the control room. An automated voice suddenly talks to them and knows all about them. The computer has a mind of its own, as it can choose when to tell lies and when to tell the truth. After arguing with it for a while, Gideon punches through the wall and into the computers circuits. Gideon then grabs a disk drive out of the hole. That piece can tell them what the computer had been thinking the whole time it was talking to them. They then build a makeshift laptop out of more parts out of the wall to use with the drive. Just then, guards barge in and shoot them with tranquilizers. They wake up in a jail cell soon after. Dek and Gideon both laid on the floor, depressed and tired of trying to stay alive. After Tessa argued with them about trying to get our of there, they came up with an idea. Tessa still had the mini laptop in her pocket. They used that to get out and then they went back to the control room. When they went back in, the computer told them that it let the guards catch them to see if the three of them had enough resolve to complete the task. After talking about countless ways to spread the news about the war zone, they come up with something. They are going to broadcast a video of them talking about the war zone and have footage of it to send worldwide, and they did just that. To find out how people reacted to the news, the computer brought up videos of towns. Everyone was in shock. People started breaking through the border fences and walking into the war zone. The war that would go on forever finally ended.