Chapter Twenty: Seattle Vance
“We’re in control,” Raven spoke over the phone.
I hung up a second later. We had taken cover deeper within the building. I didn’t want to get hit by a stray car or whatever else was getting thrown around down on the street. We stayed in some darkened secretary’s office, in a building full of identical, bland offices.
I admit, part of me wanted to go to the windows and watch the showdown between Adam Mason and the Alpha Trio. Part of me really wanted to see that fight. But I had a job to do, and there wasn’t anyone or anything that could distract me from it.
Dust and I walked out into the hallway. Raven probably already had us on cameras and could walk us to the data vault, but it wasn’t necessary. I had memorized the layout of the entire building. I knew this place better than the back of my own hand.
The kid started jogging ahead, poking around corners and doors, making sure that rooms were empty and there was no one who could get in our way. I trailed back and let him do his thing, knowing that anyone who was a civilian was already long gone. And anyone who wasn’t, well, we wouldn’t be spotting their ambush coming.
Still, I walked. I knew the time pressure, but in situations like these, it was too easy to get the blood pumping—to get distracted. Adrenaline was the last thing I needed now. What I needed was a clear head on my shoulders. And that required taking things slow and methodically. I would rather lose a few minutes than make a mistake that could cost us everything.
And that reason alone tipped me off that something was wrong. The layout of the ASA headquarters was not matching the blueprints I had been given by Joker. There were offices and conference rooms where there shouldn’t be, and where they should be, they weren’t. It wasn’t all off. It vaguely aligned with the map I memorized, but it was all just slightly… wrong. One hallway had four doors where there should’ve been six. I passed by a lounge that should’ve been a restroom.
It never looked too unfamiliar to lose my way, and yet it made my gut churn. Did Joker give me bad schematics on accident? Had there been a renovation of the building that I was unaware of? I shook my head at these possibilities. There’s no way someone like Joker would’ve been so careless. And there was no way I was misremembering things.
So that meant something else was going on here. And I didn’t like it one bit.
A few agonizing minutes later, we made it to the door. It was a simple closet door in the middle of an unassuming office hallway. No one in sight. No one who knew we were here. It was almost too perfect.
“I’ll get the lock,” Dust said as he stuck his hand into the doorknob. His hand phased through the metal and he fumbled around, trying to feel the outline of the mechanism.
I stepped around, trying to get my bearings. We were at the left-hand side of a T-intersection. Along the wall should’ve been four offices and the door for the closet. I paced the hallway and counted three. One that was supposed to be next to the closet was absent, an empty spot of wall where it was supposed to be.
I counted again. One. Two. Three. The numbers didn’t add up with the layout. There was space on the other side of that wall which was missing.
“Aha.” Dust grinned as he phased out a jumble of mechanical components. He eagerly reached to open the door, but my arm snapped on his, preventing him from doing so. He looked at me, confused.
“Hold on for a minute,” I told him as I snapped my phone open and dialed Raven.
“Do you have it?” She asked on the other side.
“Not yet,” I responded. “Do me a favor, will you? Pull up a layout of the twenty-fifth floor. Zoom in on our position. How many offices are supposed to be in the same hallway as the closet?”
I heard several clicks on a keyboard over the phone, and several seconds later, Raven gave me an answer. “Four.”
“That’s funny because I count three.”
“What does that mean?” She asked.
“It means send August up. If you don’t hear from us in the next ten minutes, something has gone wrong.”
I raised my M4 and flicked the safety off. “Dust, I want you to get on the other side of this door. You’re going to reach over and open it, and I’m going to clear whatever is on the other side of this thing. Got it?”
“What do you think is on the other side?” The young kid was confused.
“You remember when I told you about things going wrong? This is that.”
Dust grimly nodded and took his position on the other side, holding his hand out on the doorknob. I took cover on the wall and nodded.
The young kid pulled the door open as hard as he could, and I sprung forward with my sight pointed down.
I was right, and I hated that I was right. Instead of a closet space like we were promised, there was instead a corridor lined with blacker than black material. I knew what it was immediately. Zurite. It was a specially designed noise dampener that messed with the brain. In enclosed conditions, it could shut off superpowers. But this stuff was expensive and rare, not for the likes of City 57. And certainly not anything Joker warned me about.
To make matters worse, I saw another door of reinforced glass leading into a small server room that presumably contained the flash drive. Dust wouldn’t be able to use his abilities, and I doubted my weapon had enough firepower to bust through. I walked down and banged my fist on the glass.
All right. So this was a setback. But it wasn’t the end. Not by a long shot. I needed to regroup with Raven and come up with a different strategy. This was workable. We just needed to put our heads together and—
“Uh… Ghost?” Dust spoke shakily.
I turned back to the boy only to discover a man holding him hostage, with a pistol aimed squarely at the boy’s head.
He had a tan combat uniform, the same you see in the movies. He wore a kevlar vest full of pouches with magazines, grenades, and everything else you could think of. I couldn’t see his face. He had a helmet with what looked like night vision goggles, probably infrared to catch invisibles.
