Agape (Latin)

/agápē/

noun

a selfless love that puts others before itself

Luke's POV

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"When I see her back at the colony, I am going to-"

"Probably kiss her countless time and tell her to never do that again, which she will do," Michael interrupted me, loading his gun with a magazine of bullets.

"No-" I was interrupted again by a certain, annoying, now green haired boy.

"Dude, when you get back, you are going to be so happy she is alive that you won't care that she snuck on the raid."

I rolled my eyes at this, despite him probably being right about that. How could she though? My hands kept running through my hair in frustration and fear. Why couldn't she listen for once and be safe? That's all I wanted, was to be able to keep her safe. And she wouldn't let me.

"You guys?" Calum broke me out of my silent reverie. "Sorry, but we're here," he informed me and Michael.

I sighed, moving from my current position to look back at the quadrant in the back. All of them were wearing black to cover all parts of their body. Some had been fighting with the colony's army for years, wanting to defend it in every possible way, others were new to the army. Twenty year olds were sitting, holding their guns while shaking like leaves.

"All right troops," I began in a booming voice, "when we get the all clear from security we move out. The only reason you should come back to this van is if you are injured severely, you get the Code, or there is an abort signal radioed in by the person in the security center. Understood?"

Fearful nods were given all throughout the van as Michael rolled his eyes and flipped me off in response to my orders.

"Cal?" the beautiful voice I had learned to memorized spoke through the receiver.

"Melissa, nice to hear from you. How are we looking?" Calum asked, looking over the records coming through on his computer.

"Release the kraken," she said jokingly, laughing halfway through her sentence.

I rolled my eyes but couldn't stop the massive grin from exploding on my face. Despite her not listening to me and staying back at the colony, I was happy she was here. Even though she wasn't beside me, there was a sense of comfort that came with her being in my general area.

"Move out," I barked at the troops. I could only imagine Melissa as she heard me through the speakers, rolling her eyes at my tone and coming up with thousands of her sassy comebacks that she could say to me if she were here.

"You need to get out of Melissaville and focus Luke," Michael said, coming up beside me and breaking my daze as we walked closer to the building.

"I can't help it. I'm just imagining her rolling her eyes at me right now."

"Well doing that may get you killed, then you can imagine her as you float up to the big white clouds up there," he sassily responded.

"I won't get killed." He opened his mouth, but I beat him to his next sentence. "And I won't get captured either."

He sighed heavily, shaking his head as we continued our brisk pace, finally reaching the door with all the other troops. "You better hope you don't because Melissa would flip."

I shook my head and shrugged it off as a joke, but inside, I was cringing at the thought because I knew what he was saying was true.

The door opened after a younger soldier up front with jet black hair and tattoos all up his arms, who I recognized as Ty, entered in an access code from Calum. When the door opened, all the men filed to their assigned area to search for the Code. It was now that it settled in that the raid had begun, the final raid that would be the start and the end of this war. This raid would be the one that would level the battlefield for the battles to come. The one that would help us to bring an end to the short tyranny of the White Coats over this nation. But it also occurred to me that if this raid wasn't successful, we would all be doomed and everyone on this mission would be killed. With that thought in mind, I knew I had one priority on this mission.

To get Melissa out.

Melissa's POV

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It had been an hour since all of the quadrants had filed in the building, and not one had radioed that they had found the Code or picked up traces where it could be. While that worried me, I was glad that none of the teams had called for backup or reported an injury.

The chair I was seated in made a sudden squeaking noise which made me jump up and reach for my gun laying beside me. In the past half hour, I had gotten extremely nervous concerning the security of the building and if staff were going to come into this room. The doors were now barricaded shut and all locks on the door were sealed shut. Within fifteen minutes of Luke heading into the building I had ripped out the heart monitor from my colony suit since it wouldn't stop beeping to alert me that my heart rate was higher than normal, and that annoyed very quickly.

Ashton and Calum had both radioed in to give me updates on the quadrants in the building. As of ten minutes ago, every team was over two-thirds of the way clear with their assigned spots, which made me wonder if they skipped over something. But I was assured that they were checking the rooms thoroughly and nothing was around to give clues as to the whereabouts of the Code.

I paced the room, wiping my sweaty palms on my pants and trying to breath normally and not hyperventilate. The only thing my mind could concentrate on was Luke, where he was, and what he was doing.

A figure that looked familiar appeared on the screen as I caught a glance from the corner of my eye. Based on where the camera was located, the person was on the ground floor. I ran around the monitors trying to find all the cameras on the ground floor for another look at him, in hopes to identify who the mystery person was.

The next picture I had of him was more of a close up and I could see his facial structure. He wore a sly grin on his face as he strutted down the hallway. It looked menacing and scared me as I tried to recognize him. It was Michael, but why would Michael be on the ground floor? He was with Luke on the tenth and eleventh floors of the building. As I was about to shrug it off and let the uneasiness pass in my stomach, he came up to two of our troops scouting the floor. When they opened their mouths to talk, gunshots rang out and the once lively men were crumbled to the tile floor within seconds. My hand came up to my mouth in utter shock. Why would Michael kill our men? Then I realized something different about the terrorist roaming the halls.

