Chapter 30: Rest for the Wicked

Archon gave the signal and went on the zipline first. Chaining his special vest to the tightrope with a hook attached to the back of the chestpiece, he glided across smoothly, performing a deft front roll at the end as he reached the roof of the other building.

Like trained assassins, Storm and Octane followed, with the latter not bothering to use any hooks or chains. He simply took a scrap piece of metal he found on the ground and used that as his ‘hook’, grabbing it with both hands as he slid across. Worthy of a Daredevil Angelica user.

Archon looked like he wanted to say something after seeing this reckless move, but refrained from doing so as he quickly climbed up to the vent. It was located beside a staircase leading downwards, but that had been barricaded from the inside — possibly by Alpha Lupi themselves.

Luckily, the vent — just as Iris had said — was indeed loose still, even after all these years. Archon carefully removed the lid, purposely letting it clatter to the ground and make some noise.

Then, after waiting a few seconds, he entered the vent. It was just tall and wide enough to hit a man of his stature in. Naturally, Octane and Storm also fit.

The three purposely made their footsteps within the vents loud and clunky, with the hopes of letting the Alpha Lupi gang members hear them. Fanatic had drawn them a map of the vents, using his own memories of crawling in these when he was younger. Their destination was the room in the dead center of the building, on the second story. That was where they anticipated the leader to be.

Fighting fifty gang members would be difficult, so the goal of this operation was to get in, capture the leader, then have him detonate all the mines to wipe out the remaining members. Since there was no one still living in this area and these slums were far away from any sign of population, doing so was safe and easy. Sure, questions would be raised by the public, but the guild can easily cover all of that up.

After a few minutes, the trio arrived at a chokepoint in the vents. There was an exit here, and it led to a room on the topmost story, right above their target. However, there being an exit here also meant there was a hole the enemies could see them through, so the three sat back for a moment and reached out to their other two teammates.

“Ace, Ivy — what’s the situation inside looking like?” Archon whispered though his earpiece, breathing heavily from the hotness and suffocation in these tight vents.

“You’ve successfully gathered their attention, Archon,” Iris replied. “Most of the gang members are heading to the topmost floor to investigate. They’ll most likely try taking apart the vents. Be careful.”

“Roger that. How many are left down there to guard the entrance?”

“Four, but their guards seem to be down, judging from their idle postures. It appears they are curious about what’s going on upstairs as well.”

The enemies were highlighted in red through the wall for Iris, so she could see their gestures and whatnot. She just couldn’t identify who was who or where the leader was, unfortunately.

“Got it. Initiate Phase 2.”

“Copy,” Finn replied emotionlessly, and cut the comms.

He stood up and began heading for the hideout building, Iris riding on top of him. The rain poured down heavily, but they endured it just fine. They would probably end up with colds after this operation, but that was no big deal.

The two placed their backs against the door, Iris loading her gun and Finn readying his blade-gloves. She then reached down and tapped Finn twice, once on his left cheek and once on his right. This was a code they determined beforehand to signal where to Finn where the enemies were.

Finn nodded in understanding, confirming he received the info, then prepared to smash open the door. Iris placed her finger on his head and tapped three times as a countdown.

‘3… 2… 1… now!’

Finn shoulder charged the door with all his strength, smashing it open with ease. Immediately, he swiped to his left and right at the same time using the blades on his gloves, while Iris took care of the two standing a bit further back. Before the four gang members could even react, they were already dead, the corpses falling simultaneously to the floor with a soft collective thump.

Thanks to Iris’s revolver being silent, no one knew what happened here. She also scanned the room for any security cameras or covert listening devices that may have recorded anything, but found none.

“Good work,” Iris whispered and reloaded her gun skillfully as Finn ran up the stairs.

Since Fanatic had been in this building before, he knew the layout of it extremely well. Before this operation began, he had given Finn exact instructions on how to navigate his way to the destination room, where the leader of the gang was thought to be.

The reason for this was, of course, this room was the most spacious and comfortable one in the building — the boss of a gang wouldn’t let anyone else but himself enjoy that luxury unless he was either really smart or really stupid.

Finn was quite impressed by Fanatic’s incredible memory — it was almost on par with his own, which had been enhanced by the Ghost blood in his body. Fanatic knew this building down to the core, giving Finn instructions detailed to the point where it had specific step counts. Yes, Iris could’ve just told him where to go, but the less talking in stealth operations like these, the better.

In case the duo ended up lost, Fanatic was on the channel too as a last resort to tell them where to go, as he had a 3D representation of this building ready on his computer and connected it with location-tracking devices implanted on the five going in.

The plan was flawless — all that was left was to actually complete it.

Rushing up the stairs, Finn and Iris discretely executed any unsuspecting gang members one by one, using the same strategy they had when first entering, using the fact that there wasn’t any electricity in the building as cover. Before they even knew it, they had massacred every guard on the stairs and reached the third floor.

Strangely, despite the fact that he was killing humans, Finn felt no remorse. To him, these gang members might as well have been Ghosts. But what was even stranger was Iris — she too held nothing back, shooting fellow humans as if they were nothing but brainless Phantoms.

Finn had originally thought of her as an innocent girl, plagued by Ghosts, but through various interactions and encounters, he now knew she was anything but that.

Now was not the time to be worrying about that though, as Archon came in on the comms, whispering sharply.

“Ace, Ivy, you here yet? They’re starting to pry open the vents!”

“We’re here,” Iris replied, placing a finger on her earpiece. “Ready for Phase 3.”

“Roger. We’ll be there in a minute.”

Archon quickly cut the comms and began climbing back the way they came from, careful to make as much noise as possible. They exited back on the roof again and stretched their bodies.

“Oh, god… I’m really getting old…” Archon muttered, then without wasting any time, used a rope attached to his waist to hook onto the edge of the roof and rappel down. Storm followed, and Octane just jumped off without using the rope, landing solidly on the ground.

“Shit, my ankle!”

“Quiet!” Archon whispered sharply, shooting his ally a glare. Octane immediately shut up and just endured the pain.

The three then entered the building from the front, hurriedly rushing up the stairs to rendezvous with Finn and Iris who were already there, waiting beside the door leading to the second floor. They passed by many corpses, but didn’t bother sparing them a second glance.

“Alright… we should have about five to ten minutes while they investigate the vents,” Archon said once they met up. “Ivy, how many bastards on this floor?”

“Twelve, excluding the two people in the room in the middle,” Iris replied. “They are spread out, but not enough for us to take them out discretely one by one.”

“Tch… how troublesome,” Archon muttered. “I was hoping all the noise we made would get them to send more people to investigate, but…”

“Boss, I can speed past them all, focus their attention on me,” Octane suggested. “You guys just go for the leader.”

“… You sure you can do this?”

“‘Course, boss! I may not be able to keep it up for too long, but it should be enough to buy you enough time to get into the room.”

Archon took a deep breath and placed a hand on Octane’s shoulder, nodding firmly.

“Yeah… I was wrong to doubt you. Go for it, champ.”

Finn pulled open the door for him gently, careful not to make any noise while doing so.

Octane smirked and pulled out a syringe from his pocket, before stabbing it into his thigh as a green and black motorcycle suit materialized on his body.

“Oh, baby… watch this, boss. Here… we… GO!”