15 #3
My shoulders drop slightly when I see him landing in a seemingly empty dim room. The floor is about ten feet below, and the harsh sunlight warming my back shines its yellow light on where he stands and looks around, eyes narrowed. Then he turns around and delivers a thumbs-up.
“Me next,” I say and hop through just as fast as he did, landing like a cat on my feet.
Rising from my crouch, I look around, taking my helmet off as I do and setting it aside.
There’s not a ladder in here that you could even use to climb up or down, so I’m guessing Avri steps would be used, only solidifying my belief in Cooper’s previous words about Ezla and her training.
Alby and Scotty, of course, are more sensible and manifest said luminous steps, brightening our surroundings as they descend into the room.
A room I realise is, in fact, completely empty when I get a better look.
There’s a door on the wall across from me, and Tate’s already studying it, his own helmet off, Cooper, Scotty, and Alby placing theirs down by the left wall.
“Is there another scan—”
A loud BANG! of Tate’s Avri axe on the panel beside the door cuts Scotty off, green sparks flying, the biometric scanner flashing.
Then it goes dead.
“Tate!” Scotty hisses, striding forwards with panic lining every step. “What if you’ve just—”
The taalk slides away from the wall without issue. No alarm, no rush of guards, no nothing.
Too easy, something in me whispers.
Scotty runs a harsh hand through his sandy-blond hair and whispers agitatedly, “Tate, you have to be more careful. What if that had triggered an alarm? Or what if the door was designed to lock if the scanner broke?!”
“It didn’t, and it wouldn’t. The hatch was designed for a fairly accessible escape if the scanners failed—why should this one have be any different?” Tate marches through the doorway without giving Scotty room to reply.
With a nervous glance shared with Alby, I follow after him.
The penthouse we find is luxurious, and my eyes triple in size as I take in the furniture and space that’s even grander than our lavish Bonded chambers.
“Jesus . . .” Cooper breathes as he looks around, and as I do the same, I take in the fact that the walls are all the common glinting onyx in here.
But there’s no green Avri, only a dark, bloody red which screams Exot in the most arrogant way possible, though I’m sure to others it wouldn’t seem that way as it’s far from abnormal to show off your social classification in everything you own. “Nobody needs all this space.”
“No, but Havoc deserves it,” Tate says roughly. Then his eyes darken threateningly. “Just not with the second person who lives here.”
Nodding absently in agreement, I nibble on my lip anxiously before heading further into the penthouse, moving over to the banister that I see.
“Woah . . .” I breathe when I take in the second level beneath, gaping as I roam my eyes over the living room full of ridiculously posh black furniture and a fur rug between the tastefully placed couches in the centre of the room.
Alby hesitantly comes up beside me, hands wrapping around the sheeny banister as he follows my gaze with his own enlarged eyes.
“Let’s go down,” Scotty says quietly, and I watch him head to a spiral staircase that leads down to the open space below. I follow with Alby and our other brothers, only sparing the planet-sized TV on the wall a cursory glance as my focus narrows squarely down to our mission to find our Bonded.
The air is unmoving but for the subtle shift from us as we walk deeper into the penthouse, and the way I can hear each breath, each pounding heartbeat of mine, is extremely unnerving.
We find many different rooms down here, and we search them all, including a freakin’ full-blown cinema room. If it was anyone but the Game Master’s design, I might marvel at it, but I can only feel that suffocating dread as I continue onwards with my brothers back up the stairs.
“There’s no life in here . . . It’s so .
. . dead.” I don’t know if Cooper’s words are referring to the fact that this place feels like it’s empty of any people or the fact that this entire home feels .
. . wrong. Uninviting and cold. There’s so many amazing things in here, and yet I think this is the last place I’d ever choose to go.
And Ez . . . she lives here. She has to stay in this depressing place, has to sleep here every night.
My chest constricts, and heat pricks the backs of my eyes.
“I can’t believe she has to be here every day .
. .” Alby whispers, reflecting my thoughts.
He appears as pained as me as we cautiously make our way through each of the spacious rooms up here.
Like every building, the temperature is kept neutral, never too cold and never too warm.
And yet my insides are freezing, chilled to the bone as this place weighs down on me.
