“They're following two of ours” He said.
“Ours? Who is it?” Mariam asked concerned.
“We've got Niel, Mike and Dave in one car, and, shit, ok that's weird” he said, “and Monique, Sofia and Olivia in another car”.
“What's weird?” Danny asked, knowing that the definition of weird had been stretched beyond imagination the past week, so weird could mean any number of things.
“I managed to get into the Elite's systems that are tracking them, and there were a swarm of Nano-bots that looked like they were going to do something, but then they just flew off”.
“Well, if they're tracking them, they want to know where they're going” Samir said, his first words uttered in around fifteen minutes, his mind still looping the horrific events from earlier around in circles.
“Yes, so they're still tracking them, do we know how?” Brandon said nodding.
Mateo looked back down, typed a series of commands and clicked some other buttons and swore again. It was rare that he swore, and normally Mariam would pull him up on it, but she thought she would cut him some slack, what with the Nano-bots, zombie-people, explosions and so on. In fact, it made her want to swear too, why hadn't she yet?
“It looks like Niel still has his phone on, the idiot” Mateo said, “I need to contact him to get him to turn it off”
“Won't you compromise us then?” Danny asked, “They will trace any signal that links to his phone”
“No, my signal is bounced around from different locations, in and out the deep web and back, it will be impossible to pinpoint where we are”
He pressed a few more buttons, typed a few more commands, and then phoned Niel. Niel was surprised to hear Mateo's voice, but his surprise quickly waned when Mateo told him about the tracking. It was obvious when he was told, so obvious, but his big brotherly instinct had over-ridden anything logical. He still objected to having to give the phone up, but Mateo told him he had no option. He pulled no punches, he explained that every word he was saying was being monitored, and this is why Mateo hadn't given any real information over the phone, nothing to suggest their final plans. His brother would quite likely be caught in the crossfire if he was anywhere near the centre of the city and had anything at all to do with the bombs. There was nothing Niel could do; it was his brothers' choice to tread that path.
Eventually, Niel conceded, he knew everything Mateo was saying was true, and he said his goodbye. Mateo watched on his laptop as the signal suddenly ceased, the traceable connection gone. He then turned his attention to how Monique's road trip was going. That's when he suddenly saw the mayhem that had occurred since he had last checked up on them a matter of minutes before. He had been able to hack into a vehicle following them, then from that vehicle into a Nano-bot close by. He could re-route the signal so it was fed back to him, and he could see exactly what the Nano-bots could see. Sofia was gone, he wasn't sure where, but there was only Monique and Olivia left. Olivia was screaming desperately in the back, grabbing hold of a fire extinguisher. Suddenly the image went; it just fizzled out as if there had been a short circuit. He clicked back to get the view from the vehicle and saw the cloud of Nano-bots sparkling, before crashing to the ground. Monique's car then entered a tunnel, the vehicle still in pursuit; it then seemed to lift off the ground, what kind of car was this?
Mateo was momentarily confused and he had to type in a few more commands to see what he was dealing with. It was a top-secret new vehicle, part car/part plane, a sci-fi lover’s wet dream. It was armed with two gun turrets too, this wasn't looking good. He ferociously banged on his keys, trying to get some way of disabling them. The feed on the screen showed Monique and Olivia emerging from a tunnel and turning. A few more key stabs and he was able to access the weapons control panel, but it was just a few seconds too late. As Monique seemed to be mowing down a crowd of suicidal maniacs, the guns were fired. Two gigantic slugs soared towards them and struck the back end, causing the car to spin to the side and smash head on into a wall. A quick moment of panic set in, but then he quickly regained his composure, typed a command and the guns were disabled. The pilot was about to fire again, so he had managed it just in the nick of time. His fingers went into overdrive, pressing one key and then the next, every second a crucial moment and then he hit the enter key.
The craft spun slightly to the side, then lost all momentum, falling violently to the floor before crashing into a building. Mateo let out a huge sigh and held his head in his hands. That had been close. Everyone else in the van was just looking at him. None had any idea he had just saved Monique and Olivia's lives, but he hadn't saved Sofia, he had been distracted with Niel at the time. He knew he could have saved her if he had continued checking up on them, and it caused an ache in his gut that he couldn't shake off.
“Sofia didn't make it” He said turning to the others, his eyes glistening as he tried to hold back the tears, “But Monique and Olivia are okay”.
He glanced back down at his laptop, the craft wasn't completely destroyed and he was still getting a video feed. The feed was of the pilot hauling himself out the wreckage, grabbing his gun and walking towards Monique who he
