CASSIUS 15

 

Arriving at the computer room I see Draco has already arrived and is looking through something Celmund is showing him on the laptop. Burkhart is leaning against the wall, arms crossed over his chest as he looks at Brandr and Ceric that are sitting at the table. A hand clamps down on my shoulder, looking up I see a concerned Caelius looking at me.

“How are you holding up brother?” he asks

“By the skin of my teeth.” I confess, since finding out about everything that the anger hasn’t subsided. Being close to my woman helps a little in grounding me and knowing that she’s nearby, but knowing that she’s in danger is fucking with my head.

“Hang in there, we’ll find a solution.” Caelius suggests as he takes his seat. A few minutes later Wulf and Bion amble in, like two thunder clouds. As Celmund stands, moving away from Draco, Bjarni and Gunner walk in closing the door behind them. 

“Now that we’re all here let’s start.” Draco calls, “As you all know we have a problem, a big fucking problem and we’ll only be leaving here once we find a solution.”

“Why can’t we just bring him in and interrogate the asshole until we get answers from him?” Gunner asks

“That is one option, but we don’t know if he reports back to the Keres. If he does he will miss it and then they know that something is wrong and might activate the devices.” Draco suggests

“What if we find these devices and Bion extracts them.” Ceric asks

“If there’s any metal in it, I will be able to find it quickly. If there isn’t we will have to scan the whole body, but once I find it I can figure out a way of extracting it.” Bion says with a scowl. “The trick is to find out if it’s chemical or explosive, before I take it out as the extraction could be different for each one of them.”

“Won’t that be dangerous?” I ask suspiciously, there is no way he’s touching Scarlett if there is the slightest threat of it going off before he can extract it.

“Yes, I won’t be able to touch it until I know exactly where and what it is.” He confesses.

“Jasmine said that Sven was the one to inject all of the women, therefore he knows more than we might even think.” Wulf says,

“Scarlett said that the women are planning on trying to get more information out of him.” I say, “That might be the only way we are going to find out anymore.”

“That might be a good option, if we can find out any more about these devices, like whom and how they did it.” Celmund suggests

“We need to . . .” as Draco starts there is a knock at the door. We all look at the screens on the walls to the one outside the computer room and see that Jasmine, Nova and Scarlett are standing outside. What the hell are they doing here? Ceric stands and moves towards the door, opening it he motions for the women to enter.

“What is the reason for this interruption?” Draco asks with a raised eyebrow, Ceric stands behind Nova circling her waist from behind he pulls her flush against his chest.

“We have more information for you, which might help.” Jasmine says but her eyes are on Wulf as she speaks. I look over at Scarlett and stretch out my hand for her to approach me, she looks at me and then a Draco questioningly but then shrugs and walks towards me. As soon as her hand touches mine I pull her onto my lap.

“The three of us decided that it would be prudent to see what more we could find out for all of you to be able to come up with a solution.” Jasmine looks over at Nova, “Nova, you want to tell them what you found out?”

“You can’t try to fiddle with the devices; as soon as they’re touched they will disintegrate and kill us within seconds. The chemicals that they release will break down our organs.” She updates

“Fuckers,” Burkhart grunts

“Well now we know its chemical.” Bjarni adds with a frown.

“You didn’t perhaps find out how we can deactivate it or get it out, did you?” Brandr asks, and Nova shakes her head in reply.

“I did find out who made the devices though.” She says with a slight smile. “A Doctor Spindler from the FBI.” At her revelation we all sit stunned, how would the Keres acquire these devices from the FBI?

“At least we can find this Doctor Spindler and have him tell us how to extract or deactivate these devices.” Celmund suggests.

“The devices were introduced into our bodies between our ribs,” Scarlett says, “Sven wasn’t sure about the Keres name that can deactivate it but he says he is one of the Keres Tech guys and that he’s in Cape Town. His name starts with an L, he mentioned Luthier, Locke or Lough. He wasn’t sure.”

“That son of a bitch,” Celmund says suddenly, “It can only be Leif.”

“I thought you killed him?” Caelius asks

“We didn’t have confirmation, Brandr set off the bomb, we didn’t see anyone leave but that doesn’t mean he didn’t survive.” Celmund says.

“Celmund find out who this tech guy of theirs is in Cape Town, if it really is Leif we have our hands full.” Draco states with a scowl. Leif and Celmund used to be friends before Leif turned Keres, they were both geniuses with technology and had a friendly rivalry going. When Leif turned, he tried to block Celmund at every turn, he started to hack into government institutions leaving hints pointing it to Celmund. That is how we started to work with the FBI, when a selected few were assigned to work in South Africa they investigated Celmund. After finding anomalies that were planted by Leif we decided to go in and convince them that we were an asset.

“Do you really think this could be him, there has been no sign of him in the last five years?” Ceric says with a raised brow.

“Let’s hope that it isn’t, but Leif is a patient son of a bitch. If he’s the one responsible for detonating those devices he’s waiting for something.” Celmund says.

“Maybe he’s waiting for you to find your mate.” Jasmine suggests with a shrug, “wouldn’t that be the easiest and cleverest way to get rid of you?” I see Wulf wink at Jasmine at her suggestion as he nods.

