Predictably, we headed into the depths of Hemlock City and Saint begrudgingly drew closer to the sedan as Jonas took various turns, the chance of us losing sight of him increasing.
Eventually, Jonas pulled off of a darkened street into an underground parking lot beneath an innocuous looking office building which towered overhead and didn't even have any signage on the front of it. There was just a glass front to a barren looking reception area where four armed guards lingered far enough away from the doors not to draw notice, but they were easy enough to see if you knew what you were looking for.
"What is this place?" Monroe asked, leaning forward between the chairs so that he could peer out of the windshield as Saint took a turn around the block and parked up in a shadowy side street.
We definitely weren't supposed to park here, but Saint had put fake plates on the car and he couldn't give a fuck about getting a fine.
"I researched every single building that was listed in the Serenity Pharmaceuticals repertoire," Saint replied with a faint frown on his brow. "This one wasn't on that list. So I'd say it's the place they don't want anyone to know about. The place where their ethical standpoint takes a backseat and they conduct the kind of research they don't want the media to find out about."
"Great. So it's an evil lab?" Kyan asked casually, like he came across evil labs every other day.
"Why must you always reduce everything to a crass, layman's description?" Saint tossed at him, but Kyan didn't bother to reply.
I glanced back at him and found him gripping his baseball bat tightly as he stared up at the building in question. My gaze lingered on the tattoo which wrapped around the ring finger on his left hand, the wedding ring he could never take off, and my chest tightened as I considered it. I’d made my peace with the idea of the two of them being married for the most part, but I couldn’t deny it awoke a level of jealousy in me that I struggled to banish entirely sometimes.
"What now?" I asked, happy to follow Saint's lead in this. He was the man with the plan after all and I knew if anyone could figure out how to get Tatum back into our arms against the odds, then it was him.
"Now we mask up, cut the power to that building, and go get our girl," he replied simply. We all knew this was going to be anything but simple, but we also wouldn’t turn back now for all the treasure in the world.
"They'll have a back-up generator in a place this important to them," Monroe pointed out, drumming his fingers against his knee as he assessed the different ways this might go.
"So we'll cut the power from that too," Saint said simply. "And once they're cowering in the dark, we'll strike. They won’t even know what hit them."
I smirked as I accepted the ski and gas masks from him and deftly strapped them on. We looked like monsters wearing this shit, but that was okay by me. Because I got the feeling that monsters were exactly what we needed to be if we were going to get our girl back.
I sat in bed, draining a cup of hot tea as I avoided looking my pain meds in the eye. I’d been given some sort of drug cocktail which had perked me up overnight and I had a fierce resolve to take nothing more until I absolutely had to. The drugs were cutting edge and no doubt had been given to me just in time to save my freaking life because I’d been close to puking up a lung last night. Now I just felt weak, dizzy. But the pain had eased and death didn’t feel like it was breathing down my neck today.
“-a week, then we can expose her to it again,” an anxious female voice sounded out in the corridor and I strained my ears to listen.
“Every day of recovery she has, the more American lives that are lost. The doctor has given me the go ahead on this, so you need to stop fighting it,” my old friend Jonas replied and I craned my head to try and see them out in the corridor, but they must have been standing just beyond the door.
As far as I knew, no one knew I’d made that call from Jonas’s phone. It still infuriated me that I’d managed to get a phone off of the only prick in this place who apparently didn’t keep his charged up. Had Saint heard me? Did he know it had been me at all? I’d tortured myself thinking about it, hoping he’d known, hoping he’d at least think to look into the mysterious call. It was something he might have done, so maybe there was still a chance he’d gotten something useful out of it.
“She needs time to recover, why are you so determined to push this?” the woman hissed. “Is it about revenge because she gave you that sedative?”
Jonas tutted. “No,” he clipped. “Stop questioning me, Darla.”
They walked to the door and opened it, striding in as Jonas glared at me through his visor. I placed my empty cup down beside me and levelled him with a cold look right back.
“We meet again, Jonass,” I said airily, like I gave no shits what they did to me, even though fear was trickling into my chest again at the way he was staring at me.
“We’re going down to the lab,” he announced and my blood ran cold. They really were planning to expose me to the Hades Virus again so soon. “We need to make more of the vaccine to replenish our supplies,” he continued as Darla threw him a frown.
“Well maybe we wouldn’t have to if the batch we already have wasn’t going to be given to the founders and the rest being auctioned off to the highest bidder today,” Darla muttered and my pulse rate spiked.
“Stop questioning me,” Jonas snapped at her then approached me with cruelty in his eyes. He wanted to make me pay for humiliating him. And he had the chance to do so because of this sick company and Troy Memphis giving them the green light to do anything they had to to create as much of the vaccine as possible before I succumbed to the virus. “Get up.”
“Make me,” I growled.
I wasn’t fit to fight or do much at all with how shaky my body felt. It wasn’t just because of the virus either, so much blood had been harvested from me yesterday, I was running on fumes.
Jonas grabbed my arm in a vice like hold, his eyes blazing with rage and I tried to pull free.
