Page 94 of Crimson Flames

“How do we know we can trust you?” the first girl asks, reaching behind her back. There is a gun in all of their hands but hers. It seems the other two disarmed the guards and took their weapons before shooting them in the head with it.

Nessa steps forward, handing the girl her spare weapon. It’s a good thing too because I just got her the new one she’s been holding most of the night.

The last time she handed one of my gifts away, we ended up keeping the kid. I was hardly ready for another boy at this point in my life, I am definitely not ready for a teenage girl.

“You don’t know that,” Nessa says, placing the gun in her hand. “But we will do what we can to earn that trust.”

They glance at each other before nodding. “Alright then, let’s move. We call the shots though.” This command comes from the taller girl.

“That’s fair. We do not know this place like you do. We have two more teams here extracting the other dorms,” I concede.

“Shit,” the shortest girl says before grabbing a walkie-talkie from her pocket. “Retreat to your rooms. Reinforcements have arrived.”

“What’s going on?” Kai asks.

The one holding the walkie-talkie waves it at him. “We were planning to get out of here tonight. The alpha team was supposed to move first three minutes ago. We were next.”

“You were escaping tonight?” Cillian asks with a laugh. “Damn, that’s some good timing.”

The girl rolls her eyes. “Not if we shoot your friends it’s not.”

“Lev,” I say into comms, “tell the other teams not to fire. One of the groups is already on the move to get out of here.”

“Got it. They’re staying put until we give the all clear.”

The walkie-talkie flashes red before a voice comes over. “What the fuck do you mean by ‘reinforcements’, Maree?”

She rolls her eyes again as if she is dealing with a toddler. I feel her pain because this is how I feel working with Cillian half the time. “I mean, go back to your fucking dorm before you get shot, Rick.”

Letting go of the button so he can no longer hear her, she makes eye contact with me.

“Are all boys this dumb?”

I shrug. “The majority of the time, yes.”

“Hey,” Kai and Cillian say together, their heads whipping to me. Nessa laughs and winks at me.

“If you wish to argue this point then you are only proving my statement,” I add.

Kai and Cillian whisper to each other before they fist bump, and I have a feeling they are going to do something dumb later.

“We need to take care of Richard and Alberto,” the tallest girl says.

“Who are they?” I ask.

“The two guards who stand watch at the bottom of the stairs. During the day there are more of them, but at night there are two posted outside our room, two in the stairwell as backup, and two at the base.”

Cillian scratches his head. “Yeah, they’re kinda dead.”

“You killed them?” the same one says in horror. She clenches her fist before letting out a frustrated growl.

We feared some of them had developed relationships with the guards and trainers. I just hope they can understand why we did it.

She kicks the bedframe before turning to the others.

“I had so many ways I wanted to torture at least one of them. I even sharpened my new knife!”

The four of us exchange glances before I call out to Lev, “Tell the others to capture one of the guards for us. It appears these kids wish to exact some revenge.”

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