Page 187 of Nothing Special X: The Last Stand

“It’s God,” Tech whispered.

No one spoke.

Tech listened, face angled toward the floor. Xander watched his eyes behind the lenses. They moved once. Twice. Then widened.

“Holy shit.”

Free was listening too, and the expression that crossed his face made Xander’s skin prickle.

Shock. Recognition…fear.

“What?” Curtis whispered, sitting up straighter. “What’s happening?”

Tech didn’t answer right away.

Curtis’s eyes narrowed. “Please don’t say the plan involves my dads.”

“No,” Tech said.

Curtis relaxed by half an inch.

“Now I know what took so long.” Tech turned towards him. “God called someone else.”

His stomach clenched with nerves. “Who?”

“They’ll be here soon,” Tech whispered. “If they’re not already.”

They?

The warehouse had been frightening all night, but now…it felt different. Xander didn’t know why. “Are they police?”

Free’s expression was grave. “No.”

He glanced over at one of the kidnappers, who’d turned halfway toward them.

“You’re going to want to steel your stomach,” Tech said. “Or just don’t look.”

Xander

Free leaned in so close his lips brushed Xander’s ear. “Here they come.”

Tech’s grin was audible. “Oh, this is gonna be good.”

The captor leaning against the far wall looked up from his phone. “Hey! I’ve already told you to shut the fuck—”

A gloved hand shot out of the darkness behind him, seized his chin, and wrenched. The crack of his neck echoed like a gunshot. His body jerked once, then vanished backward into shadow, dragged away without a sound.

Xander yelped. Before the scream formed fully in his chest, a figure in a long white overcoat slid across the concrete on his knees, coat flaring behind him as he came to a sharp, impossible stop in front of him.

A gloved palm was clamped over his mouth. “Shhh.”

The oversized hood hid all of him, except for his dark sunglasses, and full peach lips.

Footsteps pounded around the corner. The man in white tilted his head, listening. He reached behind his back with his free hand and drew a short black rod. When one of the kidnapper’s raised his pistol, the rod snapped upward and telescoped into six feet of steel with a wicked point gleaming at the end. He rotated it in three lightning-fast moves that struck the collarbone, ribs, then temple. Xander heard each bone snap before the captor dropped, unconscious to the floor.

Xander didn’t have time to recover before the front doors blew inward with an explosion that shook the walls.

Two men in black stepped through the smoke. One wore a knee-length trench coat, its low hood shadowing a dark beard. The other moved just behind him, as equally silent and commanding.