“Tell me!” Derring cried. “You say you don’t want money? What about girls? I can—“
This time, Nolan gave in to instinct. He drove his fist into Derring’s solar plexus. The air burst from the man’s lungs in a whooshing gasp, and he collapsed to both knees, curling up around his stomach.
Nolan stared down at the man. He hadn’t struck hard enough to leave a bruise, but he couldn’t risk it again. Crouching, he seized Derring’s wispy hair and yanked the man’s head up. “The blueprints on every building you own in New Avalon. Where are they?”
Surprise mingled with the pain filling Derring’s eyes. “B-Blue…prints?” He struggled to draw breath. “What—“
“Did I fucking stutter?” Nolan snarled. “I want those blueprints. Give them to me, or I start cutting.” He twisted the man’s head farther back to an awkward, constricting angle and pressed the Echoblade to the man’s cheek. He took care not to break the skin, though. Nothing could mark his presence here tonight.
Derring couldn’t know that, however. All he could see was an armored and helmeted man threatening his life and favorite body parts. That was enough to instill terror into him.
“My office!” he managed to croak out. “Right next door. Top left-hand drawer.”
“Kali,” Nolan said over comms.
“Moving,” Bex replied. There was no sound of her rising or striding across the room, but the door to Derring’s office opened a second later.
“What’s in the drawer?” Nolan demanded. “What am I looking for?”
“A hard drive!” Derring gasped, wheezing for every breath. “Black, metal, about palm-sized. It’s biometrically sealed, though.”
“Got it,” Bex said.
A few seconds later, Nolan felt her tap his shoulder. He released his grip on Derring’s head and reached back without looking. She slid something into his hand and, taking it, he thrust the palm-sized object at Derring.
“Unlock it,” he growled.
To his surprise, a hint of stubborn defiance appeared on Derring’s face.
“Why?” Derring demanded. Fear still shone in his eyes, yet there was something else there—survival instinct, perhaps. He knew that this was his one bargaining chip. “I give you what you want, you kill me right here. So if I’m going to do this, what do I get out of it? Besides my life!”
Nolan raised an eyebrow. “You’d think that would be enough.”
Derring actually straightened—either he’d found some hidden reserve of courage or, more likely, that bump of Hero Dust had manufactured some. “I’m a very powerful man with very powerful friends,” he said, his tone dripping self-importance. “I could have you hunted down, and there’s nowhere in this galaxy you could hide.”
“That sounds like a threat,” Nolan said. “I don’t take kindly to threats.” He tapped the blade of his dagger against Derring’s groin, a little reminder to put the man in his place.
“Fine, of course.” Derring’s bravado burst like a bubble, but he didn’t fully collapse. Limited as his reserves of courage were, he was smart enough to recognize his small advantage. “But tell me what else you’re willing to offer me. Make it worth my—“
“How’s this?” Nolan moved closer until his helmeted face was a centimeter from Derring’s. “I won’t cut off your little prick and feed it to you piece by piece. I won’t slice off your fingers and toes and make them into a pretty necklace for you to wear. I’ll leave your ears, tongue, and lips where they are, and I won’t cut out your eyes. I know exactly what sort of man you are. I know you’re a shitstain who preys on innocent boys and girls, who destroys lives for nothing more than your own sick pleasure and a pursuit of power.”
Righteous anger built within Nolan, a towering inferno that he had no desire to quell. “I know that you’re the lowest, most despicable sort of creature.” He seized Derring’s collar and pulled him closer, flattening the man’s nose against his helmet. “And despite all of that, I’m willing to leave you in one piece, to walk out of here without killing you.” His voice dropped to a harsh, furious hiss. “So tell me, Fineas Derring, is that enough for you?”
“Yes!” Derring cried out, struggling to pull away from Nolan. “Gods, yes!” He disintegrated into a mess of wailing, sobbing, and incoherent babbling.
Nolan released his grip on the man, and Derring sagged to a heap on the floor, where he sat in a puddle of his own tears, urine, and terror. Nolan gave the man a few moments to wallow in his misery, then prodded him with his boot. “Unlock it,” he growled.
