Where Is Your Rider (OFFICIAL WATTPAD UPLOAD)

Chapter 18

"FUCK!" Tommy shrieked, lunging up to the very edge of the loading door of the plane, grabbing onto the hydraulic hinge to keep from falling.

He glanced around frantically for any sign of Velvet.

Nothing.

"What the hell," Tubbo blurted, his eyes wide with horror, his face white as a sheet. "What the hell, what the hell—"

Antfrost, however, was silent. He just stood there, slowly lowering his bow with a look of shock and bitter rage on his face that was slowly being overtaken by fear.

"I think he just offed himself," Tommy blurted.

"Oh no no no no no," Tubbo spluttered. "Oh what the hell, oh fuck no, what the fuck—"

And then, out of nowhere, one of the Manberg planes—a clunky-looking biplane that looked like it'd been plucked straight out of some World War I textbook—rocketed up past them, smoke trailing out its engines. The pilot was dead in the cockpit, and Velvet was clinging to the fuselage with one hand and pulling the joystick back with the other, holding Ant's bolo knife with his teeth.

Tommy accidentally made eye contact with him.

Velvet glared straight into his soul, as if to say, this is your fault, dickhead, and then slammed the biplane's joystick into a sharp dive.

Without warning, Ant suddenly yanked a vial off his belt, snapped it into the hollow point of one of his arrows, and fired it.

His aim was impeccable. The arrow hit the strut that held the biplane's upper and lower wings together and the vial shattered, and the contents burned right through the metal like it was paper.

Velvet screeched in alarm as the plane suddenly spiraled out of control.

For a moment, Tommy's heart almost stopped as Velvet lost his grip and was thrown into a free-fall, but he quickly regained his wits and grabbed onto the other wing, scrambling up onto it and sprinting as fast as his legs could carry him before flinging himself into the air.

He plummeted and tucked and rolled onto the wing of a larger bomber, and Ant shouted a litany of curses that Bad definitely wouldn't've approved of.

"Jesus shit, why're you trying to kill him?" Tommy yelped. "He's your boyfriend—"

"He fucking lied to me!" Antfrost snarled, slinging his bow into his back. "He said he loved me! He said he cared! And he's no fucking better than you, or him!"

Tommy froze.

Wait, what—

Ant suddenly lunged off the plane, landing heavily on the wing of Velvet's plane—which had risen up to their level to exchange fire with Boomer, who was in the Claw's turret—and swearing in pain.

Velvet, who'd been scrambling along the hull, balked. "Wait—"

"GET YOUR ASS BACK HERE!" Ant snarled.

Instead of attacking, or even stopping to defend himself, Velvet turned tail and ran.

Tommy froze again, spitting curses. Shit, that caravan down below, the one exchanging fire with figures that must've been the others and the other Badlands members, needed to be stopped, but he also needed to stop Antfrost and Velvet from killing each other.

Ant had mentioned that his hatred of the members of the THESEUS program stemmed from him trusting someone he shouldn't have.

There was only one other out there that Tommy knew of, one other like him.