Deep underground below an old factory, a man equipped with partial combat gear walked along a corridor.
The rhythmic sounds of his steps echoed off the walls.
The lamps in the ceiling flickered randomly, and the sound of dripping water could be heard somewhere in the distance.
After a few more minutes, the figure arrived before a thick steel door.
He put his finger on a scanner in the wall and held his eye up for the biometric scanner. He waited for a moment and then took a step back.
With a cracking noise, the door was unlocked and swung open and the hallway was flooded with a wave of cool air.
***
Jake sat on the roof of a small building and carefully observed the entrance of an unassuming garage situated on the opposite side of the street.
It should be fine now.
Jake had watched this place for the last ten minutes because he wanted to be sure that there weren’t any people around.
While he trusted Zack’s preparations, it never hurt to be overly cautious.
Let’s go… Deciding it was time to act, Jake suddenly jumped over the edge of the roof and fell down towards the street.
He created a small dust cloud upon crashing onto the hard concrete floor, and immediately dashed towards the building.
Jake knew that the first few minutes were crucial for the success of the mission. As long as they could successfully trap all of the gang inside, victory was all but guaranteed!
All around him, he could feel similar figures hushing through the darkness, from one spot to the next, closing in on the garage from all sides.
A second later, Jake stood before the closed door of the garage. He stopped, and with hesitation pulled back his hand in one smooth motion.
BANG!
Jake hit the door with enough force to blow a hole though it, big enough for two people. From the information Zack had given him, Jake knew that there was at least one member of the gang standing guard at the underground entrance.
From what Jake could see, the poor guy stood right wHere he had blasted through the door. The flying metal shards sliced through his body, like shrapnel from a grenade, burying themselves deep into his flesh.
He collapsed to the floor almost immediately. While he wasn’t dead yet, his injuries were definitely serious.
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Before the guard could cause any commotion with his screams, Jake rushed inside and put his hand over his mouth.
The guard’s terrified eyes darted back and forth between Jake and the door, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
Jake put his hand into the shadows. Out of nowhere, a perfectly black knife suddenly appeared in his hand.
Jake slit open the guard’s artery and watched as the man’s strength drained together with his blood. A few seconds later and he stopped resisting.
With a breath of relief, Jake let go of the body and rose from the ground.
The first phase of the plan was a success!
He walked outside through the hole he made and signalled into the darkness.
Immediately, eight figures appeared from all around the garage. They nodded to Jake and swiftly started with their task, making sure nobody left this place alive.
He watched as they set up small autonomous turrets and other devices in the corners of the room.
Seeing how everything was going smoothly, Jake opened the hatch and looked at the hole leading into the underground base.
Although he couldn’t see the end of it, Jake confidently entered the dark shaft and climbed down.
Slowly but surly the noise from the surface got quieter, leaving him in a silent black void that felt weirdly comfortable.
…
It took some time, but Jake finally reached the end of the ladder. Below his feet stretched a simple tunnel. He could see the lights flicker from time to time. Hearing that there wasn’t anybody around, Jake let himself drop.
The tunnel, despite the flickering lights, felt more or less professional. The walls were made out of some kind of grey metal and on the floor various cables stretched along on either side of the tunnel.
“Shouldn’t there be a shipment arriving today?”
“Yea, I think so.”
Jake suddenly heard the voices of two men behind him.
He snug up to the corner and carefully peeked around the edge. There, just a few meters away from him, two armed guards talked to each other.
Jake could see that each of them was armed with a pistol and a knife strapped to their belt.
“Have you heard, something crazy has happened.”
“No, what is it?”
“Apparently the vice leader’s brother got killed by some fucker, and he tried to make the boss do something about it”.
So that kid’s brother became the vice leader.
Jake was a bit surprised by this information. In the massage Zack had sent him, it only stated that he was high up in the gang, never that he was the vice leader.
Well, there’s no use in hiding. Jake wasn’t on some kind of information gathering mission, so there was no need to stay stealthy, he was just wasting his time.
Standing up from his crouched position, Jake confidently walked around the corner.
The guards immediately spotted him.
“HEY! WHO ARE YOU?”
Noticing the intruder’s bloody appearance, they immediately pulled their guns.
Despite his calm look, Jake’s mind raced.
Bang!
One of the two guards started shooting immediately.
The bullet traveled at lightning speeds towards Jake’s face until —it didn’t!
“W..w..what?!”
The bullet, that should have easily killed him, just vanished out of thin air.
While it looked like magic to the two guards, Jake knew that their perception just wasn’t fast enough to catch what had happened.
In the short moment between the shot and the inevitable collision with Jake’s head, a black wall rose out of the floor’s shadow and blocked the projectile, and just as fast as it was made, the ominous black wall folded in on itself, turning back into shadows. The whole thing took less than 0.1 seconds!
Not wasting any time, Jake immediately closed in on them.
With seemingly inhuman reflexes, Jake clipped his arm over the guard’s gun hand and tugged down to make him lose balance and buckle forward before proceeding to ruthlessly smash his knee up into his groin.
The painful scream was telling of the blow’s effectiveness.
Before he had a chance to recover, Jake had already pulled a sword out of the shadows and beaded the temporally immobile guard.
Jake then immediately manoeuvred around the second guard to perform a chokehold on him.
Crack!
Jake had dispatched of both guards in an instant!
From the first shot to the end, the exchange hadn’t lasted more than 4 seconds.
Jake stepped away from the two corpses, not bothering to clean the blood off his mask and clothes.
Collecting the two guns and ammunition, he continued to walk down the hallway.