Derring flinched, but complied. He pressed the tip of his thumb to one side of the drive, and a little green light blinked to life. “There!” He thrust the device at Nolan. “It’s unlocked.”
Even as Nolan reached for it, Taia extended the smart steel threads from his gauntlet and inserted them into the drive’s single port. “Copying and analyzing all the data now,” she said. “I’ll have confirmation in thirty-two seconds.”
Nolan grunted acknowledgement. He stood waiting, staring down at the pathetic figure at his feet.
“Cerberus,” Bex said over comms, her voice quiet, “this was in his desk drawer.”
Nolan glanced over his shoulder at her. She had deactivated the digital cloaking of her right hand, which she now held out to him. In her gauntleted palm, she held an applicator loaded with a glass vial full of swirling, neon pink liquid.
The sight sent a shiver down Nolan’s spine. Blitz.
He stared at the shimmering, gleaming drug. It had been his poison of choice for years, and even now, after all this time, he found its allure hard to resist.
Realization slammed into him, and he ripped his eyes away from the vial to stare at Bex. How long had it been since the last time she’d held a vial of the drug and nearly injected it into her veins? Two, three weeks? She hadn’t even been clean for two months, and now she stood holding in her hands the very thing that had nearly killed her.
“Bex—“ he began.
She cut him off. “Not for me, you idiot. Him. Cleaner than Plan A.”
Nolan’s words died on his lips. Of course. He should have known. She’d made the choice to cast aside the Blitz in the Zalkrovi. Her resolve, determination, and willpower had kept her battling to regain custody of Roz. Now that she had her daughter once more, nothing would separate them. He should trust in her strength to keep her clean.
Yet he knew all too well just how tempting the siren call of Blitz—and all narcotics—could be. He didn’t trust himself around it. Hell, he’d nearly relapsed weeks ago himself. Even after close to five years of sobriety, a moment of weakness had almost been his downfall.
That was the struggle of addiction, the struggle of dealing with recovering addicts. The road to recovery was long and hard—sometimes too hard to remain on. He could trust Bex with his life, but he’d never stop worrying about her sobriety, just as he’d never stop fearing the day when something might push him over the edge and send him down that dark path.
But for today, he had no reason to fear. “Copy that,” he said, and took the vial from her. The words of Manny, the orderly, had inspired an ending far cleaner—and, Nolan felt, more fitting—than their initial plan of drowning Derring in his own pool.
Now he just had to wait until—
“I’ve got it,” Taia said. “The blueprints on every building he owns in New Avalon, including both in the Cyberwarrens.”
Nolan turned back to Derring. “My condolences, Mister Derring, on your untimely demise.”
Derring looked up, confusion on his face. “What…?” His eyes went wide, and his gaze darted to the dagger held in Nolan’s left hand. “But you promised you’d walk out of here without killing me!”
“I didn’t kill you.” Nolan crouched down next to the man and pressed the applicator against the crook of his elbow. “You died of an overdose. Nasty things happen when you mix Hero Dust and Blitz. Your heart just couldn’t handle the strain.”
Derring opened his mouth to protes
t, but Nolan had no desire to hear anything else from this scumbag’s lips. Without a shred of mercy, he jammed his thumb onto the applicator and sent the fatal dose of Blitz flooding into Derring’s veins.
The drug worked quickly. Veins stood out on Derring’s neck, and every attempt to speak choked off in strangled cries. The Hero Dust in his bloodstream had already elevated his cardiac function, and the full dose of Blitz pushed it beyond the edge in a matter of seconds. Derring spent his last moments gasping for breath, clutching his chest, and clawing at his throat.
And then, with nothing more than a terrible last hiss of escaping breath, it was over.
Chapter Fourteen
Exfil from Derring’s mansion proved insultingly easy. After posing the man’s corpse to sell the façade of death-by-overdose, Nolan and Bex retraced their steps up toward the sunroom and ducked out the sliding glass door onto the pool deck. From there, it was a simple matter to leap off the deck and glide south above the lush gardens. With darkness and their digital cloaking to conceal their movements, not a single Black Crow spotted them as they flew over the perimeter wall. Taia had a skimmer-craft parked half a klick from the edge of Derring’s estate, and disguises sat waiting for them on the vehicle’s back seat.
