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EIGHTEEN
Decima
Somehow I’d been expectingan ominous, super high-tech structure like the government facility we’d broken into to sequence my DNA. Instead, the place we were approaching in the thin early-morning light looked like an ordinary office building. It could have passed for an accounting firm or a call center.
I guessed I should have known better when it came to the Blood Hunter. He made a living out of keeping his illicit activities unnoticed. But Blaze thought that this place, which on paper was merely the offices of a company that dealt in industrial chemicals, was where the Blood Hunter was storing his main archive of stolen DNA samples.
I couldn’t help glancing at the hacker, who was checking something on his phone. “Are you sure this is the right spot?”
He nodded without looking up. “I traced information from one of the phones we nabbed through a few different contacts to someone working here. Strangely for an industrial chemical business, they have an expert in DNA sequencing on staff. The Blood Hunter would have to process the samples he getssomewhere.”
Julius, the only other crew member joining us in the hands-on assault, grunted. “Wouldn’t he have it all backed up on the ‘cloud’ or whatever?”
Blaze shrugged. “I’m sure he has more than one copy. But he’s got to balance the risks of losing the data with the risks of it being discovered by the wrong person. He won’t have spread it around very much. And if I’m right that this is the center of that part of his operations, I should be able to connect to any other networks he’s shared the information to from inside and wipe them as well.”
And then hopefully fewer mercenaries would be compelled to come after us.
Julius contemplated the parking lot. “It looks like quite a few employees are in already. How did you want us to handle them?”
A grimace twisted Blaze’s lips. “I think that’s unavoidable. There are staff here 24-7, but this is the time of day when the fewest are on hand. These are people who willingly choose to work for the Blood Hunter’s business, though. I’ve seen signs of various other illegal operations that are being concealed by this front. I don’t think we should have any sympathy for the people who’ve sided with that prick.”
He looked at me, probably thinking of the way I’d hesitated to kill any of the mercenaries attacking us if we could find another way. I set my jaw. “These people are all helping the Blood Hunter terrorize the world for their own gain. We can’t give them the chance to alert him or get in our way. That means we take them out.”
Julius nodded in somber agreement. He raised his phone to his ear. “We’re going in,” he informed Talon, who was watching the building from a farther distance with Garrison, ready to provide whatever backup we might need from the outside—and babysitting Carter.
“There’s not going to be any question that the Chaos Crew was here,” Blaze said with a wicked smile. “And while the first priority is destroying the DNA files, maybe I’ll be able to steal a bunch more data on the Blood Hunter’s operations that’ll allow us to create even more havoc later.”
I smiled grimly. “Sounds good to me.”
Julius slung the duffel bag he was carrying over his shoulder, gas canisters clanking together inside. We didn’t want to leave any possibility of the Blood Hunter retrieving data from the computer terminals inside—so that meant that when Blaze had done all he could, the whole building was coming down. Or rather, going up in flames.
Our commander raised his chin toward the building. “Let’s go.”
We marched toward the front door together. A security guard was visible just inside beyond the glass pane of its window. I drew one of my knives into my hand, holding it close at my side as we reached the entrance.
When we pulled the door open, the security guard frowned. “I don’t know you. If you have business with—”
I didn’t let him finish that sentence. With a swift swing of my arm, I’d severed his throat and the arteries that bordered it. Blood spurted out as he crumpled to the floor.
The reception desk was empty this early in the morning. We stormed through the first floor, taking down another guard and a couple of men in lab coats so quickly none of them had a chance to raise the alarm. Blaze pointed us to the second floor.
We paused at the door on the landing, peering through the narrow window into an open-concept room filled with cubicles, several of them inhabited. There was also a row of office rooms along the far wall. Blaze pointed toward them. “One of the computers in those rooms should have the access I need. I’ll head straight there. Assuming you two can take care of the rest?”
Julius’s eyes glinted. “That’s what we’re here for.”
We burst through the doorway together, Julius and I firing our silenced pistols the moment we set foot on the linoleum tiles. One after another employee dropped, some of them in the process of scrambling for their phones or reaching to their waists where they might have had weapons of their own. Too late. In a matter of seconds, they were all slumped by their desks, blood pooling beneath them.
Destroying them was so easy that a twinge of guilt passed through me, but then I thought about Petrov talking about the threats to his family. About the girls and women who’d been stolen from their homes to be used by sick men. Everyone in this building had helped the Blood Hunter make those things happen. They deserved their fate.
Blaze had pushed into one of the smaller offices. There was a bang as he must have dispatched the owner of said office. Julius and I hustled across the room and kicked in the doors of the others, confirming they were empty.
We were just turning around when a pair of security guards barreled into the room. “What the hell—” one was in the process of saying. He was only just raising his gun when Julius planted a bullet in his skull. I caught the other in the chest and then the neck with my own.
We strode through the rest of the building, checking the breakroom with its stale coffee smell lacing the air, the restrooms, and a storage area where we found one more security guard, grooving to tunes on his headphones while he peered through the window, blissfully unaware that the building had been compromised until I blasted his brains across the wall.
Julius prodded a couple of the boxes on one of the shelves. “Looks like they’ve got a drugs operation, or at least part of one, funneled through here. These are the kinds of supplies you’d need in a meth lab.”
“Lovely,” I said. “Well, they’re all going up in smoke too.”
