16. Dallas #2
“What do you want to do?” I asked as I leveled him with a look.
Gauge’s eye twitched. “Get everything that you can to Plug, as quickly as you can.”
“That’s all?” Rat asked.
I whipped back toward the email we found. The email that told us everything we needed to know. The email that plugged holes, showing us everyone’s true colors, and brought us closer to the truth.
“We need to blow this place sky high and get back to Deac. Now,” I glowered.
“Perfect,” Gauge growled as he raced out of the room, “got a few more things I wanna fuck up before we head out anyway.”
“Oh no. I’m coming with you,” Rat said as he raced out of the room.
So as the two of them bickered back and forth, I bellied up to the computer and hunched over.
I forwarded the email I couldn’t stop reading to Plug’s account.
Abort Mission. Murphy is compromised.
And right there at the bottom of the email was a picture of Doc.
Who I had a sneaking suspicion was the ‘Murphy’ they referenced.
I stared at the email one last time, then pressed the ‘send’ button.
We needed the rawest form of that email possible, and while I didn’t know how to get that done, I knew Plug would have something up his sleeve.
I watched the little wheel turn and turn.
An aged computer program, if I did say so myself.
It spun and it spun, getting hooked up on the size of the attachment being sent.
I was relieved when the little toast message finally popped up, telling me that the email was sent.
That was until a countdown clock popped up on the screen.
“Oh no,” I muttered.
The five-minute countdown ticked downward, one second at a time, and all of a sudden, I was ripped back to that bunker. Back to our brother. Back to the hallway with the harsh lights and the acceptance on Bait’s face when he knew he was going to die.
I refused to accept my fate that evening.
“Guys! The countdown has started!” I bellowed as my fingers flew across the keyboard as quickly as they moved. “Let’s get a move on! Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
Their thunderous footsteps scrambled to get back to me as I continued forwarding everything that I could to Plug’s email. I didn’t even know if any of it would help us, but I backed out to the main email inbox and just started mass forwarding everything.
“Dallas, we’ve seen enough. We have to go,” Gauge said as he placed his hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged off his touch. “It’ll take us a minute and a half to get out of the blast radius. That means I’ve got two and a half minutes to get Plug some of this shit. So help or get off.”
Rat raced to another keyboard and typed as fast as he could. But it was Gauge who tried pulling me away again.
“Dallas,” he grunted.
I placed my hands against his chest and shoved. I shoved so fucking hard that I actually knocked the man off balance. He stared at me with wild eyes before he looked down at his chest, but I already turned back toward the screen.
He seemed to be just as shocked as I was for being able to move him at all.
“Help, or shut up,” I glowered.
“Jesus, there’s so much,” Rat murmured.
“Just do what you can. Send it all to Plug,” I said.
The countdown on the clock registered three minutes and fifty-two seconds.
“Gauge! Come on!” I growled. “Help us!”
That seemed to rip him out of whatever the fuck arrested his mind, and soon he fell in line with all of us. We bopped from computer to computer, opening files and attaching them to blank emails in the hopes that they’d finish sending before this entire place blew sky high.
“Three minutes, on the nose,” Rat said.
“Thanks,” Gauge and I muttered in unison.
“Two minutes and thirty seconds,” Rat said.
“Come on, we have to go. We’ve done what we can,” Gauge said as he backed away from his third computer.
“You guys go,” I said as my head kept bobbing between the screen and the keyboard, “I just need a few more seconds.”
Rat came up to my side. “You don’t have a few more seconds. We have to get out of here.”
“Dallas,” Gauge said curtly.
“Just get out and give me one more fucking minute,” I growled.
Gauge tried to tug at my arm. “Dallas, I said?—"
I kicked my steel-toed boot out and jammed it into his shin. “Just go, goddamn it! Rat!”
Gauge growled as he buckled at his waist. “What the flying fuck, Dallas?”
“Two minutes,” Rat said.
I moved away from the keyboard, grabbing his arm, and tossed him toward Gauge.
“Get out! Both of you! Now, goddamn it!” I bellowed.
Gauge lunged for me, bucking up so close that he loomed over me like a fucking mountaintop.
“Don’t you dare make me tell Char you’re dead,” he snarled.
Then he grabbed Rat’s arm and yanked him out of the room.
Finally some peace and fucking quiet.
File after file. Picture after picture. Email after email, as quickly as I could.
It was the only thing I focused on as that countdown clock haunted my peripheral vision.
Anything I could get my hands on, I sent off.
I moved around between keyboards and mouses, hoping that something within the mass of shit we sent Plug would give us some more answers.
A direction on where to step. How to take this bitch out.
Anything.
The countdown clock flashed between black and white as the last minute of the countdown started.
“God, I hope this works,” I whispered to myself.
I loaded up yet another email to be sent off.