Lion

by Matt Rogers

  The pair of guards cascaded to the ground on either side of him, falling almost poetically. The other four dotted down the corridor were slow to respond, wrenched from the motionless states they’d been resting in for hours to meet the explosive appearance of all-out violence head on. A couple reached for their holsters.

  Too little, too late.

  Slater methodically unleashed a torrent of twelve successive rounds, emptying the magazine into the four men. They were lined up like bowling pins and Slater had nothing to be cautious about hitting — he simply had to drop four targets in a concrete tunnel.

  Like playing a video game on easy mode.

  Six men died in the space of two seconds, and before the last man had even slumped to rest Slater discarded the empty Beretta and yanked a fresh weapon out of the nearest man’s holster. He barely stopped to check his progress. Everyone around him was dead, and he only needed the simple confirmation before he took off back the way he had come, making a beeline for the waiting room home to a group of ten paedophiles.

  He gave no thought to what was about to transpire. He smashed open doors left half ajar, retracing his path through the sub-level, employing tunnel vision. Conscious thought had ceased to function — all the pain of his childhood and the suffering he’d witnessed within Mountain Lion had shut him down, turning him into a soulless weapon with a single aim.

  Kill every single person in this complex that knew about the sex slavery.

  He had become unstoppable.

  Like a freight train barrelling towards its target, merciless and unforgiving.

  He reached the corridor in question and spotted the open doorway leading to the waiting room, where nearly a dozen twisted souls waited to satiate their vices. His finger tightened around the trigger and he realised he was about to commit murder at an unfeasible scale.

  He didn’t care.

  He surged forward.

  Then he froze in his tracks. He sensed movement at the other end of the hallway, coming in the opposite direction. Heading straight for him. By rough calculations he estimated there were at least five or six men, judging by the quantity of footsteps.

  More importantly, he heard the racking of slides and the clatter of automatic weaponry bumping against body armour.

  Fuck, he thought.

  There was a small army headed his way, armed to the teeth.

  How?

  He didn’t have time to think, or consider. Any number of avenues could have collapsed — he’d infiltrated this casino by propping up a house of cards that could have crumbled at any moment. The head of security might have figured he could explain his way out of the recording, and sent in the cavalry to demolish Slater.

  Whatever the case, he needed time to consider.

  To plan.

  Being caught in the open would achieve nothing.

  So he darted to one side of the hallway and squashed his bulk into a jagged alcove set between two giant concrete slabs. There wasn’t enough space to conceal himself entirely, but most of his torso managed to power into the gap, and the rest became draped in shadow.

  Slater held his breath, clutched the Beretta at the ready, and waited for all hell to break loose.

  Sweat ran off his face — the sub-level had become stifling, choked by stress and tension. The warmth seeped into everything, hanging thick over him. He narrowed his eyes and waited for the arriving party to materialise around the bend.

  He would have maybe two seconds to determine how to proceed before they spotted him.

  That’ll be enough, he told himself.

  A few feet ahead, he heard concerned voices emanating out from within the waiting room. Paying customers, disgruntled by the time they’d spent in limbo.

  You won’t have to wait much longer, Slater thought.

  All of a sudden the approaching party roared into view in a tight cluster of motion — even from their strides Slater could sense they were elite, eons beyond the minimum-wage security down here. He spotted Kevlar vests and tactical gear and high-powered assault rifles with attached sights and thick suppressors.

  A hit team, their faces hard and their movements practiced.

  They knew combat. They knew it well.

  Slater realised he didn’t stand a chance.

  Half-heartedly, he raised the Beretta slowly, lining it up with the mercenary at the front of the pack.

  ‘Here goes nothing,’ he whispered.

  But no-one saw him. None of the unit — he counted five men total — even glanced his way. They weren’t focused on anything past a certain doorway.

  A waiting room.

  Oh, Slater thought.

  He shrank back into the shadows, and watched as the unit surged through the open doorway, entering the same space as the customers.

  ‘What the hell is this?’ one of the businessmen shouted, puffed up on outrage and confidence. His voice floated out into the corridor where Slater stood motionless, somewhat aware of what might follow.

  If Forrest’s at breaking point — how might he react?

  Like this.

  ‘Sorry, gents,’ one of the mercenaries said. ‘We’ve been instructed to shut this little outfit down. Don’t take it personally.’

  ‘What the fuck does that involve?’ a European voice snarled.

  Suppressed automatic gunfire bit the air, five weapons firing at once, an unrelenting stream of brutality that made Slater flinch where he stood, despite the years he’d spent on the battlefield.

  No words followed, but he knew he was listening to the sound of ten men dying.

  43

  The gunfire ceased seconds later, but Slater found none of the obvious effects of hearing loss — the suppressors had taken care of that. Of course any gunshot is still biting, and the idea of any round being fully quieted was reserved for fairytales, but he found himself able to think without the horrendous high-pitched whining that often cropped up in the aftermath of unsuppressed automatic weapon discharges.

  He shimmied out of the alcove, crouching low on one side of the hallway. These were Forrest’s men, and Slater couldn’t wait for them to go quietly. They would ensure everyone in the waiting room had been stripped of their existence before pressing further into the sub-level, eliminating any trace of the sex slavery operation. Slater had no choice but to confront them.

