Page 107 of Becoming Super

CHAPTER 18 – Zack

There was mass pandemoniumin the room as Volton guards stormed the area, searching for Tantar. Many of the attendants were huddled into small groups. They looked frightened and confused, which I am certain was the intent of the attackers.

Rafe gave me a look, “You and Chloe go see if you can find Tantar. Heath, Rylee, and I will see what part two of the evening's entertainment will be.”

“You think there will be more?” Rylee asked.

I nodded. “Rafe is right, this is likely a diversion for the larger crime. Mart could have taken Tantar any time before now. He clearly had control over him. We need to see what the bigger picture is. Are the comms units working?”

Chloe clicked her wrist and it flickered to life. “What caused everything to shut down?”

I had experienced something similar to this when I was working with Axel and Sarah on our last mission. Zeron intelligence had a device that would stop all communication within a certain amount of space. We had used it several times to speak openly. I had a hunch that when the power was cut, this was deployed to remove communication and make the confusion stronger.

Chloe grabbed my arm. “We need to go this way.”

I had stopped second-guessing her intuition. Chloe had a way of knowing things; it was almost a second sight. I raced after her as she ran to the now open doors and down a servant’s hallway. We came to a door that looked to be leading to a maintenance closet.

“What?” I started to say, but she yanked the door open and it showed a set of stairs leading downward.

Without another word, I started down the steps with Chloe close on my heels. We could hear someone talking and I motioned for her to step lightly so that we could get closer and figure out what was going on.

“I still say we need to kill them all.”

The voice was unfamiliar to me, but the person who spoke next was all too familiar.

“No, I am sure they bought it. They will never believe that I am in on it.”

Chloe’s mouth dropped open.

The next person to speak was Drake, “If we don’t deliver The Head Commander’s son and his imprinted pair to the Stavainians, we are as good as dead. I brought them to you, just as I was expected. So, either way, I will be paid.”

“Stupid fool!” The other man had to be Mart, “And now that Tantar has fed them that story about me I can’t go out there. You are an escaped convict and Tantar...”

“Tantar what?” Tantar’s voice cut through his uncle’s rage. He no longer sounded like the friendly boy that we had met. There was a hard edge to his tone. “I did exactly as I was supposed to. It was Drake that was to make sure they were within grabbing distance when the lights went out. But no, he got himself caught, by the human no less. It was no easy thing making it look like my guards were incompetent enough to let you escape, Drake.”

Choe raised a brow and the silent outrage on her face had me wanting to laugh. The woman was clearly affronted by Tantar’s remarks.

“Yes,” Drake sneered, “Because it was my fault the human was some gypsy fortune teller.”

“Silence, we are solving nothing with your bickering. If we cannot get away and fake Tantar’s death before the trail gets back to the crown about Rafe’s missing funds, we will all likely hang.”

That I had not been expecting. It was well known that Rafe was quite possibly the richest man in the galaxy. Or at least he had been, until Chloe outed him in front of all of us.

There was the sound of a door opening and then footsteps on the stairs. We were trapped between whoever was coming along and the meeting down below.

“What are we going to do?” Chloe mouthed the words more than said them aloud, but I heard it all the same. And the truth was that I had no idea.

“Did you hear that?” Tantar spoke and then there was the sound of a chair scraping against the ground.

Any second we would be discovered. I shoved Chloe between me and the wall just as a Stavainian dignitary came rushing down the stairs. He stumbled when he came upon us, clearly surprised and not expecting to run into anyone.

When he spoke, it sounded sharp and was in a language that I had never learned. We all have communication electrodes devices implanted inside us that allow interplanetary understanding of communication. So, it was strange to hear a foreign language coming out of his mouth.

The door slammed open from below and before I knew it Chloe had crept around me and attacked the Stavainian. With a sharp headbutt, she knocked him clean out.

She looked over at me and smiled. I am not sure that I have ever loved her more. She was a badass fighter and it was sexy as hell.

We raced down the stairs and met the other three. Chloe took on Mart, who clearly had no formal training. I heard a sickening crunch and knew that his arm might never be the same. She turned to Tantar, but I couldn’t continue watching her. I had Drake to deal with.

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