‘It’s time to add some heavy metal bling to the bodies of these Huntsmen Board pricks, and their scumbag mutts, Sigurd and his chumps!’ Sharaf exclaimed, brash and buoyantly confident. ‘Locked and loaded, Tiger, locked and loaded! I’m gonna spray these bastards with enough hot lead to send them to hell and back three times over!’
William nodded grimly, gripping his own AK with both hands. Now that Sharaf was inside, there would be no need for the crossbows, so he abandoned them, along with the other extraneous equipment.
‘Aye old friend, it’s time,’ he muttered.
Sharaf’s eyes probed William’s from within the dark shrouds of his mask.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ he said with a subdued but undeniable authority. ‘You want Sigurd for yourself. But you know that that’s not the plan, and I don’t think I need to remind you that you agreed to keep your emotions out of this. You know that going off on a renegade mission right now would jeopardise everything we’ve worked for up to this point. So I’m gonna tell you this now, William: don’t do it. Don’t you dare do it. You’ll put everything at risk of catastrophic failure if you do. We all know your history with Sigurd, and that’s exactly why you’re staying at the back – to ambush and take out the Huntsmen Board Members who are gonna come running your way when the guns start blazing. Zakaria and myself will handle Sigurd, and only us two. I guarantee you this, though: if you can’t control your emotions, and you break ranks to pursue your personal vendetta, you’re going to kill all of us in the process. In the event that that happens, if I don’t die, I swear on everything holy that I’ll come for you myself and cut you down. You understand?’
William’s eyes were cold and his face was tight with bristling defiance, but he nodded in capitulation. He had, after all, agreed to this – they all had.
‘I’ll do my job, and you do yours,’ he muttered. ‘Emotions won’t come into play, I swear it, brother.’
‘They’d better not, for our sake and yours. Now come on, let’s move. These assholes aren’t going to slaughter themselves.’
***
‘I’m not Aurora, whoever that is,’ Adriana stammered, staring wide-eyed at the imposing figure of Zakaria, clad in his intimidating gothic plate armour. ‘My name is Adriana, and I don’t know anybody named William.’
Zakaria shook his head, continuing to stare with unnerving intensity at Adriana.
‘Something is not right here. There is some trickery going on, some devilry at work! Ranomi, handcuff her. We’ll detain her until we figure out who she’s working for and what her true purpose is.’
Ranomi looked both astonished and infuriated at this order.
‘She’s with us! This is the woman who took the grille off to let me in! Without her this whole plan would have fallen to pieces! There’s no way in hell I’m handcuffing her.’
Zakaria’s expression crystallised into a mask that was hard and unsympathetic, and his seeing eye glowed with a cold frost.
‘Fine,’ he growled, ‘I’ll do it myself.’
As he stepped forward, Adriana whipped the revolver from behind her back and pointed it at him. Her hands were trembling, but her eyes, although red with tears, were ablaze with determined purpose.
‘Don’t come one step closer!’ she shrieked. ‘Nobody is going to make a slave of me ever again! Ever! I don’t care who you are, but I’ll die and take you with me before I go back to being a slave, an object for filthy perverts to use and abuse! Never again, never!’
‘For God’s sake Zakaria!’ Ranomi shouted. ‘She’s not a spy! She’s not one of them!’
Zakaria kept his eye locked in Adriana’s eyes, and his entire being radiated a powerful, driving menace. He raised his Uzi and aimed it at Adriana’s forehead.
‘Ranomi, I told you to put the cuffs on her, and for the sake of all of us and this mission, you had best do that,’ he growled, speaking in a severe tone to Ranomi, but keeping his eye locked on Adriana. ‘We can’t prove right now that she is a spy, you’re right, but neither can we prove that she isn’t one. Are you ready to put this entire mission and all our lives at risk on the basis of this woman’s claims? This woman who you’ve known for all of five minutes? And how the hell do you explain the fact that she looks like a carbon copy of the ghost who has driven William to depression, ruin and the gates of Hell itself?! That cannot be a mere coincidence, especially when a snake like Sigurd is involved.’
Ranomi’s brash confidence was faltering somewhat, and her comebacks weren’t quite so snappy.
‘Are you sure?’ she stammered. ‘How do you know she looks so similar to Aurora? You never saw her when she was alive.’
‘I’ve seen pictures, and I have an acute memory for such details! Why, I’ve seen—’
While Zakaria and Ranomi had been arguing, Njinga had been edging closer and closer to Adriana, taking very slow, subtle steps, which were barely perceptible to a non-trained eye. As soon as she was within striking range she lunged forward with vicious speed and rapidly disarmed Adriana, yanking her right arm up behind her back while wrapping her left arm around her throat in a chokehold. Adriana screamed with fright and tried to struggle, but Njinga held her firm.
‘Good work, Njinga,’ Zakaria growled as Adriana whimpered and bucked futilely.
Ranomi’s face, meanwhile, crumpled into an expression of disgust and intense disappointment.
‘Njinga!’ she exclaimed as she shook her head disapprovingly. ‘How could you?!’
‘No, no, no!’ Adriana gasped, weeping plaintively, her body racked with sobs of both fear and frustration as she fought against Njinga’s iron-firm hold. ‘No, let me go, let me go!’
‘Hold her tight, Njinga,’ Zakaria