“Please drop your weapon, Mr. Vance,” the man said calmly.
Instead, I raised it. “Shoot the boy, and I shoot you. Should’ve jumped and killed us when you had the chance.”
The door to the server room opened behind me, and I knew at once I was done. Sighing, I didn’t need to look at the man who had been hidden in there. I felt the muzzle of a gun pressed against the back of my head.
“Please do as he says. Drop the weapon, Mr. Vance. We need you alive for now, but that doesn’t mean we can’t make things very painful for you.”
I looked at Dust who had an expression of complete terror on his face. Yeah, that was how it felt to be outclassed. What was more embarrassing was that they didn’t even have to use their superpowers. We were beaten out by a clever trick. I dropped my rifle to the floor.
“Remember what I told you, kid,” I reminded Dust. “Some fights you can’t win.”
He nodded as he finally understood why I gave him that cellphone.
…
I gasped as I spat out blood. Getting punched in the face wasn’t anyone’s idea of a good time—least of all mine. The Spec Ops guy had handcuffed me to a chair in one of the nearby offices where he could interrogate me. Evac would be on its way as soon as Mason was put down, and then I knew I would be shuffled off to some hellhole where interrogation could commence in earnest.
But until then, Spec Ops weren’t ones to waste time.
“Who are you working for?” The man asked, cracking his knuckles.
In the haze of my blurry vision, I sized him up. The Spec Ops man was in his forties. Bald and with a square-jawed face that was many times scarred over, he was a professional through and through. The heavy-set man looked like he had seen more than his fair share of the battlefield.
How many did I see out in the hallway? Nine? No, ten? There was probably a full squad at least. They had let us go about our merry way until the trap was closed. Then they appeared seemingly out of nowhere and took positions as me and Dust were carted off to separate rooms.
“Go fuck yourself.” I groaned, waiting for August to make his appearance.
He should’ve shown up by now. That was the worrying thing. One squad was bad enough, but there were doubtlessly others. Did August get intercepted before he even had a chance to get up here? And even if he didn’t, would it matter? I had no idea what these guys’ superpowers were. Was it duplication? Flame control? Super speed? All of the above?
All I knew was that Spec Ops took class threes, and just one of them could tear through my outfit in no time. I didn’t think there was much August could do even if he hadn’t been walking in blind.
“Who are you working for!?” The Spec Ops guy punched me again so hard my chair nearly toppled. I couldn’t be sure, but I think I lost a tooth.
So this is what the big leagues felt like, getting your ass handed to you. Oh man, a part of me really wished I had taken Mr. Greene’s advice. I would’ve given anything for someone to bail me out right about now. Hopefully, I still did.
The Spec Ops guy unsheathed a knife from his belt and waved it in my face. “I don’t have to deliver you in one piece. You know that, right? You have ten seconds, or I start cutting fingers.”
“How did you know?” I asked him, hoping to stall for time. “How did you know we were coming? Who tipped you off?”
Spec Ops guy grinned. “Who’s to say we weren’t here from the beginning? Did you seriously think you could break into an ASA headquarters that easy?”
I smiled at him. “Yeah, I kinda did.”
But as I said those words, a terrible suspicion came over me. Joker had given me the wrong layout. Maybe that was excusable, I don’t know. But not to warn me of Spec Ops? Not to even mention it? Granted, I thought the job might not be so easy as advertised, but to overlook such a crucial detail? With someone as absurdly well connected as Joker, there was simply no way.
Unless… Unless there had been a double-cross somehow. And he had stood to gain.
Spec Ops readied for another punch, but I cried out before he could strike. “Wait!”
He hesitated. “Yes?”
“I’ll tell you what you want to know,” I said, still panting heavily. “Just let the kid go. He doesn’t know anything. I got him wrapped up in all this.”
Spec Ops crouched down. “That depends on the information you tell me.”
I knew it was a lie before he spoke the words. There was no way they were going to let Dust go, but I had to buy as much time as I could. This wasn’t a negotiation. This was a game of how much I could distract and delay. Didn’t quite know for what, but it was my only chance.
I breathed heavily for several moments, acting like I was getting it back together again. Before Spec Ops could get suspicious, I spoke.
“I worked with this guy. Don’t know his name. Don’t know his face. Secretive, you know? Went by the alias of Joker. I can’t even tell you his real voice. All I know is that he works for the Checkered Hand, and he wants information on Blacksites.”
Spec Ops smiled, as if he had finally broken me. Maybe there was some truth in that. I didn’t ever consider myself a man to sell out his own employer, but deep down, I knew it was my employer who sold me out first. Fairs fair when it comes to stabbing the other guy in the back.
“So what?” I choked out. “Is that good enough? Are you going to let the kid go?” I added some pleading emotion to that last bit.
