81
Jackson's POV
I figured it out too late that the best course of action was to run. I was pinned down right now by two strong men who didn't seem to have any intention to kill me just yet. It made me fear even more, knowing that they knew my identity, which was probably the only reason why they weren't killing me yet. They wanted to use me as a hostage, and that would be even more painful than failing the mission—which I had already failed.
I thought about it now, and it occurred to me that the entire mission from the beginning had been a loss. I had lost it from the moment I took only 10 men to accomplish this very taxing mission. I didn't count my enemies and had literally underestimated them, especially in terms of numbers, and that was the reason why I was in this situation.
However, even as I had made a fundamental mistake, I would have come out with either a small loss or a big loss. Of course, there was only the option of me coming out with a loss of a lot of stuff, but it was a competition between how much I would lose. I could have failed the mission by asking us to retreat in order to get more manpower later, and have them take the city, which was something that would be very painful. But now that I think about it, that would have been the best possible call for me to make.
Secondly, I could have fought a little and killed a huge number of them, and probably risked going for their leader or someone like that in order to end this tenaciously. That was fighting with a plan that I didn't even do right now because I hadn't had enough time to think of something as clever as that. Therefore, I wasn't able to have us fighting with a goal apart from attacking each and every one of them that came at us, whether they were significant or not, when it was very clear that we wouldn't be able to beat all of them.
Of course, even this second idea was a risk, but it was still better than what I had done in the end. The risk was that I might not be able to get the leader, and I would end up in my current situation, but at least that plan had a goal and a couple of means to meet the end there.
But this last one, the one that I did, was completely terrible, and now I was paying for it. I went along with them, fighting and desperately hoping—without any glimmer of actual truth—that I would finally defeat them with the help of my men, 10 men against about 100, and I actually thought it was possible. Even when I saw about two of my men dead and a couple of them being killed as the fight went on, I didn't call for a retreat. Neither did I do anything at all. Instead, my inaction had caused us to lose, and now it was the biggest loss that we could possibly have.
We weren't just whittled down in terms of forces, and my men killed. No, I was being captured, and so was Damien and the others—if they would be captured for long, that is. I knew that they weren't that important, and the men could decide to kill any one of them, and if any one of them died because of me, I would not be able to forgive myself.
I thought about how traumatizing the experience would be if they actually killed Damien, my friend who had told me time and time again to retreat, but I didn't allow him, and I didn't think it was wise then. He usually said that he was wiser than me, of course in a kind of joking manner, but it was now that I saw that it was true. He would have been a better leader in this situation. He would have been more than ten times as good as I had been, and handled it with ten times more wisdom also.
I looked at Robert Graham Moss, who was now subdued by the men. We had come to wipe out those people and then get one of them hostage in order to tell us about the rest of them, but it was the complete opposite. They had captured us, and now they were holding us as hostages.
I knew that they would be able to demand quite a lot from my father because of me alone, especially as I'm the only child, and my dad doesn't really have a choice. With this mistake that I had made, I had not only put my friends in danger, but I'd also put my parents in a tight spot and a difficult situation. Not only my parents—those were a minor part in the grand scheme of things.
The worst part of this entire movement was that I had failed the entire park. With my dad being forced to surrender information or maybe even territory or manpower to these people in exchange for my life and my friends, there was a good chance that our park would be severely injured. We wouldn't be able to easily keep up with the unity that had been in the various alliances over the past couple of years. The idea of unity would be completely compromised after seeing the way my father led, because this was about the biggest mistake in the entire 10 years, and it was going to weaken people's faith in him significantly.
And all because of me. I started feeling the responsibility of my actions crushing down on me like a weight. I closed my eyes as I was hit by a man who seemed to have a lot of joy doing this.
"Who sent you here?" he asked with a raised eyebrow as he sat right in front of me. My hands were tied behind my back now, and my feet were tied together. I knew that it would be very difficult for me to break out of these bonds, and even if I did, what was I going to do? Would I be able to fight against the hundreds or so of them that were still around?
No, there weren't hundreds. I thought, counting the number as quickly as I could and just taking a rough estimate. At the end of 30 whole seconds, there were about 25 left with us here—35 trained men, each one of them stronger than the last, and all of them veterans in the area of Baton.
It was a good thing on our part that we had been able to wipe out most of the weak ones, who were even more than the strong ones in number, which was a little natural of course. But now it also meant that we were faced against the behemoths, the strongest of the strongest of them, and we wouldn't be able to win even if we were at full force of 10 versus 25.
What's more, they were as strong as could be. Having not put too much effort because the weaker ones would bring down our strength easily, and we weren't even up to our initial number of 10 anymore. We were just like six left, which was a terrible number to pass against 25 strong men who weren't even tired when we were the ones that were awfully tired as a result of dealing with so many people that came before us.
"Who told you we were coming?" he asked again, glaring at me. Only then I realized that I had spent a couple of seconds thinking and hadn't responded to his question at all. I was a little lightheaded and wanted to keep on thinking, but I knew that he was going to hit me if I didn't give him an answer immediately, now that he had repeated himself twice.
"I saw that there were a couple of attacks in other places," he said, and I realized that it was Robert speaking instead of me. For some reason, he was taking my place, indicating that he was the one who led this meeting. I looked at him in surprise, not knowing what he was aiming for, but he continued.
"I connected all the lines together, being the smart person that I am, and therefore decided that this was going to be the next point of attack," he said, sounding bold and confident in himself. I would have believed him myself if not that I knew the truth and knew that I was the one who gathered this small bunch of people here instead of him.
I was still confused about what he was doing when the man who asked me spoke again. "It's a lie," he said, glaring at me with flashing eyes, but then turning to look at the man that had spoken—Robert—with the same look in his eyes. He wasn't looking at me anymore, and I knew that he was focused on Robert instead. Maybe that's what Robert wanted. He wanted to keep me away from trouble.