Chapter 18! 1.4K reads! Man, I'm surprised.

Ben's POV

All the agents were slumped on the floor, unconscious. Erica produced some zip ties and tossed them to me. I set about binding the men up. Mike dragged them all one by one to a corner. Zoe and Kristy were still there, though both of them were well-beat up. I had a bruise on my forehead and my foot hurt as well from my sudden crash. Erica was tried, but in perfect shape. The punch she had received earlier was now a big purple spot on her face. Mike was fine.

"Okay, what about these two?" Erica asked. Mike held Kristy still while I bound Kristy's hands to a pole. Mike did so to Zoe as well, though he hesitated at first.

"You'll never stop it in time!" Kristy yelled, but fell silent as soon as Mike pointed a gun at her.

"Just tell me what you know, and what your devious plans are," he said. "Everything."

Kristy hesitated. Mike placed his hand on the trigger, ready to fire. There was the sound of the gun clicking. Kristy paled and spoke up.

"Okay, okay!" she said. "We have fourteen pre-programmed missiles that will activate when we press the button on the detonator that will take about ten minutes to angle, aim and fire in 14 places all over the Hawaiian islands, which will submerge, killing several hundreds of thousands of people, if not a million."

Zoe spoke up next. "There is a jet waiting for us right outside this building that will take us to Unknown Location X, a place far from Hawaii. We'll escape the blast and make millions off of the damage. RATT's financial debts and previous verdicts will be lost! There will be no evidence at all."

They both laughed menacingly. Erica pulled her own gun and pointed it at Zoe, then turned to me. "Get the detonator."

I headed that way, grabbed the detonator and returned to Erica's side. She tossed me her gun, then placed the detonator in a corner.

"What does the computer have to do?" she asked.

"It has all the programming," Kristy said. "Though you can't stop it. There is a fail-safe that Zoe put in. If I don't launch it before seven tonight, then it will automatically go off and send a signal."

I looked at my watch. There was only an hour to seven. We had one hour to hack into the base, stop the system's automatic programming and stop the missiles from going off.

Erica immediately began to type into the keyboard, trying to clear out the numbers and letters on everything. There was a giant screen behind her, and it had a map of Hawaii with fourteen blinking dots all around it. I figured that those were the places that the missiles would go to. They were evenly spread out on the map.

All of a sudden, there was a sudden beep. Erica and I swiveled around. Mike, whose gun was aimed at the sisters, was laying on the floor, unconscious. Kristy and Zoe were no longer chained to their poles. Kristy's hand had come down on the red button on the detonator. She and Zoe had a devilish grin on their faces.

"What. Have. You. Done?" Erica yelled. Her fingers flew across the keyboard, but a warning appeared on the screen.

WARNING: MISSILES ARE LAUNCHED. CANCEL UNPROGRAMMABLE

Erica swore under under her breath and ran over to Kristy. She kicked the detonator out of her hand and threw a series of punches and kicks at Kristy and Zoe, who easily dodged them before running to the doorway.

"This is my revenge on you, Ben! Today you will die!" Kristy yelled. She pulled a small heart out of her pocket. It looked so oddly familiar, though. It was...

Oh no. It was the very keychain-dagger that Erica had given me for Valentine's day ten years ago. My mouth widened in surprise and so did Erica's. She reflexively turned to me. I shook my head in dismay. How did she get her hands on it?

She raced towards me, turning it into a dagger. A moment later there was a piercingly sharp sound in my ears everything started blurring around me. I felt the bottom of my waist, and I felt red liquid. My shirt was red. Kristy left the dagger in and ran off. I clutched my stomach and fell to the floor. Erica whipped her head around, gasped and screamed. She ran towards me.

Erica's POV

She did not just-

"Ben!" I screamed before I could stop myself. Mike gasped, gave me a worried look and went on to catch Kristy and Zoe. I ran over to Ben, who was sprawled across the floor with his eyes closed. He had been stabbed right in the abdomen, which was now flowing with blood. I winced at the sight. I overheard Mike talking to the police, who took Kristy and Zoe away.

Did you do it? I mouthed to Mike, who nodded. He held up his phone and smiled. Calling the police must have been his last act before passing out.

"What's going on?" one guy asked as the other two took them outside.

Mike narrated everything and showed them his CIA ID while more men marched in and took away the unconscious men as well. I rushed to the giant screen. The missiles were headed a certain way that needed to be stopped.

"Mike!" I yelled. My voice was choked. He finished narrating what happened to the officer and rushed over to me as soon as the man left.

"These missiles... they need to be stopped. The timer over there," I said, pointing to the bottom right side of the screen. The timer read 00:08:36 and was counting down to zero. Mike, an expert hacker as always, immediately began typing out a series of reversing codes.

"I'll try to make them crash into the ocean, like far away from land," he said. "I'm sure I can hack into the pre-programmed database and make a last-minute change in the programming."

Even though he tried to sound as confident as possible, there was a nervous edge to his voice.

I turned my focus back to Ben. I ran over to him and checked his pulse. He was still alive, but not for long.

"Ben?"

He opened his eyes, and they were full of pain.

I squeezed his hand. "You won't be like this for much longer."

I closed my eyes and pulled the small dagger out of his abdomen. It was coated in blood, so I took a tissue, opened it up and placed the dagger in it. Then I turned my attention to Ben. I knew I had to stop the bleeding, so I grabbed the closest piece of cloth to me, which was a piece of fabric. It took me a moment to realize that this was the scarf that Mike gave Zoe back when we were in school, 12 years ago. I quickly wrapped it around his waist and secured it tightly. We needed to get medical help, and fast.

Ben sat up against the wall and gestured towards Mike, indicating that there were more important matters to attend to first.

"Erica? We have a problem," Mike said. "There's been a slight disruption. I re-programmed thirteen of the missiles, but the last one, that's the one that's headed to the Big Island. If I reprogrammed all of them, then the timer would have ended. But it's still going, which means the last one was unsuccessful in rerouting itself."

I ran over to him. The timer read 00:01:06. I looked to Mike, concerned. "The last one must have been their fail-safe."

"It's inevitable," he said.

"But we still have a whole entire minute!" I said, trying hard but failing to hide the exasperation in my mouth. "Is it still not possible?"

"All I can do is try." He continued to work. There was a small box in the bottom left saying that all the thirteen missiles had crashed into the ocean, far from any land at all. The timer now read 00:00:34. Lines of worry etched across his face. He took his hands off the keyboard and looked to me.

"It's too late," I mumbled, realizing it as well. "We couldn't stop it in time."

The timer read 00:00:12 and was now flashing across the screen in big, red blocks.

"It will hit the big island, but the impact will hit us too," Mike said. "I just want you to know that it's been amazing knowing you. You're so sweet and smart."

We headed over to Ben, whose eyes were wide. He was obviously still in pain, but the sight of the timer said it all. All I could manage was "I'm sorry, Ben."

"It's been awesome knowing you all," Mike said and the three of us huddled close together.

00:00:04. 00:00:03. 00:00:02. 00:00:01.

00:00:00.

Suspense! Will they die?

I'm actually surprised that no one has tagged me yet. Don't tag me because I said that. I do NOT want to answer a bunch of questions. Nope.