A R L O

Finn, Kane and I strode into the hospital. As soon as the news of what had happened to Jaxon had reached us, we'd been traveling straight to him. We hadn't even been by the compound since we'd left two days ago. It had taken a long time and various modes of transportation to get there—including a stolen car, much to Finn's dismay. But we were here now. And not a second too soon.

Jake and Delphinium were sitting in the waiting room. Both glanced up at the same time when the three of us entered. For a moment, the silence between us was awkward. No one had forgotten when had happened in Romania those few days ago. But Jaxon was near death; we'd put our anger aside for now.

Finn spoke first. "Have you gotten any news yet?"

"No. The last we heard, he was still in surgery."

"What happened?"

She and Jake took turns telling us everything: Hundsen's abducting them, their torture and Jaxon's injury. Plus, how they'd unfairly left us out of blowing up Hundsen's house.

"They cut his entire arm off?" I asked after swearing colorfully. "We missed all the action."

Finn rolled his eyes and Delphinium grimaced. The assassin's cold gaze switched to Kane, who was glancing subtly around the room. "Riley's not here. She thought it would be best to stay at the compound, given everything that's happened."

"I didn't ask." Kane had been more silent and brooding than usual during our trip here, which I didn't think was even possible. But I hardly blamed him.

"That's probably for the best," I said, dry anger flaring up again when I remembered what she did. How she'd sold us all out to Benny without even thinking about how it would affect us. And the worst part was, no one had even been expecting it. We'd trusted her. And if she was here, the fight might continue from the place it had left off.

Kane gave me a sharp look at that. I knew he was still angry with Riley for what she did, but they were still...whatever they were. He clearly cared for her, but his feelings had obviously taken quite a blow. I'd seen that fact in every dark frown he'd worn in the last two days.

If I wasn't so wrapped up in this spectacle myself, I might have found its chaos entertaining.

A nurse came approached us. "Mr. Williams is in a normal room now," he said, grasping a clipboard and wearing a cool expression that didn't tell us much about Jaxon's condition. "His surgery was semi-successful; we were able to stop the bleeding and save his life, but his left arm is now completely gone. You can visit him now, but be wary and quiet around him."

I nearly scoffed. If there was one thing that no one in this team was, it was wary and quiet. But I followed the others down a white hall filled with somber people. I tried not to meet their eyes. It only served as a reminder that I was living on borrowed time. When my condition became worse and the pills no longer sustained me, would I be placed in a hospital like this one? Would I live in a blank hospital room, pumped with medicine until I died? It almost made me wish that Imperium would just kill me before that point. I'd already had more than my share of doctors and pills.

As soon as we entered inside Jaxon's room, I gave a shudder. It was freezing, as hospital rooms tended to be. We panned out before the bed. Under the blankets, our teammate looked worse than ever. Jaxon's tanned skin had a pallid undertone and his face wore an unnaturally peaceful expression. It certainly wouldn't remain there for long when he remembered why he was here.

My eyes dropped to his left side. Where there should have been an arm propped up above the blankets, there was nothing. A blank space. I swallowed once.

This was bad, very bad. I'd already felt uneasy even simply being inside the hospital, but seeing this... It was much worse than I'd expected.

I forced myself to take a few steps closer. This was my teammate, one of my closest friends. He'd need someone to be here for him given what had happened.

For some reason, my eyes couldn't be torn from his bandaged shoulder. "What even happened to the rest of his arm?" I blurted out without thinking. "I mean, what would Hundsen even do with it?" Finn groaned and ran a hand down his tired face.

"I doubt that it even fazed him," Jake said harshly. "He's done things like this to countless others. I've seen it."

I looked up. "You've seen it? What was it like?"

"Gory. Bloody. Torturous." He seemed as unfazed talking about those things as Hundsen was doing it.

"That's so-"

"Shh," Finn interrupted me, "He's coming to."

All eyes went back to the bed. Jaxon's eyes flickered open and he blinked a few times, trying to get his bearings. When he noticed us all at the foot of his bed, he tried to push himself up on his elbows but failed, as he now only had one. A grimace found its way to my face as he slowly looked down at the bandages. Realization dawned in his eyes.

"My arm's gone," he said flatter than I'd been expecting.

"Do you remember anything from earlier?" Delphinium asked softly.

