[Some mention of blood at a few points in this chapter, but no full on gore.]

The boys walked through the hole’s entrance and into the belly of the beast. All except Aron who was hesitant to put a single foot inside the coarse concrete tunnel.

“What- oh,” Junior said. “You don’t want to go in there, I’m guessing.”

Aron shifted from one leg to the other. “I’ve just… never been powerless. I really don’t like… um.”

“He’s terrified,” Ren interjected. “Absolutely petrified, really. Haven’t felt him so anxious before.”

“Hm, it’s understandable.” Junior looked back and forth. The longer they waited, the more time the enemy had to prepare. And the potential end of the loop was drawing near.

“Alright! Aron, stay behind. I suppose I can’t fault you for not wanting to go where you can’t use your ability.”

Minhyun kept looking back at the lone boys silhouette while on the way down. He had a strong desire to stay behind with him and comfort him. Aron had always seemed pretty sure of himself. Not the most socially apt, but just at the right place between shy and cocky. Minhyun committed to spending a few moments on telling Aron that he was still useful and worthy even without godlike powers.

He side-eyed Ren who of course could sense his intentions on some level. He wanted to ask if Ren would tell him specifically what Aron was feeling but realized that he had an easier way of making the boy on the surface feel like part of the team.

Minhyun re-linked the five of them. The distance to the surface barely strained his still developing ability.

“I can sense several people,” he sent telepathically, “all doing fairly frantic stuff. Our entrance must have caused a ruckus beyond what they were prepared to deal with.”

Junior responded. “Don’t worry. I can tell their next move as soon as they decide on one.”

“Good luck,” Aron sent.

Inside the bunker was a corridor not much different from the tunnel except for the fact that it wasn’t on a slope. It was illuminated by sharp halogen lights and had a few thick doors leading away. Minhyun felt reminded of the interior of a run-down submarine.

“Duck!” Junior shouted into the link as he shoved Ren to the side. Minhyun hid in a doorway which was conveniently sat back into the wall. Ren was similarly pressed against the opposing door while Junior stood in the middle of the corridor. Where did Baekho go? He must have shifted.

Following the minds of the boys in a high stress situation plus sensing the attacker's presence was taxing.

While Minhyun wasn’t able to see for himself how many men were attacking them, he could see through Junior that there had to be at least eight, with more coming from a door further ahead. It was always a bit difficult to tell what Junior saw in the present and what was part of his future-sense, but the boy himself seemed to have no trouble telling the difference.

With the bare minimum of movement Junior evaded the bullets of two rifles. He jumped, rotated and back flipped elegantly in exactly the right places to let the stream of metal fly a hairs width past him.

As the men were closing in he took the initiative and leap frogged over the first guy to step into the faces of two others at once. He had only just landed as he took to the air again, kicking the rifles from their owners’ hands.

It looked almost choreographed – as if the goons had agreed to lose beforehand. Junior knew their every move before their muscles had even received the signals from their brains. The fact that they were probably trained to follow certain standard tactics made their approach all the more predictable.

This all Minhyun gathered from passively observing the link and gave the information right over to Ren who didn’t have the comfort of knowing for sure that Junior wasn’t in any danger – unable to see through someone’s eyes the way Minhyun did.

Still, a boy with only regular physical limitations couldn’t expect to take on a total of ten heavy guards at once and never run out of stamina. It wasn’t long before Junior asked the others for help.

As if on cue, Baekho popped right behind the goons.

The white tiger walked straight into the melee battle and shot a ceaseless stream off his Twi orbs from his hands that he held in a ‘kamehameha’ position. The orbs cast strange shadows on the walls, revealing every crack and crease. He didn’t care to aim, he simply bombarded the group at one orb per second. Junior had no trouble evading. Several bones broke as the projectiles impacted.

Once Baekho was close enough, he kicked the nearest agent on the ground in the face, making him fly back and sending red splatters from the goon's split lips onto the concrete.

Minhyun decided that this was his call to action and stepped out. There was a rifle laying on the floor and one of the agents was slowly crawling towards it, blood pouring from his nostrils. Minhyun grabbed the weapon and hopped out of reach. He didn’t know how to use it but the fight was close range at this point anyway.

Sending the weapon’s thick end down on the crawling man’s face took care of him. The dream walker had never actually hit someone before. It was beyond weird. Faces were a lot softer than he would have thought.

Peripherally, Minhyun registered what Ren had been up to the entire time. Two Conmotes, taller than most humans with freakishly long necks, were cutting off the retreat of the battered agents and at the same time engaging the reinforcements that had come from the other end of the corridor. Those men hadn’t been in Minhyun’s mental reach before, so he figured they had been hiding in the houses above ground.

He felt a bit useless. Junior was directing Baekho through the link with short commands to make sure no agent of the void escaped, Ren took care of the rest and Minhyun… well, except for supplying the link he might as well have been with Aron right now.

Checking back with the boy on the surface he was told that several agents had been trying to engage them in front of the destroyed entrance, but of course there was no way to get past Aron as long as he was outside the force field blocking his powers.

***

The thin corridor was amess with red splatters, torn uniforms and even the occasional dismembered finger. Minhyun was careful not to step into the growing blood puddles. This was all a bit much to take in but it helped immensely to have Aron practically by his side, so to speak. The powerful boy had seen – and caused – his fair share of mayhem.

“The last room,” Junior sent, just as he had finished surveying the remaining bodies. The quartet walked slowly in that direction. They had mere minutes left before the end of the loop – or world or whatever. If they could stop it at all the opportunity would be here and now.

Minhyun heard Junior mumble through the link. The boy had just gained a random piece of information about the device blocking Aron. The generator for it was in the room directly to their left. They had a short mental conversation about whether they should break in and inspect or even destroy it but since time was of the essence, they figured there wasn’t much resistance left ahead and Aron was good to have on the surface in case more reinforcements showed up.

Junior turned the huge handle on the door at the end of the corridor and Baekho slammed his weight into it, aided by a Twi orb. The metal whined pitifully but gave way.

The room was a lot fuller that the sparse part of the bunker they had seen so far. Electronic equipment lined the walls, two man sat on stations left and right of the main attraction – the strange object the boys had only seen as blueprints.

Evidently the men in the room were either peaceful researchers or cowardly guards. They had their arms in the air and were pleading for their lives.

“Fine,” Junior said to them. “You stop doing what you’re doing and hand over all data you have. Is there anything in the works already? Any procedure you’ve set into motion? No? Alright, so what is all this?”

Ren had created a fear based Conmote for intimidation purposes. Minhyun found it fascinating how this particular kind of construct was basically self-sustaining as long as it kept giving people the creeps.

The researchers explained that they themselves had no idea what the artefact was and what they were even doing. All they had were orders for how to proceed. Inject 10 Watts of energy here, read some infrared output there. They weren’t even scientists, just goons with a knack for computers.

“What was your next order?” Junior sounded aggressive, but due to the link Minhyun could tell that it was a façade. Junior fully intended to spare their lives and take them into custody just in case they knew more than they currently let on.

A loud bang came from the ceiling.

Ren was shot in the back of the head and dropped dead.

Several more bullets hailed down from an automated machine gun swinging on a robotic arm. The remaining boys took shelter out of reach of the arm while Ren’s corpse received more and more holes.

Baekho collapsed next to Minhyun, blood flowing rapidly from a bullet wound in his leg.

Junior cursed. Again, he hadn’t foreseen events, which should have been impossible. And Ren had paid the price.