As Lazar was stepping out of the truck, he and Amandla were startled by something; although the transmission from Buren's walkie-talkie wasn't interrupted, the noises they were hearing stopped all at once...
It was so sudden that Lazar was wondering if it was a sound issue due to the interferences caused by the distance and/or the urban obstacles between his walkie-talkie and Buren's, but what he and Amandla heard later made him realize that he was wrong.
"Mmmmmmm."
Amandla's eyes widened and Lazar stopped moving when they heard what sounded like moans of pleasure coming from a woman.
After a short moment of floating during which Lazar and Amandla were looking into each other's eyes with faces expressing their incomprehension, the silence was broken again...
"I hope you liked what you heard as much as I did." A smooth and seductive voice asked from the other side of the line.
It was a tiny possibility to them before, but after hearing the moans and words of this 'woman', it was now obvious to Lazar and Amandla that the person who initiated this transmission wasn't Buren or a soldier who wanted to warn them of the attack that was occurring as they had unconsciously assumed initially, but an enemy who had found a way to use a walkie-talkie...
The enemy in question appearing to be a sadistic Garache who had presumably heard Lazar's transmission, had deduced from the fact that he had a way of contacting the people she was attacking that he was on good terms with them, and had thought that making him listen to the screams of the soldiers that were being massacred around her would be a good way of gaining the psychological ascendancy over him or simply having fun.
"I'll give you time to answer me and don't hold back on the dirty talk, I love it." She whispered in a lustful tone before making sounds with her tongue that were presumably supposed to stir up desire but from Lazar and Amandla's point of view were just disgusting since they only had the sounds and no visual.
'If someone had told me that one day I would hear a monster sexually harassing a human through a walkie-talkie...' Amandla thought while massaging the bridge of her nose.
When the transmission ended, Lazar didn't answer right away, but his interrogative look and the fact that he was returning to his seat suggested to Amandla that he was either trying to determine whether or not he should answer or that he had already planned to answer but was trying to determine in advance what he was going to say...
Thinking that her opinion could help him, Amandla shared it with Lazar, "That's strange, the importance that this she-wolf in heat is giving you seems to be..." She started to say before trying to find the right words to finish her sentence.
"A bit disproportionate?" Lazar completed without having to think, making Amandla understand that he had come to the same conclusion or that he was at least not far from it.
"Well, this disproportion would be explainable if, for example, someone had been able to recognize your voice during your transmissions." Amandla strongly insinuated with apparently a very clear assumption in mind.
This comment made Lazar pensive because if he took into account what Amandla was saying... 'Buren, Andrew and the soldiers who attacked us upon our arrival are the only people on the scene who could have informed that Garache about us.'
After a few more moments of reflection he then deduced that at least one of the people on this list had been transformed by the enemy.
Amandla sighed, "Seems like some of these monsters are smart. If, as I think, someone revealed everything he or she knew about us to the ennemy, then..."
Before she could tell more about her worries to Lazar, Amandla silenced herself because the same sizzling she and he had heard when they received a transmission returned; apparently the Garache had already gotten impatient.
*SIZZLE*
Lazar and Amandla then heard the Garache again, and this time her tone was even more exaggerated, "You naughty boy, seems like you like to keep me waiting." She said with both annoyance and amusement in her voice, "Come on, answer me and show me what kind of male you are..."
'Okay, that's too much. I'm done.' Lazar dropped the walkie-talkie on the dashboard then opened his door once again thus wanting to leave Amandla as the only witness of whatever bullshit the Garache was up to to do something more productive.
'I don't have time for that anymore.' If he wanted to conduct an effective counterattack, he knew he had to act quickly.
Thinking he should at least give Amandla some guidelines before doing what he had planned, Lazar turned to her after stepping out of his seat, "Give me 2 minutes, after that we will leave for the TD Garden on foot, we must at all costs intercept the monsters before they leave."
Amandla's face went blank, "What?!" She exclaimed looking at Lazar as if she was looking at a madman.
Lazar's gaze grew firmer, "Trust me, I know what I'm doing." He assured her.
"I understand why you are reacting like this..." He began to explain with a soft and comprehensive voice, understanding very well that from Amandla's point of view, what she understood was that he wanted them to face directly a force that had just defeated an entire regiment of several thousand soldiers, "...but on this one, please have as much faith in my abilities as I have in yours."
'On the one hand it looks like a suicide mission and on the other he looks confident. Do I take the risk?' Amandla started to ponder on this seriously, and she forced herself to come to a decision after a few seconds since she was also feeling that they were running out of time and the words of the Garache as a sound background were becoming more and more confusing to her mind.
"...I know you're here, be an Alpha male and come to let me hear your sexy voice again."