Page 46 of Ashfall
Hawk comes skidding into the room whilst I pace back and forth, staring at her phone.What the fuck is her passcode?His voice pulls me from the panic I'm struggling to keep a tight fist on. “She could be at the gym, she?—”
“I fucking know that Hawk! She's not there, her phone was left, the emergency stop was pulled on the treadmill. And I can't get into her fucking phone. Something's wrong.” My throat dries up with how loud I’m yelling, I likely didn’t need to pull the alarm, I could have woken up every sleeping god and demon with how loud I am.Where the fuck is she?
One by one the room filters in. Adam, Phantom, Rhaine and Hunter. Burrows is last as he rushes in, out of breath, clearly sprinting from wherever he was. “What the fuck’s going on?” He demands, his eyes flying around us all, and I see the moment his brows furrow at our missing member. The missing part of my fucking soul. “Brodie is gone. Her phone was left in the gym. Adam. Unlock this.” I stride up to him and he clambers to grab it before running from the room, reappearing a few seconds later with a laptop and cable in his hands.
“When did you last see her?” Burrows asks, but he isn’t looking at me, his gaze is fixed to his pager, likely alerting James and whoever else we need. I need every single fucking person on this base looking for her.
“In bed a couple hours ago. I woke up and she was gone. She goes to the gym for a run but comes back no later than 2200 hours. I woke up just before midnight. She wasn't in the room and she wasn't in the gym.”
Adam pulls the phone from the laptop. “Broke the code.” Handing it out to me, I snatch it from him.
My fingers fly across her recently opened apps. Her music playlist, and then our texts from when I was in a meeting,distracting myself with her. That’s it. No new messages, no calls, nothing. “Can you search it to see if there’s been anything deleted?” He nods, taking it back from me whilst he gets to work, dropping the laptop onto the desk as he leans over it. I stare over his shoulder as my eyes flicker back and forth from the corners - waiting. My chest rises and falls in shallow breaths.The control cannot slip.
James comes rushing in, a young patrol at his back. “Brodie left the base after curfew. She demanded the patrols get her a convoy to the front gate. Left around 2120.” The world stops. My breathing stops. She's been gone for almost three hours. She could be fucking anywhere by now, she could be near the borders or, hell, in another fucking state. My hands fist through my hair, tugging the ends as I slam my eyes shut. I’m battling to steady my breathing, but every cell and fiber in my body is ready to rip this place to shreds, ready to burn the fucking world until I find out where the fuck she is. Because I know exactly who's managed to get to her.
“It’s Graves. There's no other explanation for her to run off in the middle of the night.” My voice is deadly calm compared to the hysteria swirling inside me. Because if Graves has her, has laid a single fucking finger on her, I want to cage up my wrath and unleash with him before me. I'll peel the Epidermis, Dermis and Subcutis from his body, then I'll shred the layers between that and wrap them around his fucking neck before feeding him his skeletal muscles. Phantom looks at me. “She wouldn't just leave, he's used something to lure her out. She wouldn't take him on alone.” As much as this little prick grinds my gears, ever since I saw his dirty little paws on her at the club, he's right. And the only other thing I can think of sobers me. My gaze pierces James. “Where is The Captain?”
All eyes shoot to me, James and Burrows sharing a look before the latter struggles a swallow. “We've been unable toreach him the last couple of days. He left his position. We expected him to be making his way here when I sent the comms about Black Talon. I told him it was initiated and to return to this base as soon as possible.”
Breathe Noc, fucking breathe.You can’t kill anyone here, you need them.
“Fucking look for him,” is all I manage, because I think if I attempted any pleasantries right now, I'd lose my mind.
Adam speaks up from the corner of the room. “Nothing deleted, at all. Our secure app hasn't been initiated in weeks. I'm checking the CCTV from 2000 hours at the front gate.”
I move over to him with a lethal grace I've never known possible. I may look like I'm simmering, but I'm way past my internal boiling point. It's when it spills over onto my exterior, that’s when anyone in my proximity should worry. I watch Adam’s screen as he pulls up all the feeds and fast forwards, focusing on the primary spots she'd had to travel through. Eventually, the first feed shows her walking to the gym – nothing suspicious in her movements. Ten minutes later, she’s running from the building, and my jaw grinds; she looks terrified. I can feel the fear through the screen. She runs about a hundred yards over to the patrol, her face stoic when she pulls on a mask to speak to him, like she doesn’t want to raise the suspicions.
