Violet Detours (BOOK 2) : Badly, Madly, Deeply

TORN

"What makes you so sure about that?" Aurora asked.

"Because there are others who have different colored ones..."

"Really?" Aurora asked.

"Yes. Like this one over here..." Gusion could only guess she was probably pointing at a person in the monitor they could only see.

"That's one of the guards at the rooftop."

"Yes. And he's got the only orange card among that team." Guinevere pointed out.

"And those scientists...only a few of them had the same colored cards. The rest are all blue." Aurora noticed.

"It's only rational that not everyone could go inside that lab." Guinevere said.

Gusion, then again, was amused by how sharp Guinevere's deductive skills were. And he couldn't help but feel proud despite the fact that he couldn't figure out why.

"So I should look for an orange card."

"Yes."

"Well, could you at least tell me where the nearest one is?"

"Oohh, you don't need to." Aurora muttered in a confusing tone.

"And why is that?"

"Get ready. One is heading your way within three seconds." Guinevere informed.

Gusion hurried towards the end of the corridor, pressing his back against the edge as he mentally counted.

3...

2...

1...

A brown haired middle-aged woman turned his way, her bespectacled eyes widening as soon as she came across him.

Gusion swiftly grabbed the ID hanging from her chest and smacked her hard in the head before she could alert anyone.

The woman collapsed instantly.

"That was harsh." Guinevere commented.

"What do you want me to do, lull her to sleep?" Gusion lifted the unconscious woman up and brought her along with him as he swiped her ID card into the scanner.

The door did a few beeps before it swung open, letting out a greenish blue light from inside.

Gusion looked around and walked inside.

He let the woman down right next to the door and then looked ahead, a sigh of surprise escaping his lips as soon as he saw what was in front of him.

Piled in an aisle right ahead were life-sized cubes, each one containing a creature that was mostly machine than men, their limbs loaded with weapons Gusion had never seen before.

He walked along the aisle, looking at the variety of its sizes and forms.

"Why? What are you seeing?" Aurora asked from the other line.

Apparently, their spy cameras couldn't see through its anti-surveillance walls, allowing them to only see through thermal visions.

"All of the world's most evil thoughts, formed in various shapes and sizes." Gusion muttered as he stared at one cube at a time.

One was a lot buffer and taller than he was, its head a tangle of wires where its hair were supposed to be.

Another one was smaller, curled up in a ball like an infant inside a mother's womb, though its soles had holes where jet thrusters would ignite.