  And — with the element of surprise still resting firmly in his hands — he felt like he had a chance.

  ‘Clear?’ one of the men said from inside the waiting room.

  ‘We’re good. The sick fucks deserved it.’

  ‘Taking the high road, Pierce?’

  ‘Get fucked. They’re a level below us.’

  ‘You sure? We’ve got to kill the product, too. What have the girls ever done to deserve that?’

  ‘I don’t see you protesting.’

  ‘Pays the bills. We good to go?’

  ‘Everyone reloaded?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  A pause. ‘Alright. From what I know there’s two guards outside each—’

  He didn’t get to finish the sentence, because the man chose that moment to walk through the open doorway, materialising in front of Slater in a glaring side profile.

  Slater had no choice but to act.

  A single pivot to the left, and he’d be spotted.

  Outnumbered five to one, the only way to get through this would be relentless motion.

  He nailed a round through the side of the man’s temple, the bullet vicious in its intensity, exploding out the other side of the mercenary’s head in a shower of gore. The corpse crumpled where it stood, but by then Slater was already on the move, shouldering the dead guy aside and unloading all fourteen additional rounds into the waiting room, dropping mercenaries left and right, sending lead into limbs and foreheads. His trigger finger pumped at a lightning fast pace, and before the surviving hostiles had the chance to return fire Slater recognised the sound of an empty magazine and d
ucked back out of harm’s way.

  There was only one guy left alive, and he came screaming out into the open at a flat-out sprint, intent on capitalising on Slater’s empty magazine.

  Slater had poised himself directly alongside the doorway and he caught the man’s charging momentum full in the chest, knocking both of them back across the carpet in a tangle of limbs. In the carnage Slater kicked out, still off-balance, his heel catching the barrel of the man’s carbine rifle. The gun twisted away, breaking the mercenary’s trigger finger in the process. It clashed against the opposite wall, out of harm’s way.

  Even though the haze of adrenalin and testosterone and the pure savagery of combat, Slater sensed something give in his bad knee. As he landed on the concrete with the mercenary’s weight slamming down on top of him, his leg buckled at an awkward angle and something snapped — either a ligament or a bone, he wasn’t sure which. He couldn’t even feel the sensation but he understood the extent to which it would impede his movement.

  He had to deal with the six-foot, two-hundred pound, furious elite combatant on top of him in the next few seconds, or he would be beaten to death when the guy realised Slater was unable to walk.

  Scrambling on the ground, rolling for position, both men fought with everything they had. It didn’t take Slater long to realise the guy was a trained jiu-jitsu practitioner — an untrained hostile could be isolated and shut down in the space of seconds. But as Slater locked his legs around the guy’s waist, pinning him in position, the mercenary dropped an elbow into Slater’s stomach and wrenched his lower body free from the hold.

  He transitioned into side control, covering Slater’s chest horizontally with his entire bodyweight. Slater bucked and writhed, but the power of leverage trumped any kind of adrenalin boost. The guy flattened himself out across Slater’s upper chest and used his right elbow to smash scything blows into Slater’s forehead.

  The first elbow caught Slater hard enough on the temple to stun him momentarily, allowing the mercenary time to drop a second, similarly powerful strike into the bridge of his nose. Hot pain flooded his senses and blood burst from both nostrils.

  Slater coughed, spat, and recognised that another couple of those would strip him of any ability to retaliate. He would be brain dead in moments.

  The mercenary loaded up a third elbow, but he became greedy. He lifted his entire torso a few inches off Slater to transfer all his bodyweight into another strike. He must have thought Slater was on the verge of unconsciousness — perhaps Slater appeared more hurt than he actually was.

  The brief half-second of opportunity opened up, and Slater seized it.

  He bucked hard at just the right moment, levering himself out from underneath the man. The guy tumbled onto his rear, left with nowhere to transfer the energy he’d built up in his right arm. It took him a second to compose himself — certain victory had been right there in his grasp — and by that point Slater had hurled himself across the guy’s seated bulk, acquiring top position in the blink of an eye.

  And he had jiu-jitsu ability in spades.

  From there it became fairly straightforward. Hurting everywhere but still functioning, he used the small window of space between their frames to drop a quick succession of hammer fists into the guy’s cheeks and chin, sacrificing power for output. The shots were short and sharp and no doubt frustrating as all hell for those on the receiving end. The guy squirmed, his airways restricted by Slater’s fist smacking him repeatedly across the face.

  After a couple of seconds he gasped for breath, and Slater used the moment of distraction to slice his legs into place across the man’s stomach, seizing full mount position.

  Now you give up your back.

  The guy lay facing straight up in the air, exposed to all manner of punches and elbows as Slater saw fit. To avoid taking the brunt of the damage to his unprotected face, he instinctively rolled onto his front.

  If Slater wanted to, he could have choked the guy unconscious right there.

  Like clockwork.

  But he didn’t feel inclined to do that. He recalled what the unit had said.

  We’ve got to kill the product, too.

