They left the car well before the road curved toward the property.
Aht killed the engine beneath a line of dying trees, the hood ticking softly as it cooled. Neither of them spoke as they stepped out, the night swallowing the sound of the doors. Markus adjusted the weight of his weapon against his shoulder and followed as Aht led them through the brush, moving with the quiet certainty of a man who had done this too many tis to count.
The warehouse sat deeper in, its lights glowing faintly against the dark sky. From this distance, the fencing was only a suggestion. The place looked sealed, fortified as Markus ntioned, the kind of compound ant to keep secrets in and intruders out.
They hadn’t gone twenty steps when they caught the sll.
Markus slowed, breath hitching despite himself.
It was old blood mixed with rot, sharp and unmistakable, riding the cool night air. Not fresh enough to scream urgency, but not old enough to be forgotten either. Aht stopped too, his posture changing subtly as he turned his head, and his eyes narrowing.
They followed the scent.
Just beyond the tree line, the ground dipped slightly, forming a shallow ditch that ran alongside the outer periter. Sothing pale lay tangled in the weeds.
Markus crouched first.
It took a second for his eyes to adjust, for his mind to accept what it was seeing. The body had been left there carelessly, half-dragged, half-dumped. The chest was torn open, not cleanly, ragged edges where animals had fed. Birds scattered at their approach, wings beating hard as they lifted off, one dragging sothing stringy with it before disappearing into the dark.
Markus swallowed.
This wasn’t disposal," he said quietly. "This is how they treat people when they’re done with them."
Aht didn’t answer. He was already scanning the area, jaw tight, and his eyes cold. A few feet away lay another body. This one was worse. The limbs twisted at wrong angles, parts missing entirely. Whoever had left them hadn’t cared who found them.
Or wanted them found.
They crept closer to the fence, keeping low. From here, the compound ca into full view.
The walls were high, reinforced with steel plating and barbed wire, floodlights mounted at intervals. Caras tracked slow arcs along the periter. Everything about the place scread control.
And yet...
Inside the yard, movent flickered.
Markus pressed himself against the concrete base of the fence and peered through the sh. His stomach turned.
Several people were gathered near the main structure, their hands bound, clothes torn. So were kneeling. Others stood unsteadily, heads bowed, bodies trembling with exhaustion and fear. Ard n moved among them with casual cruelty, laughing, shoving, circling like bored predators.
One of the captives cried out when a rifle butt struck her ribs. Another tried to step forward and was yanked back by the hair. A gunshot cracked; not aid to kill, but close enough to send them all flinching, collapsing into themselves.
Markus and Aht felt heat flood their chests.
"They’re keeping them alive," Markus muttered to himself. "Why? This is disgusting."
Aht’s expression didn’t change, but sothing sharpened behind his eyes. "For now."
One of the n lit a cigarette, leaning against a crate as if this were entertainnt. Another dragged a captive a few steps away from the group, speaking into her ear while the others watched and laughed. She flinched against his touch.
One of the n who walked out of the nearby door flicked a lighter and brought a cigarette to life, the glow briefly cutting through the dusk. He didn’t stand for long. He dropped onto a wooden chair like he had all the ti in the world, legs stretching out in front of him.
"Bring her," he said casually, not even looking.
Another man grabbed one of the captives and dragged her forward. She stumbled, barely staying upright before the first man nudged her knee with his boot. She sank down instinctively, hands shaking as she knelt in the dirt. This wasn’t the first ti.
He rested his feet on her back as if she were furniture. Took a slow drag and then exhaled.
Then he leaned forward and pressed the burning tip into her skin.
Her scream ripped through the yard.
He pulled the cigarette away, watched the smoke curl from her flesh, and smiled to himself. When the ember died, he lit it again, unbothered, almost bored, and burned her once more.
Laughter broke out behind him. Easy. Familiar. Like this was nothing new.
From where Aht stood, sothing inside him went dead quiet. It was not shock nor disbelief.
It was recognition.
And Markus felt it too, the instant, blistering certainty that every man in that yard had already signed his death warrant. He saw his n and they all coiled in disgust.
Markus’s fingers curled slowly.
