“Heeey… Where are the energy bars?” asked M2 for the hundredth time since they started climbing the service stairs to reach the first floor above the surface.

“As I said, I’ll give them to you once we reach the first floor. I don’t have any on me at the moment,” explained Eki, also for the hundredth time, while releasing a soft, masked sigh. It seemed that this target was quite stubborn on matters concerning food.

“I’ll squash you against the stairs if you’re lying,” warned M2 as he continued climbing the stairs, always closely observing his surroundings. He had never been in such a place, full of laces of stairs whether he looked up or down.

“I’m not lying so you can rest assure,” tried to sooth down Eki, rolling slightly his eyes around as he continued to keep the target under an always present gaze. “You said you haven’t been able to sit down or eat anything for five days. How can you move as if nothing happened then?”

“You can’t do something as simple as that?” asked back M2, with a voice that sounded way to surprised for him to actually be mocking Eki. “I usually spend a week closed down in that cell. Ah… but then I get to go outside for three days and during that time I eat the nasty food they give me.”

“…” Eki intently studied the supposed ‘super soldier’. He had the physic of a well-trained soldier, at least that was true. His well-developed muscles and big frame, as well as the way he walked like a wild predator hunting for prey, told him that he had been worked to the bone in terms of body to body combat and other types of fighting techniques. He was slightly affected in the head, that much was as clear as day, but he still seemed to be very smart. “Are you six… really super soldiers?”

M2 came to a sudden halt when he reached the base between two laces of stairs. Slowly, he turned his head around to look at the solder walking behind him. “We are.”

Eki’s whole body shook with fright at what he saw in front of him. The brown eyes of the target now housed a strangely accentuated red glow to them, partially illuminating the dark stairs. If Eki had thought of him as a predator before, then now he knew with 100% of sure that that name was the only thing that could accurately describe M2, as the terrifying and deadly presence that he was currently displaying came to prove. There were some war veterans that possessed a blood-chilling aura to them... but their eyes didn’t glow crimson red.

M2 fully turned around to face Eki and lowered his upper body, closing the distance between their faces. He intently observed the soldier and tilted his head slightly. “How easy it would be for me to take these handcuffs off and get rid of you… No, I wouldn’t even need to take these off to do it. Not for you and not for all the people on the floor above us. It would be just like crushing ants beneath my foot.”

Gulping down hard, Eki slowly opened his mouth to speak while he tried to prevent his body from teetering with fear. “Why haven’t you, then?”

“I wouldn’t get to eat the energy bars if I did,” simply answered M2, tilting his head slightly more as he looked directly to the soldier’s eye. “That would be such a waste. That and because nobody has told me to do it nor did I feel the need to do it.”

“That’s…” Really messed up, inwardly added Eki, completing the sentence that he really would have liked to say out loud.

When M2 withdrew his face and started climbing the stairs once again, Eki couldn’t help but deeply sigh in relief. That had been scarier than being dropped from a military helicopter to a currently-under-battle zone. Wiping with the back of his hand the cold sweat that had gathered on his forehead, Eki continued to climb the stairs behind the target, keeping his guard even higher than before.

Soon after, they reached the door that led to the main hall, where all of the workers of the lab were being kept. He walked to in front of M2 and started opening the closed door, looking over in his direction at the same time as he offered a warning. “Don’t cause any problems or you won’t get to eat the energy bars.”

“Okay~” acknowledged M2, an excited glint in his eyes.

Eki fully opened the door and both soldier and target stepped inside of the main hall, silence immediately filling the entire room. The workers of the lab looked over in their direction, their faces completely drained of all colour. Some of the closest workers actually started crawling in the opposite direction, in an attempt to put as much distance away from M2 as possible. That behaviour didn’t come unnoticed to any soldier present, who readily shifted their attention to the first target arriving there.

“Keep walking in the door’s direction,” instructed Eki, giving a jerk with his chin to indicate the direction to where the target was supposed to walk towards. They walked for a few seconds but once they reached the centre of the hall, M2 came to a sudden halt. “What is it? Continue walking and you’ll get to eat the bars.”

