Man two is scrambling for his gun. There’s a nasty scratch along the side of his eye.
From Neo.
“Wait,” he says as I storm toward him. “Just?—”
I walk straight up to him and headbutt him as hard as I can.
Apparently, my skull is thicker than his.
My ears are ringing as I pull back, but I don’t give a shit about that. Not as the other guy slides to the floor, his eyes rolling back in his head.
“The whole point of the table is to actually use it.”
I whirl around at the sound of Samson’s voice. He’s in the doorway, Matthias at his side. Samson’s sporting a black eye, and Matthias has a nasty-looking graze on his collarbone. Aside from that, they appear uninjured. “I did for the first one. But he mentioned Neo.”
My brothers’ faces harden. Matthias is the one who speaks. “They have him?”
I nod curtly. “Yes. He was knocked unconscious, but that’s all I know.”
Samson crosses the room, grabbing a knife from a tray. “All these toys assembled, and I doubt a single one of them knows how to use them properly.”
I hold still as he cuts the cable ties, grateful I don’t need to snap them myself. “Have you found the others?”
“Negative,” Matthias responds, slipping into the mission speak we rely on in times like these. “All rooms between mine and Samson’s are empty.”
“Fuckers are deserting like rats on a sinking ship,” Samson adds. “Took one look at me and Matthias not tied up and ran the other way. Cowards.”
Okay, sosomeof us use official mission speak.
“We need a plan,” I say, pacing the room. “Do we know where we are?”
There’s not a lot in the room to give it away. The two tables. A long worktop littered with weapons. A dusty computer on a desk in the corner.
But this isn’t some playground setup. Not with the high-grade cameras pointing at us from every direction. We likely won’t have long before someone checks the feeds and realizes we’re loose, if they haven’t already.
“Some kind of military installation,” Matthias says. “Multiple floors. I found a window and estimate we’re on the fourth or fifth level.”
I exhale slowly. Not great, but again, we’ve survived worse. “Do we know if the others were captured or if they managed to escape?”
Those are the only options I’ll allow myself to consider right now. Because the alternative…
No. I can’t even think about it.
“We don’t know,” Samson says, his fingers tightening around the dagger. “I came to first and found Matthias. Then we came straight here.”
“We walked into a trap,” Matthias says heavily. “It was too easy. We should’ve known.”
Having already come to this realization, I just nod. “We can dissect it after. Right now, our priority is finding the others and Neo.”
Neo.
Neo.
Neo.
His name’s resounding in time with my heartbeat, begging me to move. To get to him faster.
My monster is silent for once, giving my brain space to think. To plan. To prioritize. Like me, he knows this is the best way to get Neo back where he belongs.
