Silent Knight

Chapter Fourteen

Sure enough, the power was cut in the building.

"Great job," I said to Morathi.

"Except now we can't see a damn thing," Alex mumbled.

"Yeah, but neither can they," I pointed out. "Let's move," I told my team. Alex went up to the door and upon realizing it was locked from the other side, he proceeded to kick it open.

"The room you need to get to is on the third floor," Morathi informed us. "There should be a staircase to your right as soon as you go up from the basement." We all climbed out and I flicked on a light at the end of my gun, the others did the same. "I've lost visual on you now, you're on your own until you get out," Morathi said.

"Copy that," Alex said into the coms. We began to move closer to the stairs when we heard the sounds of boots stomping down them.

"They're probably coming to check on the power," I whispered. The basement is where the building's functions were, heat, water, no doubt they had a breaker box or two down here as well. I motioned for my team to press against the side of the stairs and waited for the men. I quietly pulled my blade out of the sheath, wrapping my fingers gently around the hilt.

They came down yelling in Russian, I counted two voices. My team remained quiet as mice as they descended. When they got to the last step I jumped behind the first person and slit their throat. Before he had the chance to even think about what had hit him, I had lowered his dead body onto the ground. I spun around to see Alex holding the second Russian in a chokehold. When the person passed out, Alex gently set the body on the floor. We dragged their bodies to the side, on the off chance that someone would come looking for them or updates on the power.

With my head, I motioned to start making our way up the stairs, me at the front. When I got to the door. I cracked it open and peered inside. I couldn't hear anything, so I opened it the rest of the way and carefully walked through. It was an empty hallway. By now, the emergency lights had turned on, and I could see the area's vague red outline.

Despite all of the damage, the building still looked beautiful. The marble walls had managed to survive the destruction and the inside still looked like a government building. Except the Canadian and Albertern flags had been tossed on the ground and replaced with the Russian flag. I looked to the right and sure enough, I saw a set of stairs leading up to the second floor. One man was standing at the bottom.

As quietly as I could, I snuck up to the man. I didn't want to leave a mess like with the guy in the basement, so I put him in a chokehold like Alex had done downstairs. With a hand over his mouth and my arm around his neck, I walked backwards with the man. Once he passed out, I tossed his limp body back down the stairs we had just climbed and gently shut the door.

"He's fine," I muttered to the others. Alex raised his eyebrows. "What? Now we can move."

We went up to the third floor quietly. There was a railing that overlooked into the middle of the first floor where we could see about a dozen men patrolling around the marble fountain that was in the middle of the room. My eyes went wide as I looked at the top of the fountain, noticing the severed head that was on display, undoubtedly the leader of the province. I looked back at Valliere, who also had noticed the head.

"It's okay," she whispered. "No one liked that guy anyway."

"Wha-?" Alex started to say, but I quickly shushed him, we didn't have much time. A few people were yelling in Russian about how they needed to get the lights back on. We didn't have much time.

"Which door do we go through, Cockapoo?" I whispered into the coms.

"It should be the head office of the president prime or whatever."