“Argh… I really want to eat…” groaned M2, still completely motionless. “But I told you. I’m not leaving without the others. Once all six of us are here, then I’ll eat the energy bars… and get inside of whatever that ‘humvee’ is…”

“You said you would cooperate with us,” said Eki, looking around the area where they had stopped. All the other soldiers were keeping their distance from them and the workers of the lab were still as silent as dead mice. “We told you that we will take everyone from here with us, right? We didn’t lie when we said that. It’s our duty to complete our mission. You understand that, right? Since you’re sort of a soldier too.”

“Yeah… I understand…” acknowledged M2, eyeing the soldier closely. “But I’m still not leaving.”

“Why are you so fixated on—“started asking Eki until he was interrupted by the sound of the second access stairs’ door opening. Eki (and M2 too) immediately looked in that direction and saw an unknown blonde and a known soldier coming from the stairs.

“And they told me to go back to my cell just when the game was at its peak~! Isn’t that unfa—“ complained the blonde while peering sideways to the soldier that was leading him to the main hall. However, when he looked to in front of him, his eyes opened in surprise and he immediately yelped. “OH!!! M2~!! You weren’t lying! He’s here! He’s really here!”

“I’ve told you time and time again that I wasn’t,” sighed Kuwabayashi Utei while rolling his eyes around. He kept leading the straight-out overexcited blonde to the centre of the main wall and they came to a halt there, a fair amount of distance between the two targets. “Why haven’t you brought yours to the humvee yet, Eki?”

“Ah… Some circumstances, I gue—“

“Hey, hey! M2! Do you think we are allowed to speak now?” anxiously asked the blonde, interrupting Eki once again without meaning to.

“Ah… Yeah, I think so,” answered M2, looking over in the scientists’ direction and then switching his gaze back to the blonde. “This thing has fallen. I think we can finally talk to each other. With the others too.”

“Really!? Yay!!!!” excitedly squealed the blonde, giving a quick jump while his hands remained handcuffed behind his back. “Then~ Nice to meet you, M2~”

“Yeah, nice to meet you too, M5…” sluggishly greeted back M2. “I always had the hardest time trying to understand your writing. You’re awful at it.”

“That’s so mean! It’s hard to write when you’re most of the time tied down to a wall!” yelped M5, pouting at the words that M2 had thrown at him.

“M1 and M3 are tied in worse ways than you are and their writing is much better than yours,” pointed out M2, tilting slightly his head as he observed the shocked expression that appeared on M5’s face and then how he simply dropped his head, softly grumbling at himself.

“You… have never met him?” hesitantly asked Eki as he exchanged quick glances between M2, M5 and his fellow soldier, who was just as surprised over this as him.

“We have passed by each other in the corridors sometimes…” explained M2, shrugging his shoulders. “But this is the first time we have talked or even met personally.”

“Then why do you keep on saying that you won’t leave without them? You never spoke with any of them before,” pointed out Eki, arching slightly an eyebrow as he focused his attention on his target once again.

“Letters!” suddenly said M5, once again with a cheerful demeanour. He threw a glare to the workers of the lab, causing most of them to shriek in fear and crawl even further away from that area, and then switched his gaze back to M2. “We were forbidden from speaking with each other. So, during all these years, we communicated through letters hidden in se~cre~t locations and when we were brought out of the cells, we gathered them and wrote back to them, hiding them once again when we went outside of the cells while waiting to receive an answer back in return.”

“Ah… I’m hungry… When will the others arrive?” mumbled M2, looking up to the ceiling in utter boredom.

“Yeah! I reaaaaaaaally want to meet the others too~” added M5, cheerfully smiling. “Oh, M2. Will they also open the bottom door? I… I won’t leave without him… I will never leave M0 here! Do you hear me, all of you soldiers and disgusting torturers!? I’m not abandoning M0 here for anything in this world!!”

“I won’t leave without him, either, M5,” acknowledged M2 with a slow nod of his head. “M1 and M3 would never let that happen. M4 neither. As I said, I’m not leaving without all of us six here.”

“Yeah, agreed,” also acknowledged M5, giving a sharp nod of his head.

Both M2 and M5 switched their gazes to the group of workers sitting on the floor, all curled up on top of one another out of fear of the two super soldiers. They stared and stared at them… their eyes glowing a threatening red hue.