Nolan and Bex slipped on the long, high-collared overcoats intended to cover their now-uncloaked armor, removed their helmets, and donned the simple caps to conceal their faces. Within thirty seconds, the unmarked skimmer-craft was pulling away from the mansion and humming through the streets of Upper Heights.
All of that, and not a single sign of alarm from the mansion behind them. It had been as clean an op as they could hope for, and they’d gotten the intel.
“Taia, show us what you found on Derring’s hard drive,” Nolan instructed. He sat in the driver’s seat, though the AI had control of the vehicle.
The dashboard screen winked to life and a three-dimensional blueprint appeared there. “Based on this intel, I calculate an eighty-six-point-seven percent probability that we are correct in assuming the Protection Bureau’s offices are located in our target building.”
Nolan studied the structure. Though it had only two above-ground stories, the building also appeared to descend six stories beneath New Avalon’s surface, running deeper even than the network of tunnels below the Cyberwarrens. The underground base spread out in a maze of hallways, corridors, elevator shafts, and smaller rooms a square kilometer wide.
No way the Protection Bureau could have built something like that so quickly, he thought. This discovery validated his belief that the organization had simply appropriated an existing structure.
And that explains why Taia can only occasionally bring the smart cells online. Even advanced comms signals struggled to penetrate that far beneath the ground. Knowing the Protection Bureau, they likely had signal jam fields and scanners operating at every entrance to the structure.
The Cyberwarrens’ underground tunnel system had been utilized to maximum effect, providing six different access points. Though four of the entrances were small, two appeared broad enough to accommodate vehicles. The two larger entrances actually bore markings: the southernmost had been labeled “Intake,” while the exit to the west was “Departure.”
Nolan’s brows furrowed. “The fuck was he transporting through that place?” The answer that sprang to his mind sickened him.
Taia confirmed his grim thoughts. “While Bex was searching Derring’s desk, she had me hack into his private terminal. I found shipping manifests for containers that bore no markings or tracking numbers, but appeared to have been transported by a few familiar faces.”
Two images popped up on the screen, eliciting an angry growl from Bex. “Vladimir fucking Demisov!”
No one could mistake the heavy, bearlike face of Vlad, even before seeing his enormous beard. The other image showed Iosif Kazakov, Vlad’s second-in-command and lieutenant of New Avalon’s very own branch of the Shramirovannyy.
“Derring was working with the SMV.” Nolan glanced at Bex. “Getting children trafficked onto New Avalon for his prostitution ring.”
“And let me guess,” Bex said, anger flaring in her eyes, “Derring had that underground structure built as a transit and holding station for the girls and boys he bought from the SMV.”
“Sick piece of shit.” Nolan felt his wrath surging again. He hadn’t gone into this mission out of any sense of heroic duty or justice, but now that Derring was dead, he couldn’t find it in his heart to pity the man. “But how’d the Protection Bureau get their hands on it? You think they knew about his operation and used it to ‘convince’ him to give them that building?”
Bex inclined her head. “I’d be more surprised to find out that wasn’t what happened. Given what you’ve told me about them and what I’ve heard from the few sources I’ve talked with, it fits with their MO. They’d only have moved against Derring if it fit their agenda, whatever the fuck that is.”
That had always been a question in Nolan’s mind. The name “Protection Bureau” suggested that the clandestine organization conducted operations and gathered intel in the name of safeguarding the Nyzarian Empire. Much of what Nolan had seen fit with that intention, but there were far too many instances where the missions Agent Styver had given him seemed to only make things worse—if not for the Emperor or the Empire at large, certainly for the citizens directly affected.
No, the Protection Bureau seemed to march to its own tune, a fact that had only begun to bother Nolan recently. Until Wolfe, he’d been able to turn a blind eye, accepting that their missions had set him—mostly—against scum like German French and Fineas Derring. Yet now his eyes were open, and he could no longer ignore the belief that the Protection Bureau operated by their own set of rules.