I don’t know if that was the wrong thing to do. I wasn’t too worried about deceiving the Spec Ops guy, but it still somehow felt wrong. It betrayed a connection to Dust that I didn’t really have. I had a fondness for the boy, but a job was a job. And to paint him with such importance to me felt like I was only dragging him further in the shit, which I really didn’t want to do.
A kid shouldn’t have to suffer for an adult’s mistakes—much less his misdeeds. I was surprised I found myself thinking that, but here I was anyway. It’s a terrible thing that the young get entangled with the sins of the old, I suppose. If only that weren’t the case, maybe I wouldn’t have to feel so guilty about it.
“We’ll see.” Spec Ops lied. “How did you manage to get Daniel Peterson to defect? Where is he now?”
“Who’s Daniel Peterson?”
Spec Ops punched me in the gut, and I doubled over in pain. It was really rich getting beat up for something I didn’t even do. And I knew I had to keep quiet about this one. Even with all the shit that went down, I still had a plan to catch Peterson and not a suspicion could get out.
“Ask him yourself,” I panted. “The plan was Mason, only he somehow convinced Peterson to go with him. It’s not my fault you can’t keep track of your guys.”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
I looked him in the eye. “You really think I would be sitting in this chair if I had a teleporter working for me?”
That managed to get Spec Ops to shut up for a bit.
“Tell me something,” I asked him. “How screwed were we? How many squads?”
Spec Ops smiled, and it told me all I needed to know. My heart fell in my chest. Again, I never expected this place to be unguarded. But I was led into the slaughterhouse. Before he could ask any more questions, his radio clicked. “Alpha Trio is down. Lance Bain is dead. Squads one through four move to contingency plan.”
For the first time, I saw a look of visible concern cross the soldier’s face.
“Looks like my guy was tougher than yours,” I chuckled.
I never really considered the possibility that Adam Mason would walk out of here. But hey, maybe he was just that absurdly strong. Maybe he could take all the punishment the Democratic Union could throw at him and then some. Maybe… just maybe… he was the ultra super-hobo.
I spat out more blood as I laughed.
Before Spec Ops could hit me again, there was shouting and then screams from the hallway. I wish I could’ve jumped him while he was distracted, but I could do nothing with my hands zip-tied to the chair. The soldier opened the door and looked out. He suddenly vanished from sight, and I was seemingly left alone.
Could’ve been invisibility. Could’ve been teleportation. Could’ve been a lot of things. Damned if I knew, though. Either way, I heard the men in the hallway open up. I saw and heard bits of the chaos that was happening outside.
“Contact! Contact!”
“Jansen and Reynolds are down!”
“—what the hell? —is this guy!?”
“Backup! We need— right now!”
I was sitting there absolutely confused. There was no way August was dishing out this punishment. Was he? Had I just underestimated him? I heard the sounds of men screaming and dying out there, and trapped within the room, I didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on outside.
Gritting my teeth, I struggled against the zip ties. All I knew was that I wanted to be free of this chair by the time whatever was happening outside was done. The gunfire was slowly losing its intensity. I didn’t know whether that meant the Spec Op guys were winning or losing.
I heaved against the restraints, but all it did was topple me over onto the floor. My face was squished on the tile, and I looked up as I saw a bloodied Spec Ops soldier run into the room. He crouched and emptied his rifle out into the hallway before switching to a nullifier not unlike my own. He got off three pops, and from the loud cracks, I knew it was on its highest setting. The directed noise was meant to kill.
I noticed blood was trickling from his ears and nose. He didn’t look to be well, and he looked disoriented.
A bulking man in a black uniform stepped into the doorway. His clothes were tattered with burns and bullet holes and even frosted ice. I saw a lot of blood on him, but I couldn’t see any wounds. He wore a black helmet with a visor that completely obscured his face, and he carried a long rifle that I knew was an amped up nullifier.
Boom.
My world was suddenly sent spinning as I was caught on the edge of the blast. So much was a blur, but I saw the colors and shapes of what was going on. Spec Ops was on the other side of the doorway. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I think he had moved really fast. At the moment, I didn’t think anything. But if I had, I would’ve been really impressed that he kept it together enough to use his powers.
Spec Ops lunged at black uniform. His arms were like lightning, hitting the man’s chest and head at least a hundred times in a few seconds. As I regained my senses, I saw Spec Ops shove his arm into black uniform’s chest. With great difficulty, he pulled out something red and beating.
But the other guy didn’t die. The man in the black uniform grabbed Spec Ops by the neck and placed the nullifier right under his head. I saw the ceiling was painted red, and the man in the black uniform dropped a headless body to the ground.
I groaned and tried to get up, but I couldn’t. I was helpless as this new guy slowly walked up to me and placed the same nullifier on my head.
“Where the fuck is Daniel Peterson?”
Link to Chapter Twenty One
Man things are really getting interesting, can't wait for the next chapter
Oh wow, somehow I didn’t realise the guys that stole the kid weren’t Vance and his crew. The rabbit hole is far deeper than I thought.