I have just started replying to messages and will be continuing to do so over the coming days. If I haven't responded to your message by the end of the week, send me another and I will respond.

Also, I'm going to be putting up a poll on Instagram today, taking a vote of whether or not you all would want a sequel to Password Incorrect. Now if a sequel ever does happen, it likely wouldn't be any time soon, but I figured I could take a vote to see how many of you would read a sequel if I wrote one.

Anyway, enjoy the chapter!

Everly's POV

Ian looked between Sam and me. "I'm clearly missing something here," He said. "So do either one of you want to actually fill me in?"

I didn't respond to Ian instead, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed Lily's number. I had a really bad feeling about this.

"You are without a doubt, the worst friend ever-"

"The party's over," I cut her off.

"Well duh, considering there's no birthday girl-"

"Lily," I said. "I need Nicky brought to my building now. I need you to send everybody home. Send Delta 2 out my way along with any other agents you invited to the party."

I turned to Ian. "Call in your team members, get them here, but make sure they don't come in the building."

"Ev," Lily said. "What's going on?"

"I'll explain when you get here," I said as I pushed up out of my seat. If we're still alive. "Just do not come into the building. Stay outside."

Sam frowned at me. "Why don't you want them coming inside?"

"Lily," I said as I got into the security system on the computer. "I need Nicky now," I said. "but do not let her come by herself." I hung up before Lily could begin asking more questions. I wanted to answer them, and I would, but at the moment I had more pressing problems.

Like getting everyone out of the building. Immediately.

Except, I couldn't. Because someone had overridden my clearance to the security systems. I slammed my hands down on the desk in frustration before looking to Sam.

"Get out of the building," I told him. "Find Megan and start getting people out of the building, now."

"You want to tell me what's going on?" Sam asked me.

I pushed past him and walked up to the fire alarm on the wall just outside my office door. I pulled it. The alarm started to blare and the lights started flashing. Hopefully, that would help manage to get everyone out of the building.

I grabbed my pack of tools from the top drawer of the desk and dropped to the floor. I pulled myself under the desk. "I don't have time to explain. Both of you just get out of here," I said as I began to take apart the computer.

It took me longer than I would have liked before I was able to remove the hard drive from the computer. I pulled myself out from under the desk only to see Ian leaning in the doorway to my office.

"I thought I told you to get out of the building," I said.

"You did," Ian said with a shrug. "But that didn't seem to apply to you."

I grabbed hold of his arm as I brushed past him. "Seriously," I said. "we need to leave, now."

"You've said that," Ian replied. "Are you going to explain why? Both you and Sam seem to know something and neither one of you has felt the need to share it."

"Sam and I, as well as Delta team 2, encountered some mercenaries on one of the first missions I did with them," I said as I pushed the button for the elevator, when it didn't come, I wasn't surprised. "This way," I said to Ian as I shoved open the door to the stairway.

"They wore body armor we'd never seen before. Armor that would blunt a knife with no problem," I said. "And they were good. Really, good. We barely beat them. Since then though we haven't seen or heard anything about them. It's like they disappeared. Until now."

I pulled my phone from my pocket as I all but sprinted down the stairs, with Ian on my heels. I would have preferred to take the elevators, but they were locked down. Unfortunately for myself and Ian, we were still like ten stories up. I knew he had more questions and I was willing to answer . . . most of them, but I had more pressing problems.

I dialed the number and pressed the phone to my ear as it rang, waiting for Nicky to pick up.

"I'm on my way," She said. "Though Lily didn't say why I'm needed."

"Are you driving?" I asked her.

"No," She replied. "Ryder is. Why?"

"I need you to hack into the fire suppression system in my building. Now," I said.

"The sprinkler system or the other system?"

"The other system."

"Why-"

"Just do it," I told her. "I don't have time to explain why."

"You want me to turn it on?"

"No, I want you to turn it off."

"It is off."

"It won't be," I said as I looked down to see how much further we had to go.

I didn't have control of the building any longer. I wasn't sure exactly why, but I had a few guesses. In order to have taken someone from this building, those mercenaries would have had to have had a hacker get into the building. And since I had been locked out of my own system, I was guessing they weren't quite done with the building just yet.

I also had a guess as to why. They were waiting for me to come back to the building.

A second alarm started to blare and it wasn't the fire alarm I had purposefully set off.

"I hate when I'm right," I muttered as I looked over my shoulder at Ian. "We need to move now."

"What is that alarm?"

"The building is going into lockdown."

"Can't you override the lockdown?" Ian asked me.

"Normally, yes," I said. "But considering someone went through a great deal of trouble to lock me out of my own system, I'm not going to even try to see if my codes work."

"What other fire suppression system were you talking about?"

"There's a lot of valuable information in this building. It's all backed-up, but still, since there are several devices throughout this building, I wanted a system other than water spraying everywhere. So the other system that was installed locks down the building, makes it airtight, and then sucks all the oxygen out of the building."

Ian, I noticed out of the corner of my eyes, stopped in his tracks.

I didn't wait for him. "Before you say anything, that system was only meant to be activated if it could be confirmed everyone was out of the building."

"And now?"

"Considering I no longer have control of the building, I'd move your ass."

Ian swore and when the lights in the stairwell suddenly went out and then turned back on in red, I swore too.

"Hurry!" I shouted as I skipped over several steps trying to make it down to the first floor. "The system's been turned on!"

Ian stopped me when I would have thrown open the door to the lobby.

"Your building is made out of bulletproof glass, yes?" He asked.

