BRAYDEN
THIRTY
“Idon’t like that we split up from the others,” Parker grumbled as we reached another fork in the path. “What happens when they find everyone? If we are underground, how is that going to work?”
Jay stopped in the middle of the tunnel and turned on Parker, thrusting something into his hands.
“They have one of these and will be able to radio us if they find anything, even if we are underground. Now, looking at the map, it would be more likely Ubel is keeping them all in this large open area here. So let’s mark the wall and head to the right. ”
“Great. Now even you’re being a dick about things. What did I do wrong this time?” Parker muttered under his breath.
Typically, Parker never pissed me off, but how he was dealing with things, especially telling Lailah to keep things secret, had gone too far. Now I wish I was like Micah and didn’t give a shit if I punched the big baby in his face.
“I think if you were more focused on the mission and not worried about yourself, it might help,” I suggested as I shoved passed him.
Parker tossed his hands in the air. “How is being worried about Lailah not being focused?”
“Because we ALL worry about Lailah!” I yelled, turning to face him again.
“Don’t you get it? All of us love that woman, and if anything happened to her, it would kill each and every one of us.
But—I know that if we let anything happen to these innocent people, it will break something in her that we may not be able to fix.
So, getting these people to safety is my top priority right now because it’s hers—you get it now? ”
Parker looked at me, stunned. I don’t think any of them had really seen me lose my temper before, but everyone had a breaking point. I knew that both Micah and Hudson would do whatever it took to keep Lailah safe, and through our bond I also knew she was fine, even if I couldn’t be with her.
Seeing that Parker didn’t have anything else to add, I started after Jay as he led us deeper into the catacombs.
Now moving in silence, I was able to pick up on the sound of people whispering and others crying softly.
When we emerged into the large open area that looked like it at one point had been a gathering room of sorts, we found the students.
All their hands and feet were bound, and many of them were still knocked out, laying on the ground, while a few others had managed to huddle together.
I jogged over to one, pulling the gag from his mouth before I started on his hands. “Are you alright?”
“Fuck if I know, I can’t even remember what happened or how I got down here. Where are we?” he asked, rubbing his wrists once they were free.
“Under the chapel in the catacombs. We’ve come to get you guys out, but sit tight until we’ve checked on the others. You could get lost really easily out there,” I reassured as I moved on to the person next to him.
Quickly, the three of us worked, and a few of the other students helped as well once free.
The ones that were still asleep needed Parker’s particular skill to wake them up from the demon magic used on them.
Now that everyone was awake, a group off in one corner seemed to start panicking about something.
“There’s a BOMB!” a girl screamed, setting off the whole room.
“Oh my god, there’s another over here! We’re all gonna die down here, aren’t we?!” another voice called.
I looked at Jay, unsure of what to do but hoping he had some experience with what was going on. Nodding to me, he let out a shrill whistle that he amplified with his power so it boomed through the room, causing everyone to stop and look at him.
“If you want to make it out of here alive, then you need to calm down,” Jay instructed. “Give us a moment to see what’s going on before we set something off by accident. The best thing we can do is remain calm.”
This seemed to settle some people, but others were in hysterics and tried to fight to get out of the room. Jay signaled to Parker, who nodded his head and sent out a wave of power, putting everyone back to sleep. It was the safest option we had with only three of us trying to deal with everything.
“Guys, do you read me?” Hudson’s voice sounded over the radio.
Parker pulled the device out of his back pocket and hit the button to talk. “Yeah, we hear you.”
“We lost Lailah…”
“What the fuck did he say?!” I snarled, yanking the radio out of Parker’s hand. “You better be lying to me, Hudson.”
“Trust me, I wish I was too. She said something about hearing Ubel and took off in the opposite direction from us and vanished. We’re still looking for her, but I don’t think we can manage without you guys.”
“How much you wanna bet that bastard planned this? There’s no way we can help them if we have bombs set to go off in this room,” Parker pointed out as he turned to slam his fists into the wall. “Damn it, damn it, damn it all to hell.”
“Did you just say there were bombs?” Micah’s voice asked over the radio. “That evil prick never planned on us getting out of this place alive, did he?! Damn it! I bet he lured Lailah away from us as leverage—FUCK!”
I looked around the room, torn on what to do next. We needed to get these people out of here before something happened… but what about Lailah?
