'Back in town, if you want to grab that drink,’ the text I’d sent to Maris remained left unread. I sighed.

  “Still nothing?” Jack inquired, as we walked between the darkened columns of the Pantheon finding our way to base under the moonlight.

  “No,” I responded, wishing I’d made a new friend when I could’ve. Suddenly, my mind went back to our mutual model friend. “Actually, I did think I saw something in the paper in Geneva about Sansa Peguero. I wish I could remember what it said,” I searched my mind frantically. “And understand French as well.”

  “We’ll have to look into it,” Jack said, leading me down the shadowed stairwell, into the uniquely familiar tunnels to our hidden entrance.

  Instantly, Jack halted, holding his hand up to still my movement.

  “What’s wrong?” I whispered innately.

  Jack knelt down, and I spotted a leg laying out across the floor from the darkness. I slowly rounded Jack and spotted Acu?a, our resident friend and guardsman to the passage. My hand pressed up against my quivering lip.

  Retracting his two fingers slowly from the boy’s pulse, Jack looked back up at me with a somber expression and shook his head resolutely, his fists visibly clenched in anger. The boy was gone. A long dried blot of crimson shined through the vest covering his chest, yet dull still. It mustn’t have been too long...but long enough.

  Pain gripped my heart, wrenching it with further loss, even for someone I didn’t know all that well, but a kind person nonetheless. Another connection severed.

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  Jack rose and inspected the cracked open passageway, before un-holstering a handgun and creeping inside, whipping quickly once breaching the entry to track with his weapon poised up, finding nothing in the flickering light of the stairwell, sparks draining from the ceiling sporadically in now bullet laden electrical work. He turned back around to face me. “Stay here,” he whispered.

  “No,” I whispered back triumphantly, “I’m coming with you.”

  “That wasn’t a question, that’s an order,” he cocked back.

  “I don’t take orders from you,” I said, pushing my way in behind him and trying to march forward down the steps.

  “Hey!” He snapped, stepping back in front of me and pushing me behind him. “If you’re gonna pull this, stay behind me.”

  I looked at him quietly and nodded my head in understanding.

  We continued on down the stairs through the silence, which was occasionally marked by electronic disparities in the air and reached the door at the bottom, which was cracked open as well.

  Taking in a deep breath, Jack held up three fingers and wagged them down quickly in show before counting down with one each on three in trial.

  I nodded again, before he started up for real.

  On the count of three, Jack slid into the door and raised his weapon around the room, tracking and scanning for anything that moved.

  After a few minutes inside, he returned and opened the door fully for my entry.

  “No one's here,” he said, “it’s empty, but trashed.”

  I stepped inside, crunching atop broken glass and debris scattered around the facility. It felt awfully sad to see our home in tatters. Monitors and files tossed a strew. Everything in disarray. “Do you think the others are okay?”

  “Don’t know. Makes sense that I wasn’t able to reach anyone now.”

  Something then piqued in Jack’s mind, sending him on a mission to a hidden panel along a wall down the way. He pressed his palm on a small panel, which unlocked a hidden compartment.

  A large weapons cache with molded compartments popped out from the wall. Spots for large assault rifles and extra types of weapons along with their ammunition. All gone. Completely Empty.

  Jack sighed heavily.

  “As if he we didn’t need any more evidence of the truth.”

  “What’s that?” I asked, inquiring about his statement.

  “We’ve been infiltrated," Jack growled. "We have a mole.”