EUNOIA ━ diego hargreeves

39

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
──-ˋˏ☂︎ˎˊ-──

DIEGO QUITE literally flipped the entire room upside down while Lila left in search of Five. Freya watched him turn over the mattress, and look under the bed. Obviously, Stanley was not in the room, but she wasn't going to be the one to tell him that.

Lila returned a few moments later, Five trailing behind her. When she saw that Diego was still frantically tearing the room apart, her expression flickered in annoyance. "What the hell are you doing?! Stanley is gone! We need to face this!"

"Just check the chimney!"

"He's not in the bloody chimney!" Lila shouted. "He's been Kugelblitzed!"

"And whose fault is that, huh? You're the one that brought him here!"

"Diego," Freya warned gently as he neared Lila. His head snapped over in her direction. "I know that you're upset, but Stan could've been Kugelblitzed anywhere in the world, not just here. Don't..." She glanced to Lila hesitantly. "Don't blame Lila. It's not her fault."

"Can we focus?" Five asked, shaking the pure shock off from Lila's face. "How did this thing open before?"

"I don't know," Diego answered, moving to examine the other side of the room. "It was already kinda open."

"Already kinda open," Five repeated, eyeing him. Freya sighed. "Diego, you should've been an engineer. It's a lost opportunity."

"Why'd you wanna go in there anyway?" Lila demanded. "It's just sushi and death."

"When we met future me in the Commission bunker, I warned myself about Oblivion. Now, Pogo told me—"

"Wait, whoa, whoa!" Diego interrupted. "Pogo's alive?"

"Different Pogo, but yes. The monkey said Dad spent years training the Sparrows for some kind of super-secret mission into..."

"Let me guess," Freya stared at the hidden entrance. "Oblivion."

"You're so wise, Freya," Five told her, tone dripping in sarcasm, which prompted her to roll her eyes. "So, I come back here and find that you three morons have actually been in there. Everything's leading to Oblivion. So we have to go in there."

"Hell no! Not happening."

"No way! We barely got out alive."

"Yeah, I mean Diego lost fingers. Next time we could lose our heads."

"I never took you to be afraid of anything ," Five mused, nodding towards her. "I thought you were fearless."

"I'm definitely not afraid," Freya protested. "I'm being logical. Isn't that what you want?"

"Look, this is about more than you three."

"Says the guy with all his fingers," Diego snapped, holding up his hand. "I didn't get this by giving a mummy a hand job, all right? I went in there, and I lost my fingers to this thing with...with a knife on a chain."

"Hey, look," Lila cut in. "Diego might be 90% idiot and 10% Freya-minded, but he's right about Oblivion, okay?"

"Damn, only ten percent?" Freya scrunched her nose up. "That's humbling."

"We're not just gonna waltz back in there because you say so," Lila went on.

"Good," a voice said from behind. Freya turned to see Luther and Sloane standing in the doorway. "Because you're coming with us."

"This should be interesting," Five muttered. "Where to?"

"Sparrow Academy."

"The world's ending, so I think it's time we put our petty bullshit aside and work together on this Kugelblitz."