“Well then, let’s hope that she doesn’t pop up while we still trying to solve this problem.” Draco says, before he stands and walks towards where Jasmine and Nova are. “We were all very fortunate to have such strong and special women amongst us. I promise that we will all do our best to find a solution as quickly as possible.” Jasmine smiles approaching Draco she lifts on her toes and kisses him on the cheek.

“What the fuck?” Wulf roars as he stands from his chair. Draco’s eyes twinkle as he looks over at Wulf and winks.

“We will leave you to it now that you know everything.” Jasmine says, stepping towards the door. Ceric let’s go of Nova and turns to go and open the door. Nova takes that opportunity to step up to Draco and also kiss his cheek with a cheeky smile.

“No way I was going to miss this opportunity.” She teases, Draco throws back his head and roars with laughter when he sees Ceric’s scowl.

“Don’t even think about it.” I say to Scarlett as she stands, she looks down at me and smiles. Then leans down and kisses me gently on the lips. My woman has a way of calming me that no one has ever done before, as she stands and turns towards the door I smile as I see her hips sway as she walks. Then suddenly she sprints across and also kisses Draco on the cheek.

“Sorry, it’s just rude if I was the only one not to thank him.” She says with a mischievous twinkle in her eye as she looks at me. I don’t like my woman touching other men no matter how innocent, looking over at Draco I see his grin. The fucker is enjoying this, if he’s not careful he will swallow those white teeth of his pretty soon.

“Now that they have managed to distract and lighten the mood as they pretended let’s continue.” Draco says as he sits back down in his chair. Only then do I realise that that is what they were doing, trying to lighten our moods. I shake my head in annoyance, darn women, Scarlett has only been around them for such a short time and already she’s catching onto their habits.

 “You know, I take offense to that.” Burkhart says suddenly, “You not the only one trying to find a solution here. If anything we should all have gotten a kiss.” He teases

“Fuck off” Ceric growls as he shows him the finger. Wulf just grunts as I glare at him making him laugh in amusement. “Those women have you all by the balls.” He states as he shakes his head.

“You’re just jealous because your balls aren’t being handled.” Brandr teases,

“Now that we’ve let off some steam let’s get back to it.” Draco states

“I think that we should find this Doctor Spindler and find out if there is any way to get those suckers out.” Bjarni suggests

“I agree, but we need to find out first how they got this technology or if Doctor Spindler somehow turned crooked.” Gunner suggests, as we talk Celmund is already clacking away on his laptop. “We also need to maybe ask our guys in Cape Town to keep their eyes open for this Leif guy.” Gunner wouldn’t know Leif as he started with us after we thought that we had killed him, but Leif isn’t just good at IT but at disguising himself too. That is why it took us so long to find him the last time.

“I have an address for Doctor Spindler, you will never guess who he works with.” Celmund says. “The fucker that’s responsible for the enhanced guys that attacked us.” He says as he brings up a photo of the doctor on the screen for us to see.

“Why is this looking more and more like the Keres aren’t just working with the Catalonian Mafia but with the FBI too?” Wulf asks

“I think you should have a talk with our Bratva friends and let them know what our suspicions are, they might be able to find something out that we can’t.” Caelius suggests as he looks at Draco, “If the Keres are in bed with the FBI so are the Catalonians.” Draco nods in agreement. 

“I will phone Alexey and see what he can find out, in the meantime, Celmund, Burkhart, Cassius, Caelius and I will make our way to visit Doctor Spindler. Cassius I would like Scarlett to accompany us, she can tell if the doctor is telling the truth when we talking to him.” there shouldn’t be a problem if we are ambushing him at his house, and if Scarlett is with me, I’m fine with it. Therefore I nod in agreement, letting everyone know that she will be accompanying us.

“Great, we will keep the coms on. Bion you might want to listen in and see if there is anything that we miss.” Draco says, “Is there anything else anyone wants to raise?”

“I want to have the wedding as soon as possible, I think when Bjarni has the naming ceremony I will marry Brielle.” We all look at Bion as he pulls out a ring box from his pocket and open it.

“When did you buy that?” Celmund asks with a raised brow. “You never left the hotel until we had to go collect the weapons.” We all look at Celmund with surprised looks. “What? I keep an eye on everyone when we away just in case anything happens.” He grumbles.

“For your information, I ordered it online and had it delivered to the hotel.” He answers.

“It’s a nice ring brother.” Brandr says, “Don’t you think it’s a bit big though, she won’t be able to move her finger.” He teases.

“Yeah, yeah” he quips, “you just worried that your women are going to see how unromantic you assholes are.”

“What do you need from us?” Draco asks

“I have a list of things that I need done,” he says with a shrug, “If you guys are happy to help I can delegate.”

“Of course we’ll help asshole, just let us know what it is.” Ceric says as he punches him playfully on the arm. I look around at my brothers and my heart tightens, we might not be blood related but we’re brothers. There is nothing we won’t do for each other, and even though we’re all worried and angry about this new occurrence with our women we have all drawn together and will fight as one to save them, or die trying.