Page 23 of Captive Beta
“Move. Your. Asses.” Timothy grinds out, at the end of his patience. “Now!”
“Going.” Mathew puts the rack with samples into the bag, trying to keep them upright, and then puts the bag onto his back.
Yeah, not going to do that.
“Give me that.” I grab hold of the bag. I’m not going to let Mathew carry a bag with unknown substances on his body. Not going to happen.
Mathew tries to walk off, then turns to me. “What now?”
“I’m not letting you carry that. We have no idea what could happen if anything started to leak.”
“Don’t treat me like some—” Mathew’s voice fills with anger.
“Like you’re the boss and I’m not?” I give him a levelled look. “There’s a reason you do missions as a team. Part of that is so that the risk of what happens can be spread over multiple people.” And I don’t want to have to explain to the rest of the pack or organisation how I could put him in danger.
“Stop arguing! Move!” The way Timothy’s voice cracks sends adrenaline through me.
It seems that I’m not the only one, as Mathew lets the bag slide from his shoulders and I put it on. Then I grab my gun and follow behind him.
When we reach the end of the hallway that leads to the rest of the building, the sound of shots being fired nearly makes me jump.
Okay, so, I guess there was a good reason for Timothy to get antsy.
The voice in our ear is back. “Go to your right. The staircase is empty. Then go down and leave through the front door. They’re fighting security at the back door so that’s a no-go right now. Then you take another right and team two should be waiting there for you. They’ll get you out.”
Team two? That’s… Three backup plans already down the drain. Damn.
I now understand why they have so many plans before they go in. With so many people to move around, there are a lot of variables that can go wrong, and so many variables to cover.
When I go in on my own, the only person I have to get out is myself, so I only need to make sure that I’ve got a few escape options that I can get to. But with so many people, there are a lot of people to get out.
I stay at Mathew’s back as we duck into the hallway. There’s fighting going on in the direction we came from when we entered the building, but as Timothy said, the staircase to our right is quiet.
The alarm is still blaring, which is making focusing harder and harder. I’m running out of energy quickly. I really want to be out of here soon so I can hide in the nest for the rest of the night, or maybe just in some closet where no sounds can reach me.
When we reach the ground floor, Derrick’s voice comes in. “Change of plans! Team two is being held up.”
“Where are you?” Mathew seems pretty calm, even though chaos is going all around him.
“A minute away from you. We’ll cover you. We’ll still take the same route out as planned for team two.”
“Sounds good. Is the path to the front door empty?” Mathew reaches back, taking my empty hand, a gun in his other.
I hold onto him tightly, trying to let his calm soothe me.
“Hallway is empty, you can move.” Timothy seems slightly less stressed now.
Mathew pulls me with him into the hallway, towards the front door. “How are the others doing?”
It feels strange, having Mathew pull me along like this, but not having to think of too many things, just on following him and making sure we stay safe is easier for my head. Makes it easier to stay in the now. Narrowing down the tasks to only the most important ones and leaving the rest to others takes a lot of faith in the other people, but by now, Mathew and the others have gained that trust.
“No severe injuries reported yet. But everyone is being kept busy.”
That seems to please Mathew as he shoots me a smile, then he focuses ahead again. “Have everyone retreat as quickly as possible. We don’t want to leave people here any longer than needed.”
“Will do.”
As we reach the front door, a door to a downstairs hallway opens and I immediately point my gun in the direction of the movement, but it’s a guy from our team with more of the team following him soon after.