“We need a group decision on how to handle this, guys. On one hand, we have two hundred students trapped underground surrounded by bombs. On the other, Lailah is missing and probably in the clutches of a psycho demonic murderer.” I said, watching Jay and Parker for any sign of what they thought we should do as we waited for Hudson and Micah to weigh in.
Parker’s shoulders sagged as I saw him come to a choice. “We need to do what we can to protect them. It’s what she would want us to do if she was here. Have Micah and Hudson keep looking for her, but we can’t abandon them. I couldn’t look her in the face if we chose her over all of them.”
“He’s right. If you two keep working on your end, we will handle this,” Jay agreed, talking into the radio. “If we get things squared away here, it will give us all the time we need to keep looking for her with you guys, but live bombs in play jeopardizes us all.”
I could hear muttering through the radio as they talked before Hudson gave us their answer.
“We are both in agreement with you, Jay. I have a connection with her, so that will help keep us going in the right direction, and you guys are on the opposite end of the catacombs as it is. Deal with the bombs and the students, and we will keep you informed of what’s happening on our end as we can. ”
“Check back in fifteen minutes if you don’t hear from us before that,” Jay relayed as he stuffed the radio in his back pocket. “Okay, let’s go take a look at what we’re dealing with.”
Spreading out, we walked along the edge of the room and found a total of five bombs, each of them having an additional canister on them with what we speculated was the demon serum.
“Alright, so I can defuse these bombs, but I don’t have all the tools I need to do it quickly,” Jay started, causing us both to groan.
“That means I need you two to help me since I’m working with a multi-tool instead of the specialized bomb kit we have for these circumstances.
The other part of this I should be honest about is that I’ve never deactivated a bomb like this on my own.
I’ve assisted one of our techs and seen it done, just not on my own. ”
“We just aren’t going to catch a break on this, are we?” I asked, looking over the bomb. “There’s no other option. We have to do something, and having some idea how to do this is better than none. What do you need from us?”
Jay took a deep breath and rubbed his face with his hands. This might be the first time I’d ever seen him nervous about anything.
“Let’s see if we can move it away from the wall so I can get a better look at it,” Jay said, grabbing part of the bomb.
Parker’s head snapped in Jay’s direction. “I’m sorry, what? You want us to move this device that could go off at any time? Nope, sorry, I want to live.”
“Then I suggest you help and give us the best chance of keeping your sorry ass alive,” I growled, taking the other side, but the way it was shaped, it kept tilting forward, totally off balance.
Parker stepped up and grabbed the front, steadying it as we shuffled away from the wall and set it back down.
“Okay, now I need all the light I can without any shadow. One wrong cut wire and I’ll blow us all the fuck up,” Jay explained as he handed me his flashlight.
Pulling out his tool, he slowly worked at getting off the top of the bomb, showing all the wires.
It was a massive, chaotic ball of wire that you couldn’t tell what was going where.
The rat bastard had taken every opportunity to make this as hard as possible.
Jay picked through the wires and was able to sort out what was real and what was just jumbled up in there.
Finally, he cut a wire and crossed it with another before cutting two more.
The small timer showed up, giving us five minutes before it would go off.
Not having the right tool, he needed to use the blade to get the small screws out of the plate at the bottom, eating into our time before he revealed a small tube of liquid.
“You have got to be kidding me!” Jay swore, rubbing his forehead as he looked down at the bomb. “It doesn’t make sense why he would have three backup triggers!”
“Talk to us Jay, what’s going on?” I asked, trying to understand what I was looking at.
Jay glanced up at me, worry filling his eyes. “Either this was put here to cause whoever tried to disarm the bomb to panic and let the timer run out, or we have a major problem. This is a liquid trigger. If I mess with it too much, the two fluids will mix and react, causing it to blow up.”
“Wait, but wouldn’t it have done that when we moved it?” Parker questioned, squatting to look down at it closer. “I say it’s a fake out, because at this point there’s no other option. You have to remove that to get to the wire under it that controls the power to the battery.”
“How the fuck do you know that?” Jay demanded, brows furrowed.
“Um…” Parker shrugged his shoulders “You guys keep forgetting I’m a technology guy. I get circuitry, and the way this is set up doesn’t support a liquid trigger.”
“Parker, if I do this, know that I’m trusting you with all our lives here. Do you still want me to break this?” Jay asked, his tone dead serious.
Leaning even closer and looking at a few things, Parker looked back at both of us and nodded his head. “Yes, I’m absolutely positive.”