He had red hair.

With a sudden flare of recognition, I called Ashton and Calum on a two way call.

"Hello?" an Australian sounding voice answered.

"Ashton-"

"And Calum," the second voice interrupted.

"Michael," I barely got out, too shocked to be able to say anything.

"What about Michael?" both voices almost immediately asked, worry apparent in their voice.

"His twin. He's in the building and just killed two troops."

"Call the search off, we're leaving" Ashton said before forcefully hanging up.

I followed my orders and grabbed my earpiece to announce to the troops to abort the mission and leave the fastest route accessible.

"Code red. Please proceed to your nearest exit and have your quadrant leader verify when everyone is out of the building," I said into the mouthpiece before getting to work to seal off Michael's twin from the rest of the building.

As I was trying to close the emergency walls, I caught a glimpse of the security monitor beside me as Michael's twin smiles viciously while waving at me. Chills crept their way up my spine as I broke into a cold sweat. He raised his gun and, in perfect accuracy, shot the camera lens, making it stop rolling footage and the screen go fuzzy.

Luke's POV

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5 minutes before the Code Red:

"1...2...3," Michael called as we tried and move the safe's door again.

We had come across a safe with large encrypted coding. When we opened it there was one small problem, the door was all manual, forcing us to have to open it.

"That's enough space for one of us to get in and the other will hold it to make sure it doesn't close," Michael shouted to me as I ran around to the entrance where he is.

We had been trying to open the circular door with dimensions from the floor to the ceiling for the past 15 minutes and finally had enough room for one of us to get in to search for the Code.

"You go in Luke. I got the door."

"Are you sure?" I asked him, knowing he just had the most physically challenging jobs.

"Yea, I'm positive. Just don't take long," he panted, out of breath.

"I won't."

I hurried in, to find a metal desk in the center of the white tiled room. There wasn't a chair by it or anything, simply a file folder lying on top of it. Without opening it, I grabbed it and ran for the exit of the safe where Michael stepped away from the door when I was through.

"Did you open it yet?" he asked, his face fire engine red from the workout he just had as we walk toward the exit.

Before I had the chance to respond our earpieces were filled with sound of an angel's voice.

"Code red. Please proceed to your nearest exit and have your quadrant leader verify when everyone is out of the building," Melissa's voice said, filling my body with fear.

My heart dropped into my stomach as I glanced at Michael, whose face had drained from all color. All of a sudden, we were sprinting back towards the elevator we rode up on and headed to the first floor.

"We're going out the window," I mumbled to Michael as I began harnessing myself so we could descend as soon as possible.

"What about Melissa?" he asked, apprehension in his voice.

When I looked up at him, his face is questioning and full of curiosity as to my decision.

"She won't leave until everyone else is out of this building, so I'm following orders and getting out as soon as possible so she will get out before something bad happens."

My hair was dripping with sweat as the elevator dinged to signal we had arrived to our floor. I ran around the corridor, Mikey following close behind, to the wall of windows facing towards the van we had came in. Both, Mikey and I, hooked up our harnesses to the rope and started descending to the ground with our backpacks on our backs and the file tucked in my suit.

Our feet hit the ground and we unhooked ourselves before breaking out into another sprint. When we finally reached the van, we were the last to arrive and the only to be sweating through our suits.

"All of quadrant A and B is out of the building Melissa," Calum said into the receiver.

"Put Luke on the line," she demanded.

My heart fluttered as I stepped forward and took hold of the microphone and earpiece to communicate with Melissa.

"Luke?" she asked helplessly, sounding stressed on her end of the line.

"Yea, it's me princess," I said in a soothing tone. When those words were out of my mouth, I heard sobs from the other end and immediately knew something was wrong.

"Luke," she sighed deeply before continuing, "I hope you know how much I love it when you call me princess, and when you hold my hand like it's the last thing you're going to do, and I love it when you tease me, even though I act like I hate your guts whenever you do, and-"

"Baby, calm down. What's wrong? You're rambling," I asked, growing more worried by the second.

"Nothing baby," she responded lightly. "I just miss you and I wanted you to be safe and you weren't out of the building yet."

"I'm fine. Are you out?" I began to panic as Calum started pulling away, staring straight ahead as he drove for the original person.

"Yes, I'm out and in the van. Ashton is pulling out of the lot."

I released a sigh, relieved that she was okay.

"I just wanted to say I love you." I heard a sniffle before she continued. "I love you so much and I can't stand being away from you right now."

"I'll see you soon baby. Everything will be fine," I assured her, tears coming to my eyes as well.

A crackly sob was released into her receiver and traveled to my earpiece within seconds.

"Say it back," she begged with half of her voice. "Tell me you love me."

"I love you baby. I love you so much," I told her truthfully, but confused as to why I had to tell her at this very moment.

Michael made a gagging face in the corner as Calum continued to stare straight ahead at the road, not making a sound.

"I have to go, but I love you. Forever," she began, her voice choking up as she held back a sob that I could only assume was one of joy.

"And always," I finished, a smile beaming off my face as she disconnected.

I couldn't wait to see her beautiful face back at the colony.

Edited: 14 January 2017