J A X O N

I looked down the seemingly endless straight road. It was dark and the trees seemed to close together in the distance, eventually swallowing up the street.

Arlo suddenly pointed at an incoming car. "There it is!" His sudden outburst startled everyone. Due to his superior sense of sight, he could tell that it was one of the armored trucks that Imperium used to ship their weapons into the fortress.

Delphinium got into position on the side of the road, her arms outstretched. As the truck got closer and closer we readied ourselves for what she was about to do. It seemed that her powers were getting increasingly stronger, and I didn't know how to feel about it.

It came so close that I could see the driver through the tinted windshield and Delphinium worked her power over the vehicle. Once again, she showed the might of her abilities. With a horrible screeching, she took control of the brakes and stopped the truck in the middle of the street.

The four of us snapped to action, surrounding the truck before the driver could try to escape. Jake wrenched the driver's door open and calmly pointed his gun inside. With his hands high in the air, the driver stepped out.

"Get on the ground," Jake commanded. As the man worked for Imperium, we had no idea how dangerous he was.

"Do you speak English?" We were in Romania, and he might have only spoken their national language. If so, it wouldn't matter; Delphinium could still converse with him.

He nodded his head fervently.

"Who are you?" Delphinium asked as Jake aimed the gun at the man's downturned head.

"I'm Pedro Sana, I'm just a truck driver."

"You work for Imperium."

The man stilled at the name. Then, he uttered a hesitant, "Yes."

"What exactly do they have you doing for them?"

"Just driving trucks," he was quick to clarify. "I bring their supplies back to the fortress. They pay me good money. I don't ask questions."

"What supplies do you transport?" I asked, squinting down at the man huddled down on the ground.

"Anything they want me to. But lately, it's been weapons. There's been a great amount that they're requiring." In my chest, my heart skipped a beat. If they were making many more weapons, then they were planning something large.

"Do you pick up these weapons straight from the place they're produced?" Jake asked, sounding like he might be onto something.

"Yes." That made sense; Imperium could transport the weaponry much more under the radar by cutting out unnecessary middle men.

"Take us there."

"I...I don't know-"

"Do it, or I'll shoot." It worried me how many times I'd heard that phrase recently.

"Okay, okay!" Sana threw up his arms in compliance. "I'll take you to the weapons manufacturer. I was headed there anyway."

"Wonderful," Jake sneered and allowed the frightened man to get to his feet. "When we're there, distract the workers for long enough to let us get out unseen. If you do anything to sabotage our operation..." He held up his gun and let it do the rest of the talking for him.

When Sana relented, we all went to the back of the truck. It was empty, as the driver had just come back from the fortress. We all assembled ourselves in the large space and Sana shut the doors. The darkness enveloped us; the only source of light came from the tiny cracks in the double doors.

We were quiet for a while until Arlo pulled out his phone and turned it on. The glow from the screen illuminated his face and gave him an eerie, ghoulish look.

As he read whatever was on his screen, his face dropped. "What is it?" I asked, curious to know what could make Arlo, out of all people, not happy to be in this dangerous experience.

"Finn just sent me a message. Apparently, Gigi killed her guards and escaped her cell earlier."

"What?" Delphinium's voice was suddenly fierce. None of us had forgotten the events that had taken place between the two of them the other day.

"Don't worry, she's back in her cell now. They found her wandering around underground, looking for a way to escape and quickly brought her back."

"She's coming for me." I couldn't see the assassin, but she was somewhere to my left. "She's going to try to kill me once she gets out."

Arlo's phone light went out as he shoved it back in his pocket. "Well, you may or may not have murdered her mother."

"I didn't. Benny was lying. His plan to turn her against me worked."

"So you were there, but you didn't kill her? What exactly happened that night?" I was curious to know and desperate for her to persuade me to her side. Delphinium was one of my closest friends, so when she'd been accused of killing Gigi's mother and hadn't denied seeing it happen, it felt as if a weight had been placed on my shoulders.

"When we were being held captive by the Club, Hundsen sent me to kill Gigi's mother. He said that he'd kill all of you if I didn't do it, but I refused. When I was about to leave and go back empty-handed to them, Benny appeared out of nowhere and shot her dead. I tried to catch him in the neighborhood, but he'd disappeared. For these past few months...I didn't know what to do about it. And then Benny came along and told Gigi a twisted version of the truth, she believed it." After a pause, she added, "Along with the rest of you."

Immediately, I wished I could take back my actions that day when I'd seen her for the first time since the battle. I hadn't known what to think, and had decided that it might be better to stay out of this fight altogether.

"Gigi doesn't know that," I pointed out. "But...I don't think she's going to believe it, either. She's too far gone now."

"She's crazy," Arlo added in empathetically. I resisted the urge to remind him that he was too, as this was a serious moment.

"If she does get let out of her cell one day, I'll have your back," I vowed.

"Me too," Arlo agreed. "She'll have to go through us to get to you."

"Thank you," Delphinium's voice came through the darkness. "I mean it, thank you for even coming here. I know that you both were suspicious of me before."

I dropped my head, for she was right. I hadn't had faith in her until she'd told us what had actually happened just now. All the words she'd spoken were true; I knew it because Jake could somehow sense lies and he hadn't said a word throughout this entire ride.

"Benny is trying to turn us all against each other," I suddenly realized out loud. "We're too powerful to fight all at once, so he figured that if he can get us to kill each other, we'll be taken care of. Imperium will be almost unstoppable without us."

"A genius plan, really," Arlo commented.

"Yes, that's exactly what's happening," Delphinium spoke, agreeing with me. "That is the reason why we need to be extremely careful. A few of us are already at odds with each other and he's only been captured for about a week. Who knows what kind of damage he can ultimately do?"

"It will be fatal," Arlo said, putting in Kane's usual pessimistic statements for him in his absence.

"Let's hope not," I said, not wanting to think about any of my teammates dead.

Just then, the truck slowed and turned a corner. It was about time; we'd been in the back of the truck long enough for my legs to start hurting from sitting for such a prolonged period. The driver made a few more turns and Arlo and I struggled to not slide into each other.

The truck stopped, but the motor kept running. I was about to stand up and figure out what was happening when there was the rattling sound of a gate opening. The vehicle moved again, slowly this time. We must have been inside the weapons manufacturer property.

Sana drove for a few minutes longer until he eventually stopped the truck. The vibrating of the motor beneath our feet stilled and the air became deathly quiet.

Somewhere in the distance, I heard men talking and the creaking of heavy machinery being used. "I can hear Sana's voice. He's stalling for us," Arlo said after listening outside.

With that, Jake opened the back doors. Luckily, the truck was parked with its back up against the wall of a massive building with high-up windows. The back doors were closed with as little sound as possible.

Then, before anyone could lay eyes on us, we slipped into a door on the side of the warehouse and were enveloped in the darkness inside.