"Only a few things. I remember...I remember the swing of the sword. And when you were trying to wake me."

"Well..." I paused, trying to clear the awkward silence that ensued. "We came to visit you, man."

Jaxon nodded faintly, like he was still not completely over the drug's effects. His eyes swept across the five of us before landing on Kane. I hadn't forgotten how they'd brawled the other day, and by the looks they both wore, neither of them had either. I was too busy arguing with Riley to notice exactly what they were fighting about, but it clearly wasn't resolved.

"Kane." Jaxon said.

Kane inclined his head in a curt nod, keeping his dark eyes on the blond boy. "Jaxon."

Finn's phone suddenly rang and he picked it up. I was glad for the distraction from the tension in the room. "Hi, Mr. Hunt, sorry I didn't answer your last few calls, we've been-" He paused. "What?" After listening to the director's answer, he placed the phone down on the table and put it on speaker so we could all converse.

"We've had quite the situation at headquarters," came Hunt's slightly garbled voice through the phone. "Both Benny and Gigi escaped from their cells. They caused a bloodbath. My men don't know how they pulled off such an impossible feat yet, but they suspect another person was involved, an Imperium agent." My mind went back to the silent girl standing beside Benny. Had she broken them out?

"Yeah, we noticed," came Delphinium's wry response.

"There was a huge fight and they were there and..." Finn stopped animatedly gesticulating. "It's a long story. I'll tell you later. The point is, they're still out there."

"Well, that's the reason I'm calling. We think we know where they've been."

"How could you know?"

"Because a top-secret government facility was just broken into and robbed. Imperium is almost certainly behind it."

This was new information. "What?" asked Delphinium, sounding as angry as she'd been while fighting with Gigi.

"We don't know much, but reports say that it was a large group of soldiers. They took classified paperwork and weapons that were being designed."

"Weapons?" Now the assassin's voice was but a whisper. We all knew what she was thinking. Now they had both the Scorpions and these new government-made weaponry.

"I'll let you know as soon as I know more about it. But there is good news. They've somehow found the coordinates that the weapons are located at now."

"What, are they not at the Imperium fortress?"

"No, they're in Western Russia. I'll give you the coordinates now. I want you all to go to the place and investigate what exactly is there."

Kane wrote down the coordinates so that he could plug them into his computer back at the compound. I shared a few glances with my worried teammates. This just served to show that no matter what we did to stop them, Imperium was growing at an alarmingly fast rate, faster than we were prepared for.

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In the middle of the night, we walked through the jungle-like Russian forest—which happened to feel a bit too familiar to the one that surrounded the Imperium fortress in Romania. No one spoke; we were all here—save for Jaxon and Gigi—and I knew that everyone feared another fight breaking out. Kane had his computer out, tracking the exact area that the weapons were stored. Riley trailed the team at a distance, like she wasn't sure who would take a swing at her if she got too close. Maybe I would.

I didn't know what to expect when we got there. Why would they be keeping stolen U.S. weapons in such a remote spot? It wasn't in very close proximity to the Romanian fortress, so something else had to be going on here. Maybe they were using what they'd stolen to make more weapons in a facility?

I nearly laughed out loud when I realized how involved I now was. Before, I'd been happy to let the others debate the difficult decisions while I ignored them and daydreamed. But now that I knew how serious this was...and what kind of a world I might be leaving behind soon...I payed more attention.

Then I sighed loudly, realizing I was starting to sound like Finn. That was unfortunate.

"It should be very close, just right up-" Kane stopped speaking and walking simultaneously when what laid ahead came into view.

There was a clearing in the thick forest, long tree branches hanging over the area. In the center was a massive building, not on a scale as large as the Imperium fortress, but still large enough to momentarily take my breath away.

In the distance, a stream of Imperium armored trucks drove up and their occupants unloaded supplies. A few soldiers roamed the area, guns propped up against their shoulders. I looked closer at the building itself, my superior eyesight coming in handy. A few cannon-like weapons were mounted to the sides and small niches lined the walls. Places for snipers to hide. From the way the edifice was bolstered to the ground, it seemed to extend far underground.

This was an extensive operation, nearly as much so as the Romanian stronghold. My weakening heart sunk. Holy shit.

"This isn't just some hideout," Riley said softly, voicing my identical thoughts. "This is another fortress."