Chương 122: 35 - SHADOW SOLDIER

The Razorwind guards patrolled the dark halls of the Hunter's Mansion. The lights were in night mode, overhead lights off, while the underlights of the furniture produced a cool blue glow. A storm had kicked up, so the place was especially dark, without the light of the moon shining through the windows, and the grey rain created a constant white noise. Indoors, the hunters were asleep, and the place was quiet aside from the footsteps of the roaming mercs. Quiet as a mouse. Vienna would need to be quieter.

She would use the disorienting noise of the storm to her advantage, sneaking through the shadows of the building. A pair of guards strolled down the hall. They worked in twos. Always in twos, so as not to get caught alone, and they had routine radio checks. In ten-minute increments, meaning once she made her move, she would have about ten minutes of silence before others came to investigate. She needed to be swift. Though she wouldn't be using loot in this affair.

She wasn't trained using magic powers, just her hands and the man-made tools at her disposal. She dropped down from the ceiling, hanging from a line of enhanced wire before landing on the balls of her shoeless feet. She landed about a yard behind the guards, who couldn't hear her over the rain. She cautiously moved her way over to the door, guarding the most plausible entrance to the basement. The elevator likely wouldn't give her access, so the emergency staircase was her best bet to Tyene.

But there were two more guards in front of it, holding rifles and wearing riot gear. The sound of falling boxes alerted the guards.

"What was that?" one of them asked, pointing their weapon.

"Probably some rodent," the other said.

"Go take care of it."

"Do I look like pest control to you?"

"It could be a demon. Besides, even if it wasn't, you know as well as I that Hobbs will have our asses if we let some raccoon in here and it tears up the furniture."

"Right." The man moved towards the main living area while the other kept watch at the door. Unbeknownst to him, an invisible thread was strung across the floor. Once his foot tripped it, it triggered a sound device in a nearby room. A mechanical one, made to sound like squawking geese. He called in on the radio.

"It's just some geese. I've got it." He slipped slowly into the room where the sound came from, and he opened the door. When he stepped inside, he was greeted with a knife in the nape of his neck. She covered his mouth to muffle his scream and waited until the squirming stopped, and laid him on the ground gently.

"10 minutes," Vienna thought. She walked back out into the hall, seeing the guard alone at the door.

"Excuse me, sir."

"It's quiet hours, ma'am. You should be in your room."

"I know. But I can't seem to find a working bathroom. The one in my room is clogged."

"Understood. I'll call it in." He reached for his radio, taking one hand off the barrel of his gun. In that moment, she struck right at the side of his neck, then hammered the bottom of his jaw to close his mouth. He dropped his radio and took a step back, struggling to find his breath. That's when she drove her knife right under his left armpit. A tender spot, unprotected by his bulletproof vest, leading directly to the heart if aimed correctly. She always aimed correctly.

She caught him before he thudded to the ground. However, his radio slipped from his hand and crashed to the ground. The crack of plastic echoed down the hall. And she cursed herself for being reckless. There was a call on the radio.

"Echo 1. Do you read? Your area's pretty noisy tonight." She dragged the body behind a couch, recognizing the voice of the roaming guards. Barely through the condensation on the window, she watched them turn around and head back in her direction. She cursed herself again.

"You've gotten sloppy." She had barely slept and knew she was emotionally compromised and may have rushed in irrationally. But that didn't matter. Being more cautious would've only spared corpses, and as far as she was concerned, for Tyene, the body count didn't matter. She listened as the guards' footsteps approached and attached a silencer to her pistol. T'balt waited out in the car, which was the only thing shielding him from the rain and lightning around.

The black Corlander SUV was parked in the middle of the woods, and he leaned back in the driver's seat, staring up at the ceiling.

"But what if something goes wrong?" he kept asking himself.

"What if Vienna can't get to her, and you could've done something? What if they leave and don't come back?" These and questions like them played on a constant loop in his head. He hated doing nothing. Even though Vienna had told him he'd done his part, and she was capable on her own. Living countless lives taught him that sometimes even the slightest coincidence can get you killed. Looking right, when you should've looked left. Jumping when you should've ducked. Inside every decision meant life or death.

But if he were there, he could teleport her out if things went wrong. But it was too late. She was already inside, leaving him alone out here. He couldn't just teleport inside. Unless… He listened to the rain. After a few minutes, came the low roll of thunder building in the clouds. Then he got an idea. He watched for lightning, counted the seconds, and then appeared inside the mansion. The boom of his teleportation was loud, but everyone would've just thought a door was open when they saw the lightning outside.

It was adequate cover. A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation. But when he looked around the room.

"Maybe she really didn't need my help." There were dead bodies scattered all over, blood trickling over the marble floors as Razorwind soldiers were either shot or stabbed to death on the ground. It looked like it would've been a shootout, but based on the positioning of the bodies, each was physically moved to block its line of sight from the next two victims. Less of a wild massacre and more like people continuously walking into a slaughterhouse.

The place smelled like heavy iron, the kind you only smell in a thick pool of blood. T'balt sighed, kneeling over one of them, seeing a well-placed bullet hole right in their neck. The sad part was that these bodies didn't bother him as much as they would've once upon a time. Death was just a part of this game now. Which meant so was killing. He wished it weren't that way, but after so many lives, getting upset over it stopped being worth anything. Something stirred on the far end of the hall, like a low whirring.

It was the elevator. It was moving.