  If Slater hadn’t been here, the five-man hit team would have murdered each and every one of the young girls in the cells, chalking it up to an operational necessity. They were no more noble than the men they’d just killed in the waiting room. They didn’t deserve a quick and painless demise.

  So Slater waited for the guy to roll onto his front, exposing the back of his neck, and then he dropped devastating elbows without hesitation or remorse, targeting the top of the guy’s spine. One after another hammered home, facing no resistance, and after five or six of the massive blows Slater felt the mercenary stiffen underneath him, his limbs locking up.

  He was either unconscious or close to death.

  Not good enough.

  Slater clambered off the man — who made no effort to move from his pronated position — and fetched the assault rifle he’d knocked out of the guy’s hands seconds earlier.

  An M4A1 carbine, complete with an array of optional attachments, almost brand new.

  He didn’t think twice.

  He simply advanced toward the paralysed mercenary and lined up his aim.

  44

  When it was over, and all the members of the hit team Slater had injured over the course of the firefight had caught a bullet squarely through the top of their heads, he stood in disbelief amidst a sea of devastation.

  There were bodies everywhere. The dead customers, resting in pools of their own blood and sprawled across various pieces of furniture where they’d died before understanding what hit them. The hit team, five men kitted out in tactical gear, tasked with shutting down a sensitive portion of Forrest’s empire. The bodyguards further down the hall, who had been inefficient and slow to respond and had paid the price with their lives.

  Slater caught his breath, alone with an entire floor of corpses, and gazed around at the men who had met their demise with such brutality. Blood drenched the walls. It pooled in puddles on the dusty concrete floor, coagulating into muck.

  All in all, Slater figured the world wouldn’t miss any of these people.

  In fact, it would be better off without them.

  What now?

  He didn’t know. Ever since he’d followed Shien into the limousine he’d been moving based on what felt correct — a gut reaction to circumstances that had changed as rapidly as he could feasibly comprehend. Without Shien by his side, his stomach churned. She was safer bunkered down in the hotel room rather than following him through this hell hole, but he didn’t want to leave her unattended any longer than necessary.

  Besides, he was in bad shape.

  The two elbows from the mercenary had delivered damage that would take days — if not weeks — to heal. He couldn’t be sure if his nose was broken or not, but blood flowed freely from his nostrils all the same. A pounding headache had sprouted into life deep in the recesses of his skull, thumping and pulsating behind his eyeballs. He took a step forward to navigate around one of the mercenaries’ bodies but his leg caved in, folding in on itself as his knee landed at an awkward angle.

  Pain flared. He grunted, beginning to sweat in the claustrophobic surroundings, and adopted a strange limping approach to movement — he leant most of the pressure on his heel, stepping forward with his right foot twisted at an awkward angle to alleviate the weight on his damaged ligaments.

  Besides that, everything else hurt equally. His body weighed heavy, all his limbs drooping toward the floor as they searched for energy. No amount of physical fitness could sustain the output required for all-out combat. Brawls to the death used one hundred percent of one’s capacity, pouring every ounce of strength into fighting to stay alive. That simply couldn’t be repeated over and over again — it was more draining than running a marathon.

  So Slater found himself hobbling with a pathetic gait for the private elevator, retracing his steps to the shaft that
would whisk him back up into Mountain Lion’s public spaces. From there he could work his way out of the casino — he couldn’t imagine he would face much resistance that he hadn’t already dealt with.

  In the dark underworld of the complex, he would be resting on top of the most wanted list.

  But he imagined ninety-nine percent of the casino staff had no knowledge of this world.

  For good reason, too.

  On his way to the elevator, he considered his next move. Part of him wanted to retreat to the rival casino’s hotel room and heal up while contemplating his next move — both for Shien’s protection and his own recovery. Another part of him recognised that urge as weakness — there wouldn’t be a more prudent time than the present to take advantage of the gap he’d carved in Forrest’s defences.

  He thought of the man with the bloody hand in the private elevator.

  Was it him?

  Was he Peter Forrest?

  It had to be. His gut told him Forrest had been placed firmly on the defensive, throwing his enforcers at the situation in an attempt to restore order through sheer force.

  Slater glanced back at the dead hit team and realised he had to finish this now.

  Forrest wouldn’t allow him a second chance.

  If he took time to heal, the man would use his resources to vanish into nothingness.

  But why hasn’t he already done that?

  The thought plagued him as he chambered a fresh magazine into the M4A1 carbine, striding fast for the elevators. He glanced at the walls on either side of him, flashing by, sparse and concrete and bare, and realised his surroundings had skewed his perception. If he’d been standing on the highest floor of the complex, looking out over an emporium and set of towers that he’d built with his own resources and determination, he would understand why a billionaire businessman wouldn’t be inclined to start fresh.

  Forrest had too much pride.

  He would do anything to save his empire, because without it he was lost.

  Slater channelled the darkness still churning inside him, tapping into it. Forrest had been so determined to keep his casino operation afloat that he’d sunk into moral depravity to get his profit margins up. Slater had met a hundred — no, a thousand — men and women like him before, and the urge to wipe them out never faded away.