He twisted, ducked under the man's hands, and drew the knife from his sleeve.
There was nothing grand about this. He’d formulated no tactical plan and had nothing to fall back on if he didn’t succeed. Failure was not an option at this juncture.
The knife flashed and sliced easily through the body armor the guard wore. It was designed to protect against bullets moving at high velocity and did little to stop the knife that slid easily into his gut.
The man groaned and clutched his wound as Hammerhand straightened, grasped the guard’s hair, and jerked his head back to expose his throat before he slid the blade across it. The keen edge found the artery and red sprayed across the hallway and splashed the other man who struggled to stand and drew his attention with the movement.
He focused on the second man, who tried to retreat and wiped the blood from his eyes. In his haste, the guard tripped over his own feet and landed hard while still partially blinded, which opened him to a swift attack. The knife did its work cleanly and sliced into his throat, preventing him from shouting to raise the alarm.
In moments, his struggles ceased, although there was far more blood now than ever. Hammerhand wiped his hands clean and pushed to his feet.
Thankfully, it didn't seem that anyone had heard the struggle. The guards had been eliminated before they could shout for assistance, and the two dead men weren't wearing any radios that might have had a silent alarm on them.
Despite this, alarms started to ring in the distance and were quickly picked up by those in the prison and possibly the rest of the city too. Hammerhand paused only to wipe the knife blade clean on one of the fallen guards’ sleeves before he straightened and readied himself to see this through.
It was time to see if Scar and his men were still willing to help with his escape. He retrieved the keys from the belt of one of the dead guards and made his way toward the other cell blocks.
Chapter Seventy-Two
"Do you ever get tired of being called Jessica13?"
She looked up from her work and narrowed her eyes at Robert7, who was digging beside her. "I… don't know. Do you ever get tired of being called Robert7?"
"I don't know either. Like, have you ever had a nickname that you use? Maybe in the middle of a fight when saying the whole name might be too time-consuming?"
"Well, Hammerhand and Tinker call me Jessie, but it always feels odd when I hear it. I was always Jessica13 to myself, so I got used to saying it quickly."
"Huh. I suppose that makes sense."
"Why?" she asked. "Do you think I should call you something else? Like…Bob7? Or only Bob?"
"I don't know. Maybe Rob? Something like that? I like my name, but I would like to have something shorter."
"So only Rob, or Rob7?"
"Just Rob."
"You two had better be working out there," the Prophet shouted from where he continued with the repairs to his Argonaut. "I would be a little more concerned, if I were you, as I doubt our FEMA City friends are sitting around waiting to be attacked."
He wasn't wrong, of course. FEMA City hung over them as an ever-present threat and wasn’t something to be ignored, and the Prophet knew he had no choice but to see if Robert7 had told the truth. The people of Auburn had similarly agreed to those terms and allowed the FEMA City pilots to remain alive after he had convinced them to do so.
Fifteen of them had come to the coordinates the young pilot had given him, including Jessica13 and Robert7, to dig for the secret entrance that would lead them into the city. The Prophet and two of his men had accompanied them but would join his main force once they had located it. While the young people used the tunnels to reach their target undetected, he would lead his Desert Warriors in the planned frontal assault.
The idea had at least seemed promising, although it was more difficult than anticipated. The knowledge of the location was all well and good, but when it was hidden underground, there was nothing else to do but dig until they located it.
And thus far, none of them had any luck. Jessica13 couldn't help the niggling doubt that her trust in Robert7 had been misplaced. She didn’t believe he had intentionally betrayed them but maybe his memory of the exact position wasn't quite as good as she had hoped.
"There's nothing out here," she said, scowled, and looked at where Mini had put the Minato to work as well. They had discussed having her inside the mech, but time was of the essence. Letting him do the work with the mech and her doing what she could on her own would at least slightly increase their work rate.
It wasn't by much and at the moment, it seemed it wouldn't make any difference anyway.
"Are you sure this is the place?" she asked and grimaced when sweat began to soak into the pilot sleeve. "We have been digging around here for a while."
"They had the records of the secret entrance at the Hall," Robert7 explained. "These are the coordinates, down to the minute, but…I don't know. They put the damn things in over a hundred years ago before the Invaders. There could be a hundred different places by now. Or they could be fucking buried."
"That sounds suspiciously like you're having doubts."
"Well, given the stakes we're working against, I think I would be crazy not to have doubts."
He wasn't wrong in that regard. If there was ever a time to doubt oneself, it was when one's life was on the line.
Or maybe that wasn't quite right, but she had those doubts as well, so she couldn't judge him for them. All they could do was keep looking and hope they eventually stumbled on something. Their lives depended on it.
"Jessica13," Mini
