Super

44. Taeyong times two

Mark was beginning to get suspicious.

Well, more suspicious than he already was, at least. He had been close to having a breakdown when Baekhyun and Taeyong had informed him that their powers had stopped working, and now Ten wasn't responding. Same was the case with Taemin.

He had thought superheroes, with all that responsibility resting on their shoulders, would be a little more...responsible.

Mark had been assigned recon and scouting duty in the van parked outside the building, a good thirty feet away from the scene of action. Everyone had been nice about it, but Mark knew that the main reason they had stationed him outside was because he wasn't a Super. And he wasn't unreasonable, he knew that they had good reason—they just wanted to keep him safe—but this was beginning to feel like the vigilante version of a desk job, and he was beginning to chafe.

Mark wasn't used to being told to stay put. The receiving station and preinstalled system that Baekhyun and Taemin had built into the van was great, but the novelty of holographic keyboards had worn off pretty quickly, and now anxiety was adding to his boredom. The walls were thick, and the heat signatures seemed to wink in and out of existence, giving the whole thing a suspiciously unstable vibe.

"Bolt?" Mark tried again, but there was no answer from Baekhyun. If his comm device wasn't working, then probably Taeyong's and Shao's wasn't, too. It had been almost three minutes since Ten and Taemin had stopped replying—which didn't seem like a long time, but a life-or-death mission was hardly the same thing as an ignored text. He was growing antsy. "Eros, where are you?"

"Ground floor," Kai replied almost immediately, and Mark's chest deflated in a relieved sigh. "Shockwave is investigating the cafeteria, but there's nothing yet. I'm keeping guard, and so far, this place seems pretty empty."

"Yeah, well, it's not," Mark said, observing the multiple red blips on the three-dimensional blueprint in front of him. "Just—keep looking."

Kai made an affirming noise at the back of his throat, and he heard a crackle as the connection severed.

Biting his lip, Mark turned his attention back to the server. So far, there hadn't been any attacks, but then, he had no idea what had happened to the rest of the team. He had been observing the movements of the other red blips onscreen for at least half an hour, and he had begun to sense a pattern to their movements.

They kept disappearing and reappearing, but the places they showed up at were seemingly random. Seemingly. So far, they hadn't touched the ground floor of the east wing, which was on the other side of the building from Kai and Lucas. He guessed he could tell them to go there, but there was no saying what could appear in their paths, and this was supposed to be a relatively more dangerous mission.

Whatever was in the east wing was imprisoned. Or, perhaps...guarded.

Mark sucked in his breath through his teeth, glancing through the regular checks to make sure he hadn't missed out on anything. This was surprisingly slow, and very unproductive, too—if there were supposed to be only four bad guys, what were the other heat signatures? Pets? Civilians? Aliens?

"Allegro, there's something you need to check out," Mark spoke into the mic, using Taemin's code. His teeth worried at his lower lip as he waited for a few seconds for the reply, but nothing came. "Allegro?" he tried again.

Silence. Not even the crackle of static.

An uneasy feeling crept over Mark. I have to go in there.

That seemed like the only solution to him at that moment. Mark steeled his resolve, popping the hatch of his Bracelight to disconnect it from the AI system, and adjusted his weapons belt before unlocking the door of the van and getting out.