Chap 111: Off-Limits

“Was that an earthquake?” Tee heard Saeda’s voice from the kitchen.

Dammit. She scraped the damp, soggy lump that no longer resembled Snickers off the tip of her boot. It stuck to the edge, but she gritted her teeth and pulled it free with her bare hand. The dead Leak flashed through her mind and she rushed to its mouth.

When Zod and Saeda bolted out of the kitchen, they saw Tee—her hand drawn back from the dark, oozing corpse on the floor.

Tee slid her empty hands behind her back and stared at the puddle. Her claws retracted into her fingers, but that wasn’t what preoccupied her. The blood on the floor had spread in the shape Snickers made during his treadmill runs.

Who knew what bacteria and diseases that pest carried? Tsk—she’d done Saeda a favor.

“What did you do to it?” Zod blurted as he stopped inches from the Leak’s corpse. “Looks like it got run over by—”

“Why won’t Snickers come back to me?” Saeda cut him off, turning to scan the lower sections of the walls.

The elevator doors slid open with Kie and Miko inside. They’d felt the tremor from the floor below. Pink from Miko’s nightgown flashed as she zipped over.

“You guys did it!” she cheered.

Saeda kept making her ticking noises. They echoed in Tee’s head. She moved closer and wrapped an arm around Kie’s shoulders.

“I’m cold,” she told him. “Warm me up.”

As usual, he didn’t pull away. She felt his chest release in a deep sigh of relief, and she allowed herself to relax. Finally, Zod could start cleaning up the mess and they could go to their rooms. If the Commander asked, Zod would be the only one with a clue. Everyone else—herself included—could claim they’d been asleep all night. But would he even find out?

Zod stopped poking the body with his knife and, satisfied, rose with his hands on his hips. “One down. Now we have the others to find.”

Kie pulled his arm away from Tee and narrowed his eyes at Zod. “No. What do you mean, ‘the others’?”

Zod folded his arms and answered like a log. “Let’s just say there wasn’t only one pebble.”

A crack ran from the dent Tee had made and up the wall toward the circular light. The bulb died, plunging the section of hallway where they stood into darkness.

Saeda fell silent and glared at Zod. What the hell did he just mean?

Miko untied her pineapple bun and smoothed her hair into the style she wore on missions, saying a quiet goodbye to her silk nightgown that was about to get torn.

Kie said nothing more to Zod and headed for the elevator. Tee thought she heard a growl, but his light steps said she must have imagined it. Either way, it wasn’t the time to tease him about his apron.

Once they were all in the elevator, Tee slid two knives from Kie’s apron into her hands. She was armed for the monster beatdown to come. Could she throw boomerangs and slice off several heads at once? Tsk—that would speed things up so she could get to bed.

“Are we going to ask for summoning gloves?” Saeda asked, brows furrowed.

“The less evidence this ever happened, the better,” Kie said, handing her two more knives.

Saeda took the knife. “I don’t see how this will help against hundreds of those beasties. I can only make my blades glow when I’m calm and focused—not under stress and a heavy heart. This thing’s going to snap after one stab.”

“Then use your fists,” Kie said, stepping out of the elevator and under the high archway.

Zod rolled up the sleeve on his left arm so the skin on both arms showed. He was ready to blast monsters with both hands.

They saw no sign of the blonde boss in the mission base. Kie and his teammates sprinted toward the Lieutenant’s station. The Commander was likely fast asleep—like they should’ve been.

The Lieutenant flicked the hologram screens aside to look at them. “What are you young ones doing here?” she asked. “You weren’t called for an assignment.” Her eyes dropped to the apron full of knives around Kie’s waist.

Kie kept his gaze fixed on something above her head. “Yeah, about that… We need you to teleport us back to where we had our mission this morning.”

Zod stepped forward to stand beside him. “We have unfinished business there.”

Within a minute, a metal cabinet rose from the floor tile, and the Lieutenant handed them their telecoms. “Here you go. Do you want your summoning gloves too? I’ll need two minutes since this was—”

“No,” Kie cut in. “Please, just send us now.”

The Lieutenant hesitated. Why did the young Sentinels want to return to their earlier mission site—at that hour—and without summoning gloves? It made no sense. But something in her gut told her to let them go.

When the base vanished into darkness, replaced by millions of glowing red eyes, Tee knew one thing for sure. If she ever wanted to sneak out of Primus for a night, the Lieutenant was the one to trust.