We were suddenly plunged into darkness as all the lights went out and my heart jolted. Silence fell eerily as the sounds of all the machines in the building faded away with the loss of power and my skin prickled as I strained my eyes to see in the dark. There was just something about a power cut that made you feel vulnerable somehow, like all of the electronic crutches you leaned on every day were ripped away with no warning and you were left wondering, can I even survive without them? If they never came back on, what would I do?
Of course, I’d be just fine if that happened. Dad had made certain of that. I could live in the wild like a beast if the need ever truly arose, but for most people, the loss of electricity would be like the loss of a limb.
Jonas released me in surprise but the lights all flooded back on a beat later.
“I swear the whole world is going to shit,” he muttered as he shared a confused look with Darla. “Thank fuck for back-up generators though, am I right?”
She offered a slightly nervous laugh, parting her lips to speak, but just as suddenly, they all went off again, the silence in the building becoming thick. Holy shit.
Then realisation hit me like a hurricane. Because this was no normal power cut. A laugh bubbled up in my chest as I realised what was going on. Relief and hope and excitement twisted together inside me until I was laughing like a maniac and Jonas was demanding to know what was wrong with me.
He grabbed hold of me, just a shadow in the dark as my laughter grew out of control. “Stop it, you crazy bitch,” he commanded, but I didn’t give a damn about listening to him. I didn’t give a damn about anything at all in this fucking hell of a place. It could burn for all I cared, and I was starting to think it just might.
“What’s wrong with her?” Darla asked in alarm and I was glad that I was creeping them out. I hoped they were scared. I hoped they were freaking terrified and quaking in their damn boots. Because they should be. In fact, if they were smart, they’d turn tail and run for the goddamn hills before it was too late.
“Just go downstairs, find out what’s going on. I’ll watch her,” Jonas growled, and a flashlight on his phone illuminated as she hurried out of the room.
He swung it down to flare in my eyes and I scrunched them up against the punishing light. “Why are you laughing?” he demanded again, his features cast in shadow beyond the light and making him seem like a monster in the dark. But he was no monster, not in comparison to what was coming.
I let a wide smile pull at my lips as triumph pumped through my chest.
“Because the reapers of hell are here, Jonas,” I told him in a deadly whisper. “And they’ve come to collect your soul.”
T he funny thing about buildings which are locked down as tight as a duck's ass against intruders, is that all you have to do to breach the security is set the fire alarm off. I always thought that was dumb as fuck. I mean, yeah, someone could be trapped inside and need to get out or the firefighters could need to get in and all that shit. No one wants to burn to death, blah, blah, blah. But it seemed to me like they needed more counter measures in place against the prospect of some psychopath strolling up to their place of work and letting themselves in via the auto unlock system. I mean, honestly, they might as well have sent me an invitation and just opened up the front doors.
Sure, it wasn't a total guarantee that the door locks would be hooked up to the alarm. But in all the times Niall had taken me to break in to an office building or even an apartment block in the city, it had worked. It had to be a real fire though mind, not just some half-assed attempt at tripping the drill alarm. Real flames and real smoke and a real reaction from the security system to the threat. Then Bob’s your uncle, Fanny’s your aunt and I’d be strolling right on in to their super secret evil lab. Because yeah, I was calling it an evil lab and if Saint had a problem with it, he could suck my balls.
So we required an honest to shit fire. And that was just fine by me.
"What's taking so long?" Monroe grumbled in my ear and I had half a mind to just tug the earpiece out and toss it aside.
Honestly, these assholes acted like Saint was the only reason we were going to be getting our girl back today, but who was the motherfucker currently rigging a car to blow? I'd like to see Sainty boy flat on his back in a parking lot, half wedged beneath a car while he cut the fuel lines. He’d be all like ‘for the love of all that is holy, I just got dust on my posterior.’ Yeah, that wasn’t going to fly for this job. Sometimes getting your hands dirty literally meant crawling around in the muck and blood and piss before rising up victorious, and I was down with that. Saint could lord it over us from afar with his plans and commands but when it came down to it, our team of hooligans needed all varieties of fucked up and if my role was to be the guy who got the job done, then great.
"If you think you're better equipped to handle this part of the plan then why don't you come down here and do it?" I muttered back, forcing my way further beneath the car before taking my hunting knife from my belt and reaching up to sever the fuel line.
The sharp blade cut through the plastic with a jerk of my muscles and the heady scent of gasoline assaulted me as the fuel began to piss out onto the concrete.
"Incoming," Blake's voice reached me as I wriggled back out from beneath the BMW and rolled over onto my front as I stayed hidden in the shadows behind the parked cars.
Headlights swept into the space and I remained unmoving as the new arrival parked up on the far side of the underground lot.
I stayed silent, a wolf in the shadows, ready to pounce if need be and hoping that the woman wouldn't smell the gasoline on the air as she got out of her car. She paused, looking around at the dimly lit lot and frowning at the glow of red emergency lighting before carrying on to the stairs which led up into the building as she decided to dismiss her concerns. Bad call, Veronica. I didn’t know if her name actually was Veronica, but she looked like a total bitch with a stick up her ass so it seemed to fit. I had an aunt called Veronica and she was an asshole of mass proportions.