I nodded.

"Then if it's completely locked down, we're not getting out that way. But my team and I broke in," Ian reminded me. "there's a hole in a basement," He said. "it won't be airtight we can escape through there."

"Yeah," I replied. "Alright, follow me and take a deep breath."

We were on the bottom levels, and the fans that sucked out the oxygen were on the upper floors, so we had some time but already I could feel myself running out of breath. The system was fast, I knew, but it took a couple of minutes to completely suck out the oxygen from the lower levels.

I threw open the door to the basement and went running down the hallway with Ian close behind me. I ran up to the door leading to the boiler room and punched in the code, swearing under my breath when the light flashed red instead of green.

I punched in the code again but got the same result. We were running out of time, breathing was becoming a chore, and I was beginning to feel lightheaded. Before I could figure out exactly how to get around the keypad, Ian shoved me out of the way, pulled his gun from his waistband, and shot the keypad full of holes.

I must have given him a disapproving look cause when he looked back at me he rolled his eyes.

"You can bill me for it later," He said as he proceeded to kick down the door.

There was a gust of air as the airtight seal was broken and the fire suppression system continued to try and suck the oxygen from the building. Except there was a hole in this part of the building, so that wasn't going to happen.

My phone began ringing as Ian and I stepped through the hole, into the sewers on the other side.

"What a lovely smell you've discovered," I muttered as I pulled my phone from my pocket. Ian glared at me. "Thirteen," I said.

"Please tell me you're not in the building," Nicky said as soon as I picked up.

I looked around at the sewer walls around us. "Not technically." I looked up at the concrete above my head. "Might be under it though," I told Nicky.

"Then move," Nicky said, urgency in her voice.

I made a motion for Ian to follow and we both began running away from the building. I didn't have a chance to ask her why-not that it particularly mattered-since I got my answer pretty quickly.

There was an explosion, big and deafening. Ian and I both nearly lost our balance, reaching out to the walls to steady ourselves. A second explosion followed the first and this was even more powerful. Both Ian and I were thrown off our feet and into the wall in front of us.

Concrete began to rain down on us and I pushed myself to my feet. I grabbed hold of Ian's arm and hauled him up, pulling him forcefully after me as I ran around the corner as a third explosion shook the ground.

The walls around us began to fracture and crack as we struggled to stay on our feet, trying to put as much distance between us and the building as possible. Staying on our feet seemed impossible as explosion after explosion shook the ground.

I slipped and began to lose my footing, except Ian pulled me back and ducked us both into a corner. I put my hands over my head and hunched down as he did the same, both of us waiting for the explosions to stop. Waiting for the dust to settle.

It felt like it took an eternity before everything was finally quiet. Even then, neither one of us moved. I could faintly hear sirens above our heads. Could faintly hear screaming.

I sucked in a breath of air, unaware that I had been holding my breath waiting for it all to pass. I pushed to my feet and walked out of the corner Ian had pulled me into to stare at the wall of debris in front of me. Smoke and dust had filled the sewer tunnel, making visibility poor, but I didn't care. I was more concerned with everyone who had been on the surface when the building came down.

Ian stumbled up behind me. "Are you alright?" He asked me.

I nodded slowly. Physically, I was fine. Emotionally? I was pissed.

"You got everyone out of the building, right?" Ian questioned as if he could tell where my thoughts were.

I nodded again, not completely trusting myself to speak. I wanted to scream. I wanted to rage. I wanted to hit something. My hands clenched into fists. "They waited until everyone was out of the building before blowing it. They could have done it any time while people were still inside, but they waited."

Ian wiped at his face as he stared at the wall of debris blocking us from going back toward the building-or rather-what was once a building. "So what does that mean?"

"A warning," I muttered.

"What?" Ian questioned.

"It was a warning," I said as my nails bit into my palms hard enough to draw blood. "For me to stay out of it."

I turned and began walking off toward the nearest sewer grate. "Help me with this," I told him.

It took us a while to get the grate loose, but once we finally did, we were able to push it off and climb out. Ian helped me out and then I reached down and helped him out.

Lights, sirens, smoke, and rumble covered the streets.

I walked toward it all, looking up at where my company building should have been, but no longer was. The explosions had been somewhat controlled, I noticed. The building appeared to have collapsed within itself instead of falling over and taking other buildings with it.

The only good thing about all of this, I supposed. People were definitely going to have gotten hurt, but at least there wouldn't be any fatalities. Nicky had warned me which meant she'd figured it out and had likely gotten everyone away from the building before it came down.

I stopped in the middle of the street, continued to stare up at the smoke-filled sky.

Ian came and stopped beside me. "Sorry," He said as he looked off in the direction I was looking.

"Don't be," I said. "It was just a building, it can be replaced."

Ian turned to look at me. "Did it work?" He asked me.

I turned to look at him. "Did what work?"

"The warning?"

I looked back up at the sky before looking at the people in the streets. At the paramedics running around. The police trying to get everything under control. I closed my eyes for a brief moment and took a breath, letting it out slowly. I opened my eyes once more, taking in the destruction once again.

I'd been through things like this a thousand times before, but something about this felt different. Felt personal. Felt more sinister. Something had changed and it had barely even begun. This mission wasn't going to end well, somehow, I knew that. Although, that still wasn't going to stop me.

"Not a chance," I finally responded to Ian as I locked eyes with him. "They want me to back off, they're going to have to kill me." I let a chilling smile spread across my face. "And I'm notoriously hard to kill."

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