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I hum to myself to fill the silence until the lift pings. This is my stop. Luckily for me, the top floors have been recently vacated by a bankrupt company. I move through the corridor and let myself into the office. I picked the lock last week, and no one has come to check. Maintenance has their work cut out for them, between that and the cameras.
The office stretches around the entire floor; it’s a graveyard of empty desks and chairs, but anything of real value has been seized by bailiffs. Behind limp blinds, a glass window spans across the entire sides of the building, which would turn it into a greenhouse in summer, and I head towards it to get the best view of the Dukes’ flat.
Suddenly, there’s a noise behind me.
What the… it sounded like a drawer opening and closing.
I whip my head around but only see old filing cabinets.
“Hello?” I call.
Nothing.
A swishing noise, like a coat sweeping close by, makes the hairs on my neck stand on end.
I’m not alone.
I draw my gun and hold it out in front of me. Three bullets are left, so I’ll have to make them count. Failing that, I have a knife in my other pocket, and my knuckles are always my preferred first choice for a fight—the bloodier, the better.
I scan the area, but there’s no sign of movement.
“Come on, don’t be shy,” I call. There’s no answer. “Or do you want to play hide and seek?”
When I find them, I’ll plant a bullet through their skull. I head to the nearest cabinet, slink down and press my back against it.
“Fuck!”My concentration slips as a fire alarm above my head blares out, almost bursting my eardrums. The deafening noise takes me by surprise and makes me stagger. My arm drops for a split second, and that’s when they pounce.
A figure flies at me from out of nowhere. I see nothing but a black trench cloak and a balaclava. They’re slim build, shorter than me, and they’re quick. Quick enough to plunge a needle into the side of my neck before I react.
Adrenaline kicks in. I thrash around like a shark caught in a fishing net. These few seconds count, and I fucking know it. I roar and arch my back, trying to throw them off before they can inject a full dose of whatever poison into me. I manage to knock them back, but the effects are already starting.
I have no energy to turn. The gun slips through my fingers as I stagger forward and reach for the desk to steady myself with, but it’s further away than it looks through my blurring vision. My coordination vanishes, and I collapse to my knees.
“You…you…” I stammer but can’t get the words out.
A paralytic agent rushes through my bloodstream. I fight to keep myself upright but fall to the side. My head hits the scratchy grey carpeted floor, and I can do nothing to stop it.
In front of me, a lotus flower flutters delicately to the ground, and then everything goes black…
CHAPTER30
IVY
“There!” I declare proudly, looking at Bram to give his final stamp of approval. “Ready?”
His eyebrows and nose are scrunched from concentrating hard, but he takes a deep breath and gives a curt nod.
It got rocky for a while with me using arrows that pointed in the wrong direction, but we made it. I’ve never coded before, and damn, I’ve grown a newfound appreciation for the work of developers over the last few hours. Bram tried to write the logic behind what we were doing, but I didn’t understand it, so I told him to stick to writing what I needed to type. Nerds are fucking powerful.
“Here goes…” I murmur, hoping Bram hasn’t lied and somehow allowed me to code in something that’ll make the whole city explode like a supervillain.
I hit enter. There’s no going back. A loading bar appears on the black screen with green text. Time slows to a crawl until the word ‘Authorised’ appears in a pop-up box with a ping.
“We did it!” I gasp.
Bram jumps and punches the air in victory, losing his composed exterior with what looks to be a genuine smile. His entire face transforms, smoothing out his harsh jawline and sharp cheekbones.
“So...” I look at the text on the screen. This is the first time I’ve seen the Killers Club client database. Alaric and Penelope are the only ones with access. Despite the exhilaration of hacking into the system, my palms are sweaty. Alaric would kill me if he found out what we’d done. “Are you sure Penelope won’t be able to tell that we’re snooping around?”