The others stay quiet, but Cooper’s nose is scrunched in disgust, and Tate is scowling at anything and everything we come across. Scotty looks like he’s struggling to keep his composure, blue eyes slowly roaming about as he absorbs every detail down to the non-existent specks of dust.
It’s a while before we reach our first bedroom, one of the only two rooms we haven’t checked yet. My hope’s been dimming and dimming the longer we’ve been searching, heart sinking and sinking, and I pause in the threshold while Cooper and the rest of my brothers inspect the sizable room.
A room smelling of hot cinnamon.
“This is hers,” Tate says lowly, snatching up the hairbrush he finds on the bedside table.
“Yeah . . .” Cooper clears his throat as his eyes scan over the room, not missing an inch. “Her scent’s a bit fainter than I’d expect it to be if she was in here recently, though.”
We’re all well aware that this shouldn’t be surprising when we know what’s happening with Ezla and her father, but actually seeing the truth in person . . .
My stomach turns over.
“We have to check the last room. She has to be in there,” Scotty says after inspecting the adjoining bathroom.
Alby’s swallow is audible as we follow him out of the room, my legs starting to feel as if they might give out on me now as my trepidation shoots through the roof.
Tate’s had to break every biometric scanner we’ve come across to get us into each room, and that hasn’t helped with the ever-rising tension as no alarms have sounded out on any of them.
But if nothing else, at least we’ll be leaving Joseph with a nice little gift before we get the hell out of here and find out where Ez really is.
Tate’s breaking of the last panel in the penthouse brutally disrupts the silence.
The door slides away.
Every millimetre of me locks up.
Before I rush forwards.
“No,” I breathe in horror. “No, no, no, no, no . . .”
“What the fuck is this?” Tate spits as he snaps out of his own brief unmoving state and marches with me over to the horizontal taalk enclosure in between the foot of the mammoth bed on the right side of the room and the bathroom on the left.
A clear tube-like container that holds our motionless Bonded.
She’s on her back, eyes closed, dark hair sprawled out around her.
She’d appear as if she’s simply sleeping if I could see if she’s actually breathing.
But I can’t see a single rise or fall of her chest, and in response, my own chest pounds out a disorderly rhythm, black splotches corrupting my vision as my gaze darts all over Ezla in her enclosure, taking in the small underwear she’s wearing, leaving as much of her skin on display as possible.
“Love . . . ?” It sounds like there’s no air in Scotty’s lungs as long steps carry him over to us, Alby and Cooper hot on his heels.
Alby’s quivering palms press to the taalk, his breath coming in short pants. “No . . . n-no . . . W-what’s—what’s wrong with her?!”
“I . . .” Scotty’s head moves from side to side, a hand pressing to his forehead, horror-consumed wide eyes glued to our Bonded. “I . . . I don’t know. I-I don’t know what this is—”
“We have to get her out,” Cooper grits out, hardly hanging on to his sanity from the looks of it. I can’t tell if he’s closer to completely flipping out and destroying the place or breaking down in tears.
My answer comes in the form of his gloved knuckles cracking against the pristine tube.
“There has to be a way. Come on,” he mutters more to himself, I think, as he goes to throw another punch.
Scotty seizes his wrist, unrelenting when he tries to yank his arm away.
“What the fuck are you doing, Scotty? Help me!”
His jaw clenches. “I am helping you. You can’t break taalk with your fists. You can’t break taalk with anything.”
“I can damn well try.”
Scotty lets Cooper go as he tugs on his arm again before instructing, trying hard to keep his tone level and prevent his own distress from seeping into it, “Look closer. Like we had to take the time to study this building on TV to get here, we need to do the same right now.”
Breathing harshly, Cooper nods, eyes zooming back in on the enclosure. He brings the back of his hand to his mouth as he does, biting down on his knuckles through his gloves as if he needs the pain to ground him.
I help search, Tate, Alby, and Scotty quickly doing the same. I even look underneath the tube since it’s raised on a table, but there’s nothing there.
Deepening alarm spilling through me, I start, “Maybe we could—”
“You cannot do anything, I am afraid. Actions have consequences, and I think it is time you finally learned that.”
Jumping out of my skin, I whirl around in time with my brothers.
And come face-to-face with the Game Master.