“Found it!” yelled Miue as he pressed down the round white button near the bottom of the wall. It was strategically hidden by the sharp corner that the wall made to fully isolate the cell when the metal door was closed.

The whole room started rattling and the floor, the walls and the ceiling began moving backwards, being replaced by metal boards that slid through the adjacent divisions to the cell. When the room’s limits had been fully closed once again, with the exception of the small circle where the target remained, all of the soldiers sighed in relief.

“Ah… I want to sleep…” sluggishly complained M2, cracking his neck while lifting and lowering his arms to release the torpidity that had installed itself in his body after being in the same position for countless days. He put the plastic wrap between his teeth once again and let his body fall back to the ground, the floor trembling with the loud impact. “The bombs…”

“Eh?” interjected Eki as he motioned over to grab his rifle once again. He couldn’t leave it unattended now that this target had been freed.

“It was a lie. There are no bombs in my cell,” confessed M2, chewing on the plastic wrap as he stared at the ceiling absent-mindedly. “I only wanted you to hurry up and take those things down so I could actually move around. Oh… But there are bombs in M1 and M3’s cells. In the bottom cell too, obviously.”

“Right…” acknowledged Eki, arching slightly an eyebrow. He peered over to the other squad members, where he found Mizusaki reporting information to the other team so as to warn them of the explosives in the cells. Then Eki looked back to the target, who was simply lazing around while sprawled on the floor. He motioned his hand to the pocket on the back of his pants and took from there a pair of handcuffs. “Um… I have to take you upstairs now, M2.”

“Ahh… That’s true…” groaned M2 as he turned his head to peer at the soldier. He observed his cell’s intruders, all of them on their guard and ready to shoot him if he showed the smallest of hints that he would attack them or misbehave. “I don’t feel like getting up, though.”

“I’ll give you an energy bar if you do,” proposed Eki while showing the handcuffs to the target. “What would you prefer: chocolate chips, strawberry or nuts?”

“All of them,” readily answered M2 as he lifted his upper body from the floor. He got to a fully standing position and spit out the plastic wrap from his mouth. “I don’t eat since five days ago. One isn’t enough.”

“W-We’ll try to arrange something about that, then…” hesitantly acknowledged Eki as he walked closer to the target. He grabbed his thick, muscled limbs and pulled them to behind his back, closing the handcuffs around the wrists afterwards. “You’ll be taken to the first floor and then restrained inside of one of the humvees that took us here. Behave like you have until now and you’ll get to eat the energy bars and maybe something more once we get to the airport.”

“I told you already. I won’t leave if the others aren’t going to come with me,” warned M2, being guided by the soldier to the entrance of the cell. After closely observing the other soldiers, who kept him under shooting range at all moments, he switched his gaze to the soldier that displayed the squad leader badge on his uniform. “None of us will leave if it means one of us will remain here. You will only be able to take our corpses with you if that’s to be the case. However… it would be your corpses that would have to be taken out before that could happen.”

“We have been ordered to take with us everyone inside of the lab,” explained Murayama, lowering slightly his rifle so he could more easily observe their first target. “If one of the workers of the lab stays behind, which is not recommended, that’s fine. But our priority is to take with us you and those that you refer to with the letter M.”

“Is that so?” sluggishly acknowledged M2 with a slight tilt of his head. “Good luck with that, then. M1 is currently in a good mood since he finally got a new book to read. But I don’t think he’ll like it very much if you interrupt him while he’s reading. Or if you tell him that you intend to open the bottom door.”

“How many of you are there?” asked Miue, also lowering his weapon just the slightest. Their first target didn’t seem to be that dangerous at the moment. Completely insane and a total brat, yes, but not dangerous.

“Right now? Six,” answered M2, quickly switching his gaze to the soldier that had just spoken. “We are kept here because we don’t have defects. But the others with defects have been shipped to other buildings.”

“Where are the other buildings?” asked further Miue, throwing a quick glance to Murayama.

“Don’t know… Don’t care…” answered M2, shrugging his massive shoulders. “M5 probably knows since he came from there. Where are the energy bars?”

“They’re upstairs,” answered Eki, continuing to lead the target out of the cell.

“Yasuhisa,” called Ikusaki while motioning his hand up to catch his attention. When Eki looked over in his direction, he arched slightly one of his eyebrows. “Will you be alright with… him?”

“This is nothing that I can’t handle, Shouichi,” acknowledged Eki, smiling softly to his fellow soldier. “I’ll see you at the airport.”

“Just a little advice for the floor below, since you’re probably going to go there next,” sluggishly added M2 all of a sudden. He lazily yawned and then continued talking. “Don’t order him around. It will only make it harder on you. Or get you killed. Probably the latter. Yes, definitely the latter.”

“…” The four soldiers kept staring as Eki continued to walk M2 down the corridor, their weapons still locked and loaded in his direction. Once they lost the silhouette of the two males due to the darkness around them, they finally lowered the rifles.

“Well, this one didn’t seem that hard to deal with,” pointed out Mizusaki as he released a soft sigh. “Though I have to say that he’s quite cuckoo in the head. Will the other five be exactly like this?”

“Probably…” acknowledged Miue, taking one more glance to the insides of the cell. “But the ones that have bombs installed in their cells are most likely worse. The bombs must be there for some reason, right?”

“True,” also acknowledged Murayama, giving a sharp nod with his head. He fully motioned from under the frame of the big door and gave a jerk with his head to call the other soldiers. “Let’s clear the rest of this floor and then move to the one below. We need to certify ourselves that there’s no worker hiding here. While we are at it, let’s formulate some sort of strategy to deal with the target below us. We can’t order him to do anything so I guess we have to find something capable of persuading him like Eki did with that nutcase.”

“Yes, sir!”

The other three soldiers immediately followed after their commander, resuming once again with their search through the remainder rooms of the floor.