The question was: once he discovered what those rules were and who gave the organization its orders—which he fully intended to do—what then? The only way to answer that question was to find out the truth. He needed complete intel in order to decide how to proceed.
He returned his attention to the blueprints on the screen. “Have you found us a way in?” he asked.
“As I mentioned,” Taia said, “there are six entry points, but the blueprints fail to contain any hint of the security measures the Protection Bureau will doubtless have installed during their occupancy.”
Nolan scowled. “Which means we can’t go in. Not until we know exactly what we’re going to have to bypass.”
“Indeed,” Taia said. “However, I believe the plan to snatch Agent Styver is still on the table. Warbeast Team has maintained close observation on both the target building and the location where we suspect Agent Styver is holed up.”
“Good.” Nolan nodded. “Send this intel over to Zahra, and fill them in on what we’ve found out.”
“Copy that,” Taia replied.
“Is there anything else we need to know?” Nolan asked. “Anything else on that hard drive that might be relevant to our plans?”
“No,” Taia said. “The blueprints for Agent Styver’s building reveal nothing of interest, and the rest of Derring’s properties appear unsuitable for alternate locations for the Protection Bureau’s offices. None of them have sufficient power supply to support a server system large enough to run the Protection Bureau’s operations, or enough emergency evacuation routes.”
Nolan chewed on that. He didn’t want to press the matter, not in front of Bex, but he wanted to be sure they had all the relevant details.
“Good job, Taia,” Bex said. “We’re one step closer to putting this in the rearview. Keep us updated if anything else comes up. In the meantime, would you be a dear and enable Privacy Mode? Garrett and I need to have a chat.”
Nolan’s eyebrows rose.
“Of course, Bex,” Taia said. “Anything for you.”
Bex grinned. “You get that replacement body online, and I might just take you up on that.” She stroked the dashboard as if it was Taia. “I want to take Project Uncanny Valley out for a test-spin myself.
”
“Promises, promises,” Taia said, a very Bex-like response that elicited a laugh from the woman. “Privacy Mode enabled, now.”
Nolan turned toward Bex, just in time to see her smile fade and her expression grow serious. “The fuck’s going on with you and Taia?” she demanded.
The question caught Nolan totally off-guard. “What?” was all he could manage.
“I know you, Garrett.” She jabbed a finger at his face. “I know how much you trust Taia. Or, more accurately, how much you trusted her. I’ve been back for all of a day and a half, and in that time you’ve already questioned Taia twice. And not in an ‘are you sure?’ sort of way. I mean seriously questioning her, the same way you questioned me after I woke up on your couch.”
Nolan’s jaw dropped. He’d known she was insightful and paid attention to details, just like every Silverguard was trained to do. But this was next-level intuition. No, not intuition. She knew him and Taia better than anyone else in the galaxy. If anyone could put those tiny pieces together and come up with this answer, it was her.
“So talk, Cerbie.” She scowled at him. “What changed while I was gone?”
For a moment, Nolan had no idea what to say. On the one hand, he couldn’t lie to Bex. Not about this, given how involved Taia was in her life, too. But the truth could prove far more damaging than a lie. No matter how much he had tried to trust Taia, he still couldn’t help questioning her. How much worse would it be for Bex, who hadn’t spent every waking moment for nearly five years with the AI’s voice in her mind?
“I…” He fumbled for words. Indecision gripped him, tied his tongue in knots.
“What?” Bex asked. “You what?” Her brow furrowed. “You found out she was secretly spying on you for the Protection Bureau all this time?”
Again, Nolan’s jaw dropped. He stared at her, aghast. Had she known? How? And if so, why the fuck hadn’t she said anything to him?
At his response, her eyes went wide. “Wait, what? That was right!?” Surprise flashed across her face. “Motherfucking dick-shitting knucklefuck!” She actually recoiled—from him and from the vehicle’s dashboard. “She…what!?”
Rampant Destruction (CERBERUS Book 10) Page 11