Page 37 of The Bonding Games: Part 2

This time, the man at the door at the bottom of the steps lets me in immediately, and I march inside the Avri labs without a word. Then I head to the room which specialises in bonding cubes.

My heart rate climbs up, and I do not know why I feel so much panic. I simply cannot let my men die, and that should be a fact, not have my heart trying to leap from my chest.

Fortunately, Father is so arrogant that he has kept my fingerprint on the biometric scanners here, and I storm into the room without a hitch, the taalk automatically locking behind me.

Exot’s, Evot’s, and Neutral’s heads all swivel my way as the staff in here pause their work in an instant. Pin-drop silence greets me.

“You will do this job for me without complaint and in record time, or I will kill you all.”

***

“It is done, Miss Zefron.”

“And it cannot be undone?”

“Never. We have commanded the Avri in a way that will ensure no further alterations can be made to any six of these bonding cubes,” the Neutral man tells me from his position before the table he and the other workers in here have been sat around for the past fifteen minutes. My inky-crimson cube sits in the middle of my Bonds’ green ones on that polished white top, glowing softly, almost seeming to pulse.

Relief is so strong in me that I almost feel unsteady, but I only dip my helmeted head. “Very good.” Spinning around, I pause, slowly turning my neck to the side. “You understand that this must never get out. I have memorised each and every one of your faces. If it would not arouse suspicion and draw attention to what could have possibly happened in here for me to have splashed the walls with your blood-soaked organs, I would kill every one of you right now.”

Pure, undiluted terror floods my senses from those around me.

The same man from before gulps. “Understood, Miss Zefron. No one will ever know.”

***

When I leave the room, I am planning to head back to head to my Bonded chambers. I would like to return these cubes to my men before I make Father aware of the new circumstances, but I must be quick, inform him of the news before he tries anything, as I am aware our acting may not have been too convincing most recently, especially in the infirmary earlier.

I want all of that very much.

But when that taalk door slides closed behind me and I have the cubes securely back in my leather satchel, I know none of that will be happening.

Father stands directly before me, face drained of all colour. His hair that is usually meticulously styled is sleep-rumbled, and he appears as if he has just reached here and was moments from shoving into the room at my back before I walked out of it. “What have you done?” he breathes in horror, yet I am quite certain he has already guessed, and he need only confirm it with the scientists I have just left behind if he is not completely confident.

I open my mouth to share the news, glee filling me up—but pain so severe that it is numbing crashes through me, bringing me complete blackness in under a second.

And then there is nothing.

15

TIGER

“She should be here. Where is she?”

Chewing on my lip nervously, I glance at Cooper, who’s stood beside me as me and my brothers stand in a line facing the Training Room’s clear double doors. “Maybe . . . maybe she’s just running really late?” I say that, but we all know that’s not our Bonded. She doesn’t do late. But I don’t know what else to say, what else I can do to stop the steadily increasing dread from rising within me.

We left the infirmary not too long after Ezla asked for our bonding cubes yesterday, and we had to go our separate ways, of course, though she wouldn’t tell us where she was going, if she was returning home to her father or heading elsewhere to carry out whatever mind-blowing plan her brain concocted. Obviously, me and my brothers had all been dying to know, but we couldn’t ask anything out loud, so any queries went ignored since we couldn’t actually snatch her up to make her stay with us and talk things out with the hidden cameras about.

Now, it’s 7 a.m., an entire hour later than Ezla routinely demands we all be here, and everyone is freaking the fuck out.

“I-I don’t like this,” Alby whispers unsteadily, gloved hands fiddling with the helmet in them.

“Me neither,” Tate grits out, shifting in a way that suggests he’s moments from lunging forwards and racing from the room to go and search for our Bonded. “Let’s fucking go. I’ll storm the Techtis Council building and rip every single living thing in there to shreds.”

Scotty shakes his head faintly. “We don’t even know if that’s where she’s gone.”

“Don’t piss me off, Scotty,” Cooper spits out venomously, though he works hard to keep his words low so as not to attract the attention of the other Players in the room—they’ve already been throwing us not-so-inconspicuous glances since we’ve been in here standing like this without the Champion. “We tried to find her through the bond, and there’s nothing. No impenetrable wall, not a presence there that might suggest her hiding on the other side, no minor speck of emotion slipping through. There. Is. Nothing.”

A sick feeling rises up in me fast, tied-up stomach queasy.