Our Secret

Chapter 41: Red Goo

Artemis POV

My ears hurt like hell, supposedly I was to keep the headphones on because according to Arlen "The headset is to protect your ears'' I called bullshit but now my ears hurt. I would never admit that to her though

"Artemis" Gerald comes out of nowhere and pulls me to the side

"What?" I ask

"Did you here the voice in your headset too?"

"Yeah, what did he say to you?" He stares at me confusedly

"A man was talking to you?" He pauses "I heard Ruby in mine, she sounded panicked"

"What did she say?"

"She said "It's not safe, you need to leave right now" and that was it"

"Fuck, the element of surprise is now gone. They know we're here" I mumble, looking around to see Mike putting on a bulletproof vest while his team is anchoring ropes to the edge of the manor

"Did you tell Mike?" I ask, turning my attention back on him

"No, he'd panic. They would all panic because-"

"Me... because of me, I assured them that we would have the element of surprise but now we don't" I say, cutting him off

Mike then starts making his way down the rope. It's to late to tell him now, the mission is in motion and it won't be stopped until we safely leave Russia.

"Be safe" I whisper to Gerald

"You too" we both start walking in opposite direction towards our team. Lilith, Arlen and Adrianna are putting on their vest and Colin is looking over the edge

"Can anyone hear me?" I hear Mikes voice through the com in my ear

"Loud and clear" I say back into the com

"The first floor is empty, shall we move to the second?"

"Yes but go out the same way you went in"

"Alright" he says then at the sound of glass breaking my team opens the door that's on the roof. We have our guns drawn out in front of us, Colin walks down the steps first with Adrianna closely following behind him with her gun drawn as well, behind her is Lilith who has a sword drawn in front of herself, and behind me is Arlen

"Second floor is clear" Mike says into the coms again and my steps come to a halt as does everyone else's

"What?" I ask back

The second floor is never empty, it's always full of Russian nerds who work day in and day out trying to find new children to take or new places to turn over

"It's empty as hell Artemis, come see for yourself" he says followed by more glass breaking

"Move" I say. We walk past the first room and down the stairs towards the second room, Colin pulls open the door turning left with his gun drawn, Adrianna turns right with her gun drawn as-well

"Left side clear" Colin says lowering his gun

"Right side clear" Adrianna says lowering her gun

I move around Lilith and walk inside the room to find it as empty as what Mike said. There are no desk with computers on top, no weird posters with quotes on them, and no nerds

"We need to keep moving" I say, turning around and walking out. Colin and Adrianna following behind me

"Artemis-" Mike says. His sentence isn't fully heard because static noise fills my com after he said my name