29
Tywin
Rhi looped the feed to the outside cameras, so they wouldn’t be alerted to us surrounding the building, taking out their guards, and replacing them with members of our group. We’d had just enough time to study and have their uniforms copied. Rhi had even been able to get their radio frequency and a transcript of their communications techniques with the inside of the building.
Four in the afternoon was an unusual time for an attack and therefore made it easier for us to swoop in and take control. If we played our parts right, no onlookers or passersby would be the wiser that anything was amiss. We were pumping the men full of Propofol to keep the outside carnage to a minimum.
I peeked into the small square of glass before rapping my knuckles against the thick double doors to the east side of the building. One of the two guards glanced in my direction before fist-bumping his buddy to walk over. The other man stepped away and headed in the direction of the bank of elevators.
The guard approached with caution, eyeing me with suspicion since my face wasn’t familiar. All I needed was for him to punch in the code and open that door since Rhi currently had eyes on the lower floors of the building. Our goal was to make them do most of the work for us; open the doors, key in the elevator codes, and give us anything we didn’t have or find a way to take.
He dropped his gaze to the keypad located on the inside of the doorway and fingered the code. The door slid apart, sending a gust of air into my face. The guy stood in the doorway, blocking my entrance.
“What do you need?” he questioned, eyeballing me from head to toe, sizing me up.
“I said what…do…you…need?” he asked sarcastically while making sign language with his fingers.
“I need you to tell the devil ‘you’re welcome,’ when you see him.”
“What—
Tap. Tap.
A little of his internal matter got away from him, but it wasn’t bad for such a close-range shot. His legs gave and he fell into my arms before I hefted him off to the nearest closet.
“Rhi,” I called, hoping there wasn’t a jamming frequency in place.
“Read you loud and clear, Terror.”
As soon as I received Rhi’s audio confirmation, the rest of the team sounded off, conducting a comms check. Once we’d confirmed our comms link, Rhi relayed to us the code to the door. Khane and Arjen were about fifty feet behind me and although we were all entering from the same door, we didn’t want to crowd any locations that would call attention to us.
As soon as I turned the corner for the elevators, the guy who had been standing with the first guard was there pushing the elevator button. I fought to keep a smirk off my face at the knowledge that he was clueless to the fact that we were storming the building on the other side of the wall that blocked his view.
“You new?” he asked while the door to the elevator slid open.
“Yeah. Bruce Drexler is my uncle,” I informed him, throwing around one of the big names in the company. The lie made him cut a sharp eye in my direction because Drexler was head of operations and security for the building.
Instead of questioning why a new guard had shown up two hours after a shift change, he stepped onto the elevator and I followed, eyeballing the six-digit code so I could relay it to the rest of the team.
“Where are you headed?” he asked, hitting twelve.
“Same,” I replied, stepping inside and leaning against the back wall. I tilted my head up in thought like I didn’t have a care in the world. He took a similar posture near the numbers panel without saying a word. The tomb-like silence of the ride up wasn’t lost on me, and I sensed him eyeballing me from head to toe.
When I did glance up my fist followed my gaze, striking him hard in the chin. I followed up the strike with the butt of my pistol, hitting the sweet spot on his chin that put him on his ass.
Thankfully, the doors opened to an empty hallway on level twelve, but I didn’t exit. I took my new friend’s key card and had no problem planting my knee in his throat while I cut out one of his eyes. He had passed out by the time the doors opened at fourteen.
I exited the elevator with caution before reaching behind me and grabbing a hold of the man’s feet. A quick peek into the first room showed a small exam room where I tossed the man, who was stirring awake and groaning through the pain his consciousness roused.
“Here. Get some rest,” I suggested sarcastically before putting a couple of slugs, quieted by the silencer on my pistol, in his head.
The rest of the hallway consisted of a series of exam rooms. Due to the crew’s hasty evacuation methods when they were alerted to our arrival, they had left behind physical evidence of their practices and the equipment they used to torture their victims.
The pungent scent of sweat, urine, and feces tickled my nasal passages and polluted my lungs. Ignoring the smell, I stepped further into the room.
A tray filled with blood-soaked cutting instruments sat next to a hospital bed fixed with thick black straps. A small bone saw, the last tool they had used sat atop the thin mattress. A droplet of blood had gathered at the jagged tip. The crimson teardrop stretched towards the pull of gravity before dripping onto the dirty sheet, once white, but now stained with all manner of human bodily fluids. The blood droplet told me how recently they had vacated this room.
Rhi’s assessment of this place had been spot on. They brought people here to torture them for information before they executed them. I stepped back into the hallway, contemplating going up one level or checking the rest of the exam rooms first.