CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

 

 

Demetrius

Ambrose and I were both frantically typing on our keyboards, trying to make the guys in the office think that we were actually doing something.

Where the hell was Kiera?

The stupid Verits program had finished doing its thing several minutes ago.

“Danger, Ambrose,” her voice suddenly boomed in our ears.

I couldn’t help but jump.

One of the guys eyed me suspiciously.

“Taking down the Verits program worked,” she said. “I can see it now. The cell’s open. The girls are out.”

Good.

“Now, tell the men in there that the problem is widespread and that you’re going to have to try something else,” she instructed me.

Ambrose turned to look at me. “Hey, you having any luck?”

“Not really,” I said.

“Yeah, I’m thinking this problem is more widespread than just this office. We’re going to need to go back to the mainframe and try to figure something out.”

Mainframe? But I just nodded. “Sounds good to me.” I turned to the men. “Sorry, guys.”

“You not fix?” said one of them.

“How long will it take?” said the other.

“We can’t say, sir,” said Ambrose, “but you can rest assured we’ll be working on it.”

We both got up from the computers and left the room, leaving the guys behind us looking peeved at the lack of Internet.

“Okay, you’re out, right?” said Kiera in our ears.

“Yeah, we’re out,” I said. “Is Blaze in place? Did he make it down to the girls?”

“I can’t tell yet,” she said. “He still has to blow the ceiling to get down there. But he got Natasha out just fine. She’s with Cass.”

“Good,” I said. “Good.” Everything was going well, then. We were on track for everything to work out.

“Well, you guys need to get outside and to the back of the building,” said Kiera.

That was the plan, after all. Blaze was down in the bottom level, and he was going to basically blow out a tunnel for the girls to escape by. He’d send them through it, and Ambrose and I would be waiting for the girls to usher them to safety.

We were fairly sure that no one would be paying any attention to them at that point, because Blaze was going to remotely detonate the explosives he’d already placed on Nikolai’s office building. A leveled building should be quite the distraction.

“We’re on it,” I said, nodding to Ambrose.

Together, we headed for the nearest exit.

* * *

 

Kiera

The screen I was using to monitor the progress of the elevators suddenly blinked to life.

“That’s not right,” I muttered. “I turned you off.”

“What’s that?” said Demetrius.

I still had the channel open to him. “Nothing,” I said, shutting off my microphone. I could still hear him, but no one could hear me.

I turned my attention to the computer. I needed to turn this all off again. The elevator system was rebooting, and that meant that the elevators would be moving again.

I checked the position of the elevator.

I opened a channel. “Cass? Where are you?”

“We’re halfway up the elevator shaft,” she said, panting. “Is this an emergency, because… it’s not easy to… talk right now.”

Damn it. If that elevator came back online, it was going to come right down on her and Natasha. This was bad.

“Everything’s fine,” I said to her. “Just keep climbing.”

I opened the channel to Demetrius. “Hey, Danger, Ambrose, when you were restarting that Verits program, did you touch anything else?”

“We were in there for like ten minutes messing around with those computers,” said Ambrose. “I don’t even know what the hell I did. I was trying everything I could to look like I knew what I was doing.”

I groaned. “You guys did it somehow. You triggered a reboot of the system that runs the elevators. And now I’m locked out.”

“What do you mean?” said Demetrius.

“I mean that the only way that I can get the elevators back offline is to be onsite. I need to leave here and come into the building.”

“No,” said Demetrius. “No way. That’s not happening. We agreed that you would stay out of this. It’s too dangerous.”

“Not that again,” I said. “If I don’t do this, the elevator is going to start moving again, and it’s going to squish Cass and Natasha.”

“What?!” said Ambrose. “Listen up, Kiera, you get your little butt down here and get those elevators offline.”

“No,” said Demetrius. “I’ll do it. You tell me where I need to be, and I’ll do it.”

“You can’t do it,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know how to explain it to you.”

“Well, I’ll get there, and we’ll figure it out,” he said. “We managed to do the Verits system pretty well.”

“That’s because I was prepared for that. I knew how to explain to you guys what to do. I won’t be able to see what’s going on in that room. There are no security cameras, and I don’t even know what the terminal is going to look like. It’s got to be me, and we’re wasting time talking about it.”

“No, Kiera,” he said.

“Look, I know it’s not ideal—”

“What if something else goes wrong, and you’re not there to fix it?”

“I…”

“Get your butt down here,” growled Ambrose.

“I’m on my way,” I said.