Won't Let You Down (Book Two of The Unmatched Records)

Chapter Eighteen

Dig simply nodded, and Thea drew an arrow, the two of them running down the hall. They made it to the end of the corridor and checked both ways. "OK, maybe I'm wrong, but shouldn't there be soldiers swarming us right now?" Thea hissed.

Dig nodded, heading down his end of the corridor. Thea followed behind him, both of them ready to shoot at a moment's notice. They came to a closed door at the end, and they looked at each other in concern. Dig finally reached for the door handle, and Thea backed up, drawing back her bow. Dig opened the door, and Thea sprinted in, raising her bow, Dig right behind her, gun raised. Four things then happened at once.

The lights turned on, practically blinding the two of them.

They saw a lit laboratory, and Thea felt like she could throw up for hours at the sight of dissected aliens lying on tables, Dig's horrified "oh, my God" ringing in her ears.

Then the door slid shut behind them, making them turn around. "Guys!" Thea shouted, only to hear static in her comms.

Then everything around her went up in flames.

***

By the time the four heroes make it to the lab, the corpses are nothing but charred piles, and the computers are bubbling piles of melted metal.

Dig and Thea were lying just inside the doorway, J'onn checking on them. Parts of their uniforms completely singed away. Dig appeared to have gotten the most of it, burns littering his arms and body. Somehow, impossibly, he was also starting to stir.

Thea wasn't so lucky. Her leg was bent at an impossible angle, her left arm a complete charred mess. When Oliver bent to check her pulse, it was barely there. "Get them back to the D.E.O.," he ordered Cisco. The meta nodded and opened a breach, grabbing Thea to take through first. J'onn was right behind him with Dig. Oliver chewed his lip, watching him go, before running with the Kryptonians back the other way.

They nearly ran into Maggie, Dinah, Rene, and Nyssa. "Are they OK?" Maggie immediately asked.

"They're bad, but they're alive," Oliver answered heavily. "J'onn and Cisco took them back to the D.E.O."

"That just leaves the top floor," Nyssa said worriedly. "We saw no one on the floor below."

"And there is a severe lack of bodies on this one, too," Rene looked around.

"Good thing there's a large number of badasses on the top floor," Maggie looked up.

"Stay on this floor, make sure no one gets upstairs," Oliver ordered. "No one."

He didn't give them time to answer. He just ran for the stairs, Kara and Clark behind him.

***

"It's like they knew we'd come up here!" Malcolm shouted as he shot two arrows at the same time, whipping around to stab another soldier in the neck.

"You'd think they'd have been better fighters, though!" Laurel called back, screaming down half a dozen soldiers before running at them, flipping two knives into her hands.

"Putting several dumb soldiers together does not make them better!" Slade agreed, his sword slicing through three soldiers' necks at the same time.

Alex shot both her guns at the same time, taking down two soldiers before standing up. "Definitely not," she agreed, reaching for her comms. "We're clear up here," she reported, only to frown when she got static. "Hello?"

"Overwatch?" Malcolm turned around, frowning.

"Wonderful," Slade growled.

Footsteps came from down the hall, and the four spun around, raising their weapons. "Easy!" Oliver came out, hands raised slightly, Kara and Clark behind him.