32 Stealing Lives

"Call the guards, I'll handle him."

I fell deaf to her words. Romeo had been so pitiful and innocent only moments ago. The change was too much for me. And now that I knew what they could do, I wasn't going to leave Saye with him.

"Romeo…" I tried reasoning but he pulled her hair harder. Saye closed her eyes, but she didn't scream. She smiled and looked up at Romeo, "You can't hurt me, don't you know. You're just a robo-"

I screamed at the top of my lungs and stopped Saye from speaking. She widened her eyes to look at me and I frowned at her. What the hell was she doing? 

Them finding out that they were actually robot like entities (not actually robots) was the last thing we needed. They'd go crazy…Saye should learn to watch her words. She immediately understood what she had almost said and kept quiet. 

Romeo dragged her to a wall, "So I can't hurt you," he admitted and hit her head against the wall, "But the wall can!"

I rushed forward and grabbed his hands when I heard Saye try to not scream, "Romeo! Stop! Please!"

He turned around to look at me, "Then kill yourself Ashe. I'll stop then. Just kill yourself right in front of me now, and all this will stop."

"I-"My hands trembled. Kill myself? Of course. They couldn't kill me, so I'll have to do it to myself.

"No," I said, with a conviction I had never felt before. That's probably the moment when I realized that I actually loved myself.

Romeo shrugged and tortured Saye harder. I grabbed the mop on the side to distract him. I never did, though, because my hands went numb as I saw Saye too fall on the ground. She looked dead.

"What did you do to her?" I whispered in shock. Blood dyed her blonde hair in streaks of horrifying red. The mop in my hand clattered to the floor when Romeo came for me next and threw me against the wall.

"Please," I begged, having no option left, "Please…leave me alone."

His face convoluted in a sneer, "How can I? You took ten years of my life from me. You stole my right to live freely," he leaned closer, "Do you know, I missed my nephew's first birthday...I missed many things in the lives of my family. And now, I don't think I'm family anymore, even though I was born into it." 

I could feel the sadness in his words. And I wanted to comfort him, I really did, but my situation called for other things. I remembered what I had just told Saye. My eyes fell on the delicate part of Romeo's neck.

I grabbed his arm in pain as he hit me against the wall once more. He felt my tight grip and tried to shake it off. I let my hand travel up his arm and to his neck, probably sending chills through his spine.

He tensed there and stopped for a second in surprise, "What are you doing?"

That second of surprise was all I needed. I grabbed the almost invisible latch on his neck and flipped it open.

I looked back at his eyes quick enough to see his eyes roll up and he fell down with a thud. 

Finally sighing in relief, I dragged the boy into a room and made him lie face down as I opened up the System Controls. A holograph popped up with very few options on it. 

'Set to Sleep' 'Survival Mode' and 'Enhance'. The last option, however was locked for me and I couldn't access it. I wasn't surprised when I saw Survival Mode now magically switched on. But how?

....

Lucas disregarded the chaos ensuing outside the Locked Room and focused on perfecting his changes to a point that he was evilly satisfied. After he was done changing a few more things, he rechecked a few other things before going to the main page.

"What?" he asked himself in surprise as he saw Survival Mode suddenly disabled for Romeo.

The lights flickered again and before he knew it, he had fallen into a pitch black darkness. Everything suddenly fell quiet.

The whirring of the air conditioning had stopped and the only thing he could hear now were his shallow breaths of excitement. He slowly turned his head toward the exit door and strained to hear the voices of the frustrated employees.

"A power-cut? At this time of day?" He wondered. What might be the reason? Such a big company was definitely not used to having a building wide black out even on rainy days. 

He saw a speck of torch light moving in the distance. He saw it flit here and there before many other employees opened their own phones and switched on the torchlight option. 

"Why is there a power failure?" he heard someone asking. 

A cough came from a man. The electrician had just come up the stairs holding his own torch, "Something strange is draining out all the power," he informed and looked around. "I checked the meters, it's coming from there," he confirmed, pointing to the Locked Room.

Heads turned toward the room Luca was in and webs of slight fear grew from within. He was standing in a corner of the room with an 8 feet black server box almost hiding him. He made haste and looked at the screen. Enabling Romeo's Survival Mode once more, he closed the whole thing and stuffed the golden card in his pocket.

He put his innocent face on and walked out of the room, pretending to be dazed, "Hey guys, I was just in there doing guard duty and everything just went blank, any idea why?" 

(Somebody give him an Oscar for best actor)

...…..

I caught myself frowning again when I saw Survival Mode turn back on and glow from grey to blue. I swipe it back to disable for one last time and thankfully, it didn't changed back to blue again.

That's when I realized something. There was no way the settings would have changed if there wasn't anyone controlling the system remotely. Saye might have been right…but who was doing it? And how?

I closed the latch tight and turned to look at Romeo's face. My heart was in worry before but now, it was at rest. Adrien would deal with the other guys. I would figure out a way to shut down their survival mode too. I won't disable Adrien's survival mode, though. Not this time.

I liked the nice Adrien way too much. 

Sighing, I got up and ran a hand through my hair and turned around to check up on Saye and Adrien. Though I never made it past the door.

My feet squeaked to a stop as I saw who was standing there, frozen in shock. And it wasn't Saye.