"Oh shit." T'balt thought. He didn't know where Vienna was, but if someone was in that elevator and saw these bodies, there was going to be trouble. Part of him said to just teleport out. Vienna likely planned for something like this to happen. She probably already had Tyene and was long gone out of here. But the other part of him won. He teleported right to the elevator door. When it dinged open, he threw himself inside, blocking the exit for the person on the other end.

He tried to make it as accidental-feeling as possible when he pushed them back inside and pressed the button to close the door.

"Sorry. Sorry," he tried to exclaim before even looking at their face. When he did, it was the cold, icy stare of German Casas's black eyes looking back at him. His face was undeniably serious, even more so than usual. But he didn't recognize T'balt. That much was clear. This was a new iteration of German after all. He seemed to wait for T'balt to explain himself.

"Sorry. I was just in a huge rush," was all he could think to say.

"May I ask why?" German asked.

"Not really something I want to get into," T'balt nervously laughed. German paused, looking at the elevator buttons. None of them had been pressed. Meaning the elevator wasn't moving. Then he gazed back up at T'balt.

"Are you here to kill me?"

"No. What? What are you talking about? I was just getting in from the rain."

"Yes. This is quite unfortunate for you. Out of all the people that could've been in this elevator, it had to be the man who can read minds. That's what you were thinking just now." T'balt tried to blank his mind.

"I don't know what you mean. I'm just looking to get to my friend's room. I think they're in 234." German pressed the button for the second floor.

"Then allow me to show you the way." The elevator dinged again, and they walked in silence, all the way to the room at the end of the second-floor hall. He watched as T'balt knocked. Ellie answered a moment later, wearing some dark pajamas she must've taken from the mall.

"T'balt? What are you doing here?" She looked out in the hall, seeing German. T'balt nudged her back inside.

"Thanks for the escort. I think I'm good from here." German nodded, stepping, and T'balt closed the door behind them. As he walked back to the elevator, he pulled out his radio.

"This is a code 41599. Put the building under full lockdown." Ellie and Cannon stared at T'balt in the room, both having apparently been using the same room to save on money. But before they could say anything, the alarms in the building began screaming. T'balt nervously smiled, "I may have messed up." Razorwind forces charged the door to room 234, weapons drawn. Without notice, one of the men kicked the door open as they all flooded the bedroom, fingers ready on their triggers.

But they all remained confused as there were no signs of escape. Due to the lockdown, a protective wall had covered any escape from the window. And the door hadn't been touched since German left the suspects. And yet they were left with an empty room. Tyene looked up from her prison cell, hearing the alarms even where she was down in the basement. She hopped out of bed and looked around, but there wasn't much she could do, blocked behind that plexiglass.

But she heard the elevator ding, and German marched out of it straight to the glass. He was incensed.

"Have you lost your mind? I don't understand this warpath you're on."

"What are you talking about? I haven't done anything. What's happening?"

"What's happening is that your friends have killed more than a dozen of our soldiers, forcing me to call a lockdown. And now I'll have to explain to Corlander why they were here. It would've been easier if you just stayed still and let me handle this, but that isn't who you are… You've left me with no choice." He reached into his back pocket, shuffling around for something.

"Whoa. Hold up. What are you doing?" Tyene backed into the corner of her cell.

"I have to give him something. Otherwise, he'll do away with me like he's done with everyone else. The only way he'll accept this failure," he said.

"Is if I have something to offer him? I'm taking the Loot Thief from you."

"So you're gonna kill me?"

"No." He pulled a card out of his pocket and pressed it against the window glass.

"The loot thief can remove any loot, including itself. You're going to take it out. And I'm going to let you go. I'll tell him you escaped." Tyene stared, seeing the desperation on his face. And for a moment, she wanted to reach out to him and say, "But you can come with me." That was before pieces of his skull had splattered on the glass of her cage. The room was filled with a blood mist as a hole erupted through his eye, and he fell over in a pool of his own blood.

She couldn't even scream because she knew exactly what had happened without even having to look at the woman holding the gun behind him.

"God damnit, Vienna. Did you really have to kill him?" Vienna knelt to pick up the card German dropped.

"I'm sorry. I didn't have time to ascertain his threat level."

"I know that's a lie. You never liked German. You've always been trying to find an excuse to kill him." She crossed her arms as Vienna used the card to open the door to her bedroom jail. Vienna hooked her arm, leading her out of the cell and into the basement hall.

"We have to go now."

"Wait," Tyene pushed the woman away, looking back at German's body.

"I'm sorry. I'll make it up to you next time, okay." Vienna pulled her away, and the two began rushing down the hall, arm in arm.

"They've entered a lockdown. We may have to fight our way free." Vienna said.

"Really? That's annoying."

"I apologize. I was too reckless in my entry."

"No. I don't care about that. It's that we'll have to leave without killing him." Vienna stopped in the hall. Not because of her words but because she heard the elevator door ding. And they were stuck in a long, open hall. If they were soldiers, they needed to fight. So she equipped her gun and aimed down the sights at the door, using her body to shield Tyene. When the door opened, she fired. The bullet hit its target. And then bounced off.

The old man took a step out of the elevator, unaffected by the bullet that had just hit his forehead.

"Ah.. I was wondering what the cause was of all this trouble. If it isn't my own stepdaughter." Tyene then flashed an almost wicked smirk as she stared into the face of her stepfather, Mitas Corlander.