The Cursed Shell

27

The sirens and emergency lights kept thundering. It was almost impossible to run on the stairs. Nothing was visible. Brute could walk only with the support of the person beside him.

"Okay," Brute said, panting. "I should introduce myself. I'm Brute Coyle."

"You've already said that", Duke said. He had brown hair and had a small noddle. He looked just a few years younger than Dhawan.

"Okay," Brute remembered. "What's yours?"

"I'm Duke Stain," Duke introduced. "Look, we're here. The ground floor."

Brute whirled around, but could barely see anything in the red and black lights.

"Krystene?" he shouted.

"Hey, hey," Duke stopped him, "what're you doing?"

"Calling her name," Brute replied. "It's a way of finding, right?"

"Shshhshhh!" Duke hushed. "There are bandits here too, remember?"

Suddenly they heard a panting voice. "Brute.........is it – is it you?"

They rushed towards the way of the voice. They stopped near a counter where they saw a female adolescent with jet–black hair in a pony–tail. Brute recognised her. She was Krystene.

Brute felt a high level of joy but it didn't last for much time. He saw a cut on Krystene's wrist.

"Oh gosh, you're bleeding!" Brute screamed and rushed towards her.

"The guy has cut her vein", Duke declared.

Dhawan and Dunkirk were having a silent tip–toe walk on the stairs before they reached the seventh floor. Although they knew that the killer was aware that they were before him, they wanted to attack without any warning.

They both stopped on the last stair before the seventh floor. Dhawan whispered into Dunkirk's ear not to kill Stephenson. Dunkirk nodded.

They both stepped on the floor together. They immediately whirled around, but didn't see anyone.

They both were unaware of the bandit following them on the stairs. He was just behind Dhawan. Daniel Hank, the last male bandit in the group had just raised his knife above his long pointed nose when something fell on his back. It scratched his T–shirt and inserted its teeth on his back. Hank fell down with a shriek.

Dhawan and Dunkirk immediately turned back and saw Crunchy scratching Hank's back in a wild way.

"Hey, Crunchy!" Dhawan exclaimed. "Calm down, dude. It's enough."

Crunchy stepped off the bandit's back and walked towards Dhawan. The bandit was still badly screaming and bleeding.

"Okay, another bandit's busted", Dunkirk declared.

"Thanks to my bro", Dhawan pointed towards Crunchy.

Duke Stain had inserted a needle inside Krystene's wrist attached to a bag of saline gripped by Brute.

"So, you're a doctor too?" Brute asked.

"We're trained for such emergency situations", Duke replied.

He was cleaning the blood flowing from Krystene's wrist with a cotton cloth from a first aid box below the counter. Krystene had fainted and had lost a lot of blood.

Brute was now thinking that he didn't do anything wrong by telling those men about the secret mission. The mission was still classified!