as a human, possessed: Wordlessly, he turned around and stared at the door of the office space like it had his name on it.
“You,” Murhder said to the guard. “You tell the others it’s a false alarm on your radio. Then you go to the system and delete the security camera feeds that we’re in. You make it so that none of this ever happened.”
As Murhder spoke, he erased all kinds of things in the human’s mind and replaced them with images of an empty office area, an inexplicable alarm malfunction, and absolutely no strangers in black cruising the halls or removing a small boy from a lab or taking this guy Kraiten hostage. In response, the human rubbed his temple like it hurt. Then he shook his head and went for the shoulder communicator mounted on his uniform’s lapel.
“Five-ten to base, five-ten to base. I have an all clear on that IDD alarm. Repeat, I have an all clear. Returning to base now, over.”
Like a robot, he marched out of the door and took a left.
The human woman spoke up sharply. “How did you do that? What did you …”
Murhder glanced at Ingridge’s young. “Come on, son, let’s take you out of here.”
And then he looked at the woman. Did they scrub her memories and leave her? Or take her with them?
Either way, her mind would have to be dealt with later—he didn’t have time to do that now. They had to move.
“You’re not safe here,” he told her. “You’ve got to know this. You need to go underground. We can help.”
Anything to get her to come with them.
“Are you with PETA?” she asked.
Given that she seemed relieved at the idea, he nodded.
“We gotta go,” Xhex said.
“I’m coming with you,” the woman blurted as she put an arm around the young.
Perfect, Murhder thought—with a surge of possession that frightened him.
As Xhex gave Kraiten a shove, the man in the suit led them out the door and to the right. Motley group they were, three heavily armed fighters, a young in a hospital johnny, the human woman and Mr. Bleeder. As they passed beneath the mounted security cameras on the ceiling, Murhder prayed like hell that the security guard did a good job with his erasing.
This was a highly unstable situation, Murhder thought. Sooner or later, some other security personnel was bound to catch them on camera and wonder about the weapons and the cuffs.
It looked like a kidnapping.
’Cuz it was.
Good news came as Kraiten stopped in front of a door that was not frosted glass, but stainless steel. There was a red sign over it reading “EXIT,” but as Murhder punched the bar, the thing refused to open.
“Give me the code or your card,” he demanded of Kraiten.
When the guy started shaking his head like a little bitch, Murhder had just about had it with delays. Taking two steps back, he kicked the goddamn door with such force, it exploded out of its lock.
It took all he had not to turn around to Kraiten and flip the man off.
As he jumped through into a concrete stairwell, he glanced back. The human woman was staring at him with those wide eyes again and the young was looking up at him like he was Superman. Xhex, on the other hand, was chuckling under her breath like she knew the truth.
So what, he wanted to say. I wanted to show off for the woman. Sue me.
“We had to get through the goddamn door,” he bitched at Xhex.
“Sure,” she said with a wink. “And look, we did.”
When he turned back around, he could have sworn she tacked on “He-Man,” but he wasn’t going to follow up on that. Because he was blushing, damn it.
The group started to follow him down the stairs, moving faster and faster, clomping a descent toward some underground area.
They’d gone a good three levels down when the woman said, “Wait, stop.”
At the sound of her voice, Murhder’s body jerked to a halt, sure as if he had a choke chain around his throat and she held the leash. Worried that someone was hurt—other than Kraiten, that was—he looked over his shoulder … and had an eerie sense that he would never be the same.
As Xhex held on to Kraiten, and John guarded them all with his guns, the human woman crouched down next to the pretrans. The young was trembling and seemed suddenly weak, and Murhder kicked himself for not considering what it would be like for the kid