The beasties crouched below the five humans who had appeared from thin air. Confident in their numbers, they surged forward only for their heads to erupt in blue energy blasts, sliding clean off their necks.

The teens didn’t even have a second to breathe. They were already kicking and stabbing at monsters lunging from every side. Each shrill ended with a neck snap or a blade slicing through bone.

Zod wanted every one of those creatures dead. He wasn’t sure how he kept firing energy blasts from his palms, but he couldn’t stop. He had no other weapon—and their claws always aimed for his face.

Saeda hurled her knife. It spun through the air and sank into a monster’s throat. She froze—one of her two weapons was gone. Clutching the last knife, she braced herself as another beast ripped its mouth open and leaped for her head.

Snickers’ large, beady black eyes flashed through her mind.

Where was Snickers?

Did the beast from their living quarters kill him? Those abominable mouth-breathers!

Tears blurred Saeda’s vision as the blue flash from her knife cut through the air. She felt no vibration from the glowing blade, but the monster’s piercing shriek told her she’d landed a hit. The knife gleamed a steady blue before she swung again at another set of snapping jaws.

Miko flickered in and out of sight, moving so fast she seemed to teleport. Every time a claw missed her dress, her short-nailed fist connected. Each monster she punched went flying, crashing into the dark purple walls.

Common sense screamed in Kie’s ears, stopping him from throwing his last knife. Instead, he yanked the apron from around his neck and lashed it at the two red eyes ahead. The whip of blue light made them vanish, followed by a wet splash across his face.

When he blinked through the blood, the monster’s head was already rolling through the shallow water. A faint glow under his eyes made him notice the wind brushing his palm. Without looking, he dropped the shredded apron and curled his hand into a fist.

The next monster that leaped at him met that flaming fist. Its skull cracked, brains bursting out the back and splattering the wall. Kie dropped his knife, a wicked smile creeping across his face. With his fist blazing, he charged toward the monsters now fleeing in terror.

Tee had long lost both her knives. The shimmer from the claws extending out of her fingers was too quick for anyone to see—but stopping to marvel wasn’t an option.

The white hair across her face hid her black-filled eyes beneath an even darker shadow. Any monster caught in her fiery gaze ended up with deep trenches carved into its flesh. One by one, the red glowing eyes vanished amid the shrieks.

Blood splattered across her face, sending her pulse racing. Each dying cry drew her fangs further out from her gums. Soon, all that remained were lifeless lumps floating in the shallow water.

She stood still, chest heaving, each breath sharp through her nostrils. She licked the fangs that had slipped past her lips—then froze as they retracted back into her gums.

Her near-bite on Kie’s neck flashed through her mind.

“Freck,” she gasped.

Saeda’s voice cut through the heavy panting of her teammates. “Are they all dead?” The blade of her knife still glowed blue against her face. “What if some of them ghosted through the walls?”

Miko lifted the wet ends of her dress and gasped. “Saeda, your knife’s glowing!”

Zod kicked one of the monsters to see its disfigured face. “We can always come back tomorrow. But wasn’t this better than training?” He raised a fist and blasted into the night sky, frowning when it didn’t explode like fireworks. “The Commander will be so happy to hear about my brilliant—and completely intentional—plan.”

“Yes, Zod, you can come back tomorrow to face those colossal beasts alone,” Tee said, stepping over the bodies with her hair hanging in her face to reach Kie. “And remember to tell the Commander this was all your doing. The rest of us need to get back and pretend we were fast asleep all night.”

Zod, Miko, and Saeda headed toward Tee and Kie, and they teleported. Zod’s scream confirmed the dark green eyes and pale face beside the Lieutenant were real. Kie opened his mouth but stayed silent as the Commander raised a hand to hush him.

The Commander’s lips twitched as he spoke, his eyes staring above the teens’ heads as if they weren’t worth his attention.

“My Lieutenant has already briefed me. A sanitation team is handling your living quarters. As for the five of you, the area is off-limits until six a.m. tomorrow. Coincidentally, that’s also training time.” He paused, lips tightening to stop a smirk, and his gaze stabbed daggers into each of them. “Now hit the showers—you smell.”

When the Commander turned and walked away, Tee hissed under her breath.

“A sanitation team?” Saeda gasped. “What if they find Snickers and mistake him for a monster?”

Zod patted her shoulder. “Relax, Saeda. You’ll find Snickers squeaking as usual tomorrow. He’s probably just too full to run back to you.”

Tee cleared her throat. “So… where are we staying if the living quarters are off-limits?”