Countdown✔️

CHAPTER 09: Showdown

They all met back at the safe house.

Greg hurried into the control room where Drake and Genevieve already were. "What happened?" Drake asked. He'd been leaning against a console but now he stood up straight.

"We tagged him," Greg replied.

"Took us a bit to sort through the two you shot off into the air and the ones still on you," Tanner said from his position across the room, manning one of the workstations. "But we narrowed it down. He's gone to ground."

"Where?" Genevieve asked.

"Here." Tanner turned away from the console and faced the large screen fixed to the wall. A still of a rain-slicked, broken-down warehouse, about twice the size of the one they were currently residing in, appeared. "It's an abandoned warehouse on the far side of the colony. This is where Enzo ended up running to. I haven't been able to get anything on it save that no one's been going near it for the past week or so, which means that we have a rough timeline for how long Rogue Ops has been in town. Which is disturbing, given that we had no idea when or how they arrived and we're supposed to know everything in this shithole."

"So what's the plan?" Greg asked.

"We go in there and kick his ass," Drake replied.

Tanner winced. "It's a little more complicated than that. I managed to grab a thermal image of the warehouse and Forrester is working on pulling up schematics on the thing. There's close to thirty people inside and one of them is really glowing," he replied.

"What do you mean?" Eve asked.

"I mean he's hot with tech. Some kind of jumped-up shit I've never seen before. His temperature is at least one ten."

"That's...impossible," Greg said, frowning. "It'd fry his brain in half a minute."

Tanner shrugged. "Must be something inside making the adjustments. Whatever it is, it's gotta be powerful."

Greg glanced at Drake. "You don't think..."

"The assassin we faced down at the outpost," Drake replied, nodding slowly. "That guy was something else."

"We didn't fare so well last time..." Greg murmured.

"Sounds like we need the element of surprise," Tanner said. "And...well," he hesitated, frowned, looked around, "since you guys got pegged so fast, I figured there's a good chance we've been compromised. Which means two of us might as well come with you. Me and Bennings will, and Forrester will stay behind and run ops for us, be our eyes. We're going to have to move to another location when this is done, though," he explained.

"I kind of feel like a dick now," Greg said.

Tanner laughed. "Don't worry. This is a great change of pace from the normal shit we end up doing. Sitting around on our asses more often than not, honestly. And this place has gotten boring. We've been scoping another location for months and now we finally have an excuse to move out. Now, while we're gathering the intel, you all should be suiting up for war. This time, aside from the infiltration, we're going in guns blazing."

"My kind of party," Drake said, heading out of the room, making for the armory.

The others followed suit.

* * *

They drove through the rainy darkness in a pair of battered trucks.

Tanner drove one truck, Bennings the other. Greg and Eve rode with Tanner, Drake and Genevieve with Bennings. They'd managed to get their hands on some basic blueprints for the warehouse, though there wasn't really a way to know if its internal design had changed at all over the years. Based on what they did see, however, they'd formed a plan. Genevieve would go in through the top of the building, alone, calling on her skills as an assassin. While she was breaking in through roof access, the others would split up into two teams.