The convoy pulls up, and she drives the roads to the front gates, at a speed that would raise eyebrows if the base was as active as during the day, then it levels out. The car creeps through the exit, stopping for a couple seconds, then she slams the gas as she fires up the road, and I spot something at the corner of the screen.
“Rewind that,” I bark. Adam doesn’t hesitate, clearly noticing what I did as he pulls the footage ten seconds back, replaying it three more times. “There.” I point to the motion on the screen.He pulls it back again, slowing the speed down as we watch, my breathing stalls as I watch the footage. She threw something out of the window a couple feet up the road. “James, get someone searching that area. Now.”
His face hardens, and my eyes drift close at his words. “You remember your place, Nocturne. I'm the fucking Gene-” My eyes open slowly, almost as if I've been drugged, but the slowness of them opening is a warning, as I barely contain the urge to break his neck and fuck this full thing up.
“General, James. Get that fucking area searched.” We're in a battle of wills: His is for respect, but mine is because I am a man filled with a fueling vengeance. One more spark, and this place is going in the fucking air.
His cave comes as a sigh, pulling the radio from his back pocket. “Gatekeeper, this is Actual. Initiate area sweep of sectors one and two immediately. Over.” The radio crackles static as the patrols confirm the sweep, Adam flicks the feeds back to the live coverage. The patrols filter out, three of them on each side of the road as they methodically pace the area, guns raised and torches aimed to the ground as they near the area where Brodie threw something from the convoy, my hands fist at the slow fucking pace they go. “Actual this is Gatekeeper. Unauthorized Item discovered. Over.” My hands fists as I watch the female sprint back to the front gate, a convoy ready and waiting as James confirms the sector of the base we're in, his voice fading into the distance.
Five minutes later, James enters the room, holding a phone I don’t recognize in his hand. I stride towards him. He’s staring at it with a clenched jaw, and I notice the background has a message addressed to her. He unlocks it, the screen still on text messages that also contain video. And it all happens at once - the unsent text message, the message exchange, then the videoof Graves plays. Everyone goes motionless. My blood turns to Atlantic ice as my eyes dart back and forth from her message:
Save them. Don’t come for me.
“Fuck!” I roar, my hands fisting into my hair.Why the fuck did you do this alone. All eyes are on me, hanging onto the tension in the air. “She's gone to Graves. She's left the phone with us… so we can locate the weapon.” My voice is hoarse when I speak in the aftermath of what's fallen over the room. The realization of the sacrifice she's just made, how heavy I know that will be on her soul. She's risked her own life to save her father. Knowing that we'll find the phone, and work to secure the weapon whilst she fights for him, by herself.
Over my dead fucking body, Malyshka.
I close my eyes, letting the darkness steel over me, steady me. I need to fucking think here. “James, Burrows. Have intelligence look out for bases within a six-hour distance from here that match the files. Ones of high importance or volume. Check their coordinates, cross reference them with the numbers in the files, see if you can match the serial with them. I believe we’ll have the exact area." James seems less resistant about the respect element now that he knows we have confirmation of a weapon, one that could be launched at any given moment. Fingers fly over the keys on his pager. I stretch to my full height, cracking my neck before I stroll out the room.
Hawk grabs me by the shoulder, shoving my back against the wall to face him. “Where the fuck are you going?” I tug myself free, my icy stare frosting over as I glare at him, “To get her.” I march down the hallway, before I hear anymore useless protests. The sound of multiple boots pounding behind me has me gritting my teeth.
“You're not going alone,” Hawk roars behind me, but I don’t acknowledge him. I don’t have time to. I have a meeting with death I can't be late for. “And that’s an order.” I stop as myhand hovers over the door, flexing it into a fist as the annoyance washes over me.
I glance over my shoulder, meeting James’s glare as he speaks, “You take Black Talon with you. I'll call in air support to drop you out with proximity of discovery. Viper-3 will work on the weapon.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
nyx
The convoy is abandoned about a mile behind me, but not before I searched it rigorously for anything I could sneak onto my person. But there was nothing to find, and that vulnerable feeling tried to sink its teeth into me. I’m still biting back at it. I turn back to stare down the darkened treelined road, the leaves blending with the hazy night sky. When I face forward, the building provokes me. Its weathered bricks stand fearsome as they stretch into the distance. The mesh gated fortress hugging around it as the north Pacific Ocean slams into the mixture of concrete wall and rocks that forms the base.
