Read The Sixth Level for Free Online

that memory would lead into some nasty, terrifying, not so nice flashback. Like the time at the casino when Maria was bitten by one of the infected and Jack was preparing himself to take care of her, to shoot her.

    Thinking about that over and over was enough to make me break out into a cold sweat and keep me up all night.

    When I thought about stuff like that my heart would start racing. I could hear the blood rushing around my body and around my head. Everything was so real, like I was experiencing it all over again, like I could actually hear the moaning, screaming howl of the infected and the constant pop of automatic machine gun fire.

    Suddenly there was a banging on my bedroom door. I sat straight up and held my breath.

    It took me a second to realize that it was someone knocking on the door, a person and not something else.

    I took a few deep breaths and waited for my heart rate to slow. "Who is it?"

    "Rebecca, it's me. It's Daniel."

    My heart rate picked back up and started beating like a drum. What was he doing knocking on my bedroom door this late at night? He knows not to come in here. Was he going to try something? Did he want to 'talk'? I totally did not want to talk. Not now. Not in the middle of the freakin night.

    "What do you want?" I asked.

    "We need to talk."

    Oh God. He was gonna do it. He wanted to talk about the kiss. "I don't want to talk about that now. Can't it wait till morning?"

    "No. It can't wait. I need to show you something."

    He didn't wait for me to respond or to say it was OK to come in. I could've been naked. But when I saw his face in the moonlight, I knew he didn't want to talk about that stupid little kiss. He looked different somehow. He looked more serious than I'd seen him these past couple of days.

    "What do we need to talk about?" I asked. "What do you need to show me?"

    He had an iPad tablet computer thingy in his hand. "I need to show you this."

    "What is it?"

    "It's footage of the rescue team. The mission footage."

    "Mission footage? How the hell did you get that? Wait, I thought the mission was scheduled for tomorrow?"

    "That's what I need to talk to you about."

    He was starting to scare me.

    "Rebecca, I haven’t been completely honest with you."

    "Honest? What are you talking about?"

    "I don't work for the US military."

    "Then who do you work for?" I asked as I tensed up. "And what are you doing here?"

    "I'm a mercenary."

    "A what?"

    "A mercenary. I'm part of a team of mercenaries. We're private contractors basically. We do jobs that no one else can do. Jobs that no one else wants to do."

    "So what the hell are you doing here?" I asked. "What job is this? Are you here to kill me?"

    He actually laughed at that. "No. I'm not here to kill you. I'm here for information. Knowledge. Like I said to you earlier, knowledge is power."

    "So what do you want to know? Wait, how much do you already know?"

    "Only the bare minimum. Only what we need to know to do our job. Initially, we wanted to get close to you so we could learn as much as possible about what was going on in Australia. We wanted to know as much about the virus as possible. But now things have changed."

    "Changed? How?"

    "The Special Forces team got the green light for the rescue mission a few hours ago."

    "What do you mean? Are you saying they've already rescued my friends? Oh wait, I get it now. They rescued Maria and they killed Jack and Kenji. And you're here to break the news to me."

    "No. That's not it."

    "No?"

    "Rebecca, the military failed. The rescue mission failed."

    He sat down on the bed next to me and handed me the computer. "This is a recording of the mission footage."

    "How the hell did you get this?"

    "It's our job to be able to get this kind of stuff. We weren't able to get all of it unfortunately."

    "So like, a camera crew went in with them?"

    "No. The mission footage is recorded via cameras built into the soldier’s helmets."

    Daniel pressed play. The video started.