He didn’t know how much they understood, but Ginger understood a lot. Clearly she was a brilliant child. Whitney had deliberately used the egg and sperm of two geniuses with the hope of producing intelligent children. If Ginger was any indication, the man had succeeded in that regard.
Trap drove the soldier back away from the children toward the opposite side of the enclosed space. There wasn’t a lot of room. The man’s back hit the elevator doors, the sound loud. Pepper had told him the prison was soundproof, and he hoped she was right. The soldier punched him with his free hand, three rapid shots to the face. Trap stepped close, crowding the man, slamming his head into the soldier’s head and then bringing up his fist to punch through the Adam’s apple.
He let the body drop to the floor. I’m in. I’m armed. Both children are here in separate cells. If I can get them to trust me, I’ll open the cells. Pepper, get moving. It’s definitely a trap, Wyatt. They had two soldiers waiting. Soldiers, not civilian guards.
You’re on, Pepper, Wyatt said. Trap, don’ take any chances. Pepper will get there fast. She already knows the way. Wait for her.
One is crying, Wyatt, and the other is about to.
Damn it, Trap, you follow orders. Don’ you go near them until Pepper’s there. Wyatt rarely displayed emotion during a mission, but his alarm definitely came through.
Trap turned his attention to the children, keeping a distance from the cell doors. He signed to them that Pepper had sent him and she was on her way. He wanted to open the cell doors but didn’t want them to be afraid.
Neither moved for a moment, but he was certain they were communicating. One of them signed fast. He frowned, trying to read the tiny moving hands. He’d learned signing, of course, from the books he’d read. It hadn’t been that difficult, and his mind instantly remembered, but seeing the movements made with such little fingers was an altogether different thing.
“You’ll have to slow down,” he said aloud. “I’m not the best at reading sign.”
He added the words, using his sign language as well. One of the girls came close to the bars of her cell and raised her arms in the air, repeating the signs she’d made before, this time much slower.
He nodded his head. “Ginger is fine. So is Pepper. We’re going to get you out of here. Do either of you know if the other prisoner held on the other side is still alive?”
The two girls looked at one another. The one who had signed to him turned back, her fingers moving again.
“My name is Trap. I’m a friend of your father’s. We’re like you. Enhanced. I don’t know if you know what that means, but we’ve had experiments done on us.” He bent to examine the bodies of the two soldiers, looking for keys. He could open the cells, but it would be easier with the actual keys.
Adrenaline had kept him going, but now that the two guards had been dispatched, he felt the effects of the wrenching of his body through the cement. He felt sick and dizzy. He couldn’t think too much on it because he had to get out of the cell and into the next one if he was going to try to save that prisoner as well.
“Give me a minute,” he said, and sank down to the floor beside one of the fallen soldiers.
The children were a little unnerving with their wide, unblinking eyes staring at him, trying to make up their minds whether or not he was friend or foe. Still, they looked just like Wyatt. Wyatt was one of the few people he could call his friend and he was intensely loyal to his friends. There was no doubt in his mind that these were Wyatt’s children.
The little girl signed again.
He smiled at her. “Yes, I’m all right. Going through that thick of a barrier, like the outside of your cell, is hard on my body.”
She frowned, and he found himself smiling. She was so tiny, her hands and feet like a doll’s, but her intellect showed in her facial expressions and she looked so much like Wyatt when she frowned that Trap wanted to laugh. Her little hands moved even faster.
“How did I go through the wall?” Trap asked the question aloud. He put his head down and drew several deep breaths, trying to recover. The idea of repeating the experience was becoming harder to think about. “It’s complicated, and no, you can’t do it. Your bodies won’t allow you to do it.”
For the first time, the other child signed.
Trap’s heart jumped when he saw her question. “What’s a father? That’s a good question, baby. I didn’t have much of one, but your father is the best. The absolute rock solid best. You know how Pepper takes care of you? Looks after you? That’s a mother. A father is the male version of a mother.”
He didn’t know how better to explain it to them. He felt a little silly sitting on the floor of a prison beside two dead bodies attempting to explain parents to two seventeen-month-old babies. How could they possibly comprehend the things he was telling them?
He opened the jacket of the soldier closest to him, for the first time realizing how cold the cell was. “Do they always keep it cold down here?”