Leo almost scoffed. “What is this?” he said, looking curiously at the Guardians.
“Oh,” James said casually. “I forgot to say, I’m a criminal now.”
“Drop your guns!” someone screamed again. The Guardian shot the wall next to Seli’s head to prove his point.
“Ok! Ok!” James said, dropping his gun. Seli and Leo copied him but none of them put their hands in the air.
“You lied to me, Commander Winter,” came a familiar voice. Mr. Hark emerged from the line of assembled guardians and stood right in front of James. For a moment James thought it was a mistake that they had called him Commander, and then it hit him like water from the Arctic Ocean. Commander Josh was dead, and he had been his assistant, which meant, technically, he had resumed his place.
Not that it mattered now...
“I trusted you,” M. Hark continued.
“Then you’ve got to trust me now,” said James, stepping aside so M. Hark could see Rozin. Something out of hand happened.
M. Hark screwed his face like someone had farted in his nose. A Guardian behind him screamed an order and M. Hark dived out of the way. Immediately, a bullet whipped through the air where M. Hark had just stood and sank into Rozin’s wrist, which was clutching a gun.
Rozin screamed and dropped his gun, but not before a stray bullet flew out of his gun and scraped James’ shoulder. James winced. He touched the wound gently. It seared like heck.
“What are you doing with this dangerous Germ?!” M. Hark screamed angrily, as two Guardians seized Rozin by the arms and pulled him to his feet.
“That is what we’ve been meaning to tell you, Hark.” James said, doing his best to ignore his pain. “I went inot the Kidney to stop Singar, whom we realized was Rognard Lyan, our temporary guardian all along. He escaped though, but we have Rozin here and we can get information.”
“Well, what are you waiting for! Set him on a hot seat and see if he won’t tell us what his mother fed him on his first day!”
M. Hark’s rage was comical. Like an adorable, grumpy old man’s. But there would be time to laugh later, say if Nemo City wasn’t a pile of maggots.
“First things first, Hark. We just found out that he’s planted bombs all around the heart, but it could be disabled by electrical means-“
“Which I could do remotely from one of these computers,” Leo interrupted.
M. hark grunted and scrutinized the three of them quickly. “You better not disappoint me,” he growled and ordered his men to set some computers, if they could find one, from the pillage.
In five minutes, they had a computer up and running. After Hark had sank a solid fist into Rozin’s stomach, he told them they had about ten minutes before the bombs released their charge.
Leo sat down and cracked his knuckles. He looked behind for a second and said, “I want absolutely no interruption and no noise as I do my thing.”
Everyone nodded. The fate or Nemo City and thousands of lives hung around Leo’s neck.
Leo began, his fingers flying from key to key in nano-seconds. It was a blur, nobody, except James could see those fingers, but even through his superhuman vision, Leo’s hands were fast.
Windows were launched, minimized or closed. Codes zipped across a black canvas and several buttons beeped.
The temperature in the room had become static. The only thing moving was Leo’s fingers. Everybody held their breath.
Leo paused as a green bar crawled across the screen quite slowly. But when it was done, the desktop screen was filled with seven separate live feeds. They were images of the various bombs Rozin had connected to sockets by long red wires. The images were fed into the computer by curtsey of the CCTV security cameras.
Leo took his time during this period. This was a crucial moment. It was either he shut down the power in that section of the Heart or he could simply override their systems. He took the second option. A sudden power cut could agitate the bombs.
He typed a code across the screen and hit enter.
Slowly, a list of words flowed down the screen. The last one was; Detonators-1-2-3-4-5 terminated.
Everyone whooped and hugged his neighbour, a certain euphoria had swept over their brains. Several Guardians, including Macrophage Hark himself, cheered and clapped him on the back, but, as attention seeking as James knew his best friend could be a little, Leo did not acknowledge his achievement. He closed the bombs’ images and manipulated the computer briefly.
James saw him type a familiar number into the computer. It took five seconds before he realized it was Rognard’s number. Leo was trying to track him, assuming he wasn’t too smart to throw the phone or chip away.
He wasn’t. A live feed digital map of Nemo City swallowed the screen, and a red pulsing dot was tearing through the blue lines that were the streets.
Leo pointed at the dot. “That’s Singar,” he said to Hark. “He’s moving steadily through the Pulmonary Artery.”
Everybody was all businesslike again. Hark was issuing commands like they were his last, and everybody was carrying it like their lives depended on it, which they did. The Guardians were out of the room before you could say snap!
Hark paused at the door. “Leo, send the traitor’s coordinates to our cars’ GPS.” He looked at James and Seli. “Well? You’re coming or not?!” he tossed their guns to them.