Who's in charge here? (3)

Before showing Mika to the healer's center, Ailwin had to go see about the group in his office. Leading everyone there, he didn't pay any mind to Ruven walking beside him. He could tell that the man wanted to know who these masked people were.

However, instead of suppling the answers, Ailwin waited until Ruven couldn't take it any more and asked his self.

"Sir, who are these people?" Ruven wanted to rip the mask off of Mika to see what kind of brat laid underneath.

"Huh? Um...these are the citizens we have been looking for, don't you recognize them?" 

"Recognize…?" Ruven looked back at the group of weirdos wearing masks. "They can't possibly be citizens…"

"...and why is that?"

"...because there are no cit-...um because all the citizens went into their safe bunkers to wait out this plague." Ruven swift changed the words coming out of his mouth before he created an even bigger slip of the tongue.