"They’re ard," he said. "Probably foreign rifles. At least eleven in sight. Probably more inside."
Aht studied the fencing, the cara patterns, and the blind spots. His mind was already moving, calculating. "We don’t raise the alarm," he said. "We go over, not through."
Markus nodded. "I’ll take the east corner. Caras lag there."
They moved along the building carefully, bodies pressed low, timing their steps with the sweep of the lights. The fence lood taller up close, tal cold beneath Markus’s palms as he tested his grip. Inside the compound, laughter rose again uglier, and more careless.
That sound did sothing to Aht.
Markus saw it in the way his shoulders set, the way his breathing changed. This wasn’t a strategy anymore. This was restraint fraying.
"Listen to , Aht. Look at ," Markus said under his breath as they prepared to climb. "You don’t miss. The others might. Hostages are everywhere. If this turns into chaos..."
"It won’t," Aht said, voice low and steady.
Markus exhaled slowly. He’d heard that tone before. He just had to trust him. He knew Aht was furious. Like hell he was too but he needed to trust him... like always.
They climbed.
The mont Aht’s boots touched the ground inside the compound, the first shot rang out.
It was clean and precise.
A man dropped without a sound.
Markus didn’t hesitate. He followed, already moving, already shouting orders into his comm, and already pulling the fight away from the captives as hell finally broke loose.
Gunfire tore through the night. The yard erupted in chaos as n scrambled for cover, shouting over one another, dragging weapons up too late. The captives scread and dropped where they stood, hands over their heads, bodies folding into the dirt as if trying to disappear into it.
So of Marco’s n reacted fast enough to be dangerous. One seized a woman by the arm and yanked her upright, hauling her naked body against his chest, his gun pressed hard to her temple. Another grabbed a second captive, backing toward the wall with her in front of him like a shield, eyes wild as he searched for an angle to shoot through her.
"Don’t copy him!" Markus barked into his comm even as he fired, precise and controlled. "Make sure the lanes are clear. Watch your lines, there are people on the ground!"
Aht didn’t hear him. Or maybe he did and simply didn’t care. He moved like sothing unchained, advancing without pause. Each shot landed exactly where they needed to, every pull of the trigger ending a threat before it could fully form.
A man broke from the cluster near the warehouse doors, sprinting toward the alarm box mounted on the wall. His hand reached out, fingers already stretching for the switch...
Aht’s gun cracked once.
The man’s head snapped back mid-stride and he collapsed forward, skidding across the concrete, his hand stopping inches from the alarm. The red light above it stayed dark.
For a heartbeat, the yard froze.
Then Aht kept moving.
The n holding hostages started shouting now, voices cracking as they realized what they were up against. Aht fired blindly over a captive’s shoulder. Another tried to retreat, dragging his shield with him, screaming threats that fell apart under the sound of gunfire.
Markus advanced from the side, controlled, surgical, putting rounds into legs, shoulders, anything that made the hostages drop and crawl away. His n followed his lead, cutting angles, herding the fight inward, away from the captives and toward the walls.
Aht pushed straight through the center of it all, eyes locked, jaw set, every shot a promise kept.
This wasn’t a raid anymore.
It was a reckoning.
Markus saw it even as he fought to keep the periter intact. He saw how the bodies kept falling before his n could even line up a shot. Aht was everywhere, cutting through the chaos, closing distances that should’ve gotten him killed, and taking down threat after threat with a precision that left no room for anyone else to step in.
This wasn’t how he usually worked.
Aht was a commander, not a butcher. He let his n do most of the killing, and trusted them to handle the blood while he directed the storm. He only stepped in when soone faltered, or when a situation demanded his hand.
Tonight, he wasn’t stepping back.
Tonight, he was doing almost all of it himself.
Markus counted without aning to; one, two, five, too many to track, and realized with a tight, uneasy breath that Aht had taken nearly all of them down. Ninety-five percent, at least. The rest were scraps left behind for the others, not out of trust but because there hadn’t been ti to finish them himself.
Sothing had broken loose in him.
And Markus didn’t know whether to be relieved that the monsters were dying... or afraid of what it took to make a man like Aht stop delegating the violence and beco it.
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