It wouldn't be long before she figured out that heading into that building was a bad fucking idea, but I wasn’t inclined to warn her. I just needed to finish up my part in this then make it back to the others in time to head inside via the fire escape to fuck this place right up.
I waited in the dark until the door to the stairs closed and the woman headed up into the building. I'd only managed to cut the lines on four of the cars, but that would have to do. We couldn't wait any longer.
"You good to go?" I checked as I pulled a pack of cigarettes from my back pocket and planted two in my mouth.
"Hang on, I want to scramble the emergency signal hooked up to the fire alarm to delay the fire service's response time," Saint muttered, his attention clearly on whatever he was doing with his laptop to make that happen.
Tippy, tap, tap, tap. I listened to him hitting the keys as he worked furiously to achieve that, fighting off the urge to mock him for making me wait. It was seriously tempting, but on reflection it made more sense to let him concentrate than it did to bait him right now. Look at me, being all grown up and rational. I’d make a mental note to mock him tirelessly for it later though. Saint bait this good couldn’t be ignored.
I backed up a few steps, shoving the box of smokes in my pocket before bringing the lighter to my lips and flicking my thumb down on it to spark it up.
I’d been smoking almost constantly since Tatum had gone, using that familiar scent and taste to torture myself with all the memories it awoke in me of my fucked-up childhood. I’d needed to hurt like that, needed to punish myself for failing her. To hate myself for being such a fuck up. But I was going to make it right. I’d made my girl a vow, to have and to hold, honour and protect. I was failing in all of that right now but I was going to fix it, no matter the consequences.
I glanced at the wedding ring I’d tattooed around my left ring finger and almost smiled. I’m coming, baby.
I inhaled deeply as the two cigarettes lit up, taking a heady toke of nicotine down into my lungs. It was an awful fucking habit, but I’d worry about quitting again once I had my baby back in my arms. She was the only vice I needed anyway.
The gas mask Saint had insisted I wear was currently hanging from my belt and no doubt he'd flip out when he realised I wasn't wearing it. But unlike the others, I'd already caught the Hades Virus and survived. Kyan Roscoe was just too damn hard to kill. And that was the way I liked it. I didn't care if Saint seemed to think I might not have full immunity or whatever the crap he kept harping on about. I was as strong as a bull and didn't like wearing that damn thing over my face.
The ski mask I could live with for anonymity's sake, but fuck that ventilator shit. I never had liked sci-fi movies anyway.
"Got it," Saint said over the earpiece, that underlying current of smug to his tone which I loved and hated equally. “I’m on my way to meet you at the fire escape now.”
“The coast is clear,” Monroe confirmed.
"Anyone wanna give me a countdown?" I asked, a smirk lifting the corner of my lips as I backed up further, taking one of the cigarettes from my mouth and preparing to flick it towards the puddles of fuel beneath the cars I'd sabotaged.
It was like car dominoes. I'd lined them all up, primed them to blast and now they were gonna go boom one after another. The fire alarms would automatically activate, the doors would pop open and hey presto - four demons would be granted entry into the tower that held our queen. So help anyone who tried to stand between us and her then.
"Three," Blake obliged, sounding excited. "Two. One-"
I flicked the cigarette towards the puddle of gasoline and turned to run, keeping my head low as I expected the explosion to tear through the cars in a matter of moments.
I sprinted to the bottom of the exit ramp and paused as the deadly ring of silence told me I'd managed to fuck that up. Nice work, asshole.
"What's going on?" Monroe asked over the comm.
"Did you fuck it up?" Saint snarled.
"Fuck you
," I tossed back, tilting my head to one side and seeing the lit cigarette on the ground a few inches away from the puddle of fuel. "Give me a sec, my aim was off."
I started back towards the row of cars, my boots heavy across the concrete as I raised a hand to my lips for the second cigarette. But before I could take hold of it, the one on the ground began to roll and my eyes widened in alarm a second before it managed to find the puddle of fuel.
A whoosh of heat swept over me before I even heard the almighty boom of the car exploding and I was thrown right off of my feet and hurled back towards the exit ramp.
My back collided with the concrete and by some miracle, I managed not to hit my head as I kept my hands locked over it. Three more explosions rocked the building as the other cars I'd sabotaged followed the first into a fiery death and I rolled over, shielding my head as best I could as lumps of mangled metal slammed down all around me and agony spilled through my body.
"Fuck," I groaned, the cigarette falling from my lips as I pushed myself to my hands and knees. That had hurt like a motherfucker, but I was alive which meant I had more important things to do than lay here crying about a few cuts and bruises.
The fire alarm burst to life, ringing loudly as the sprinklers suspended above the cars kicked into action too and I forced myself up to my feet.
My head spun and my back flared with agony, but I was up which meant I was going to keep moving.
The others were all speaking over the comm, but my ears were ringing so much from the explosion that they were nothing more than a jumble of noise to me. They were probably freaking out over me, but I wasn’t the one who they needed to focus on.
I grunted something which I wasn't even certain formed words as I started moving as fast as my battered body would take me. I needed to meet them at the fire escape and get inside that building. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
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