Chapter One Hundred and Fifty
Aht didn’t slow.
He shouldn’t have been here at all. His body knew it. Every movent pulled at the damage still knitting itself together beneath his skin and muscle. It was a dull, grinding ache that flared whenever he twisted too fast or drew a breath too deep. It wasn’t fresh pain. It was worse than that, the kind that reminded you how close you had already co to not waking up.
It only made him angrier.
The silencer whispered again.
A man dropped before the thought of danger reached his eyes. Another turned halfway, confusion flickering across his face, and then he folded. Aht moved with a precision born of long habit, not haste. He didn’t spray bullets. He placed them. Every shot ended sothing that deserved to end.
A sharp pull tore through his chest as he shifted his weight. His jaw tightened, breath hitching for the barest second.
Good.
Let it hurt.
The ache wasn’t just physical. It carried mory with it; the floor, the darkness, the certainty that he had been left to die. That knowledge sat heavy and sour beneath his ribs, feeding the violence now moving through him. He was never going to forget.
One of the n staggered backward, hand flying toward the alarm panel mounted along the wall. Aht saw it instantly. He adjusted his stance, ignoring the protest in his body, and fired. The man collapsed sideways, fingers scraping uselessly against concrete.
Why did they think they could press the alarm?
That turned his stomach.
Of course, they hadn’t prepared. Why would they? Any noise tonight would be dismissed as cruelty, laughter, the sounds of n who believed they were untouchable. If anyone inside heard anything at all, they would assu it was just more suffering being wrung out of helpless bodies.
Aht’s expression hardened.
He lifted two fingers, sharp and precise. His n moved imdiately. The van rolled forward from the shadows, engine low, lights dark. Survivors were guided away carefully, wrapped, supported, and removed from this place before their fear could settle into sothing permanent.
The gate opened just enough to allow passage, tal sliding quietly against tal. Still no response from inside.
They didn’t know yet.
Or worse, they didn’t care.
Aht finished the remaining n outside with deliberate calm. By the ti he stopped, the ground was littered with bodies and silence. He stood there, breath heavy, the old injury pulsing insistently beneath his clothes, reminding him that he was not invincible, only stubborn enough to refuse death twice.
He didn’t touch the wound.
Instead, he watched the captives being taken away, disbelief flickering through their terror. Let them rember this mont. Let them know monsters could be hunted too.
Then he turned back toward the sealed gate, eyes cold, mind already shifting forward.
The quiet wouldn’t last, he was sure of that.
Aht knew that much.
n like these never stayed buried in their own filth for long. Sooner or later soone would miss the laughter outside, the noise, the cruelty that usually spilled past the walls. Soone would step out to see why the night had gone quiet.
Aht didn’t intend to be gone when that happened.
He wiped his palm once against his thigh, steadying the tremor that threatened to creep back into his chest. The ache beneath his ribs pulsed, sharp and insistent, but he ignored it. Pain was familiar. Pain was manageable.
He turned toward Markus and the n already gathering behind him, their weapons up, their expressions stripped of anything human. No orders were spoken. They didn’t need them. They had followed him long enough to read the way his shoulders squared, the way his gaze lifted toward the main doors.
This wasn’t a cleanup.
This was an entry.
They moved together through the open yard, boots sinking into dirt darkened by old stains, bodies falling into formation without a word. The space felt wrong now that it had gone quiet, too wide, and too exposed, as though the compound itself was holding its breath.
Aht scanned the buildings ahead, and stood just before them, gun steady, and his eyes fixed ahead.
Whatever waited inside had already made its choice.
And they were coming to collect.
The door shifted.
Just a fraction at first, tal scraping softly as it gave way from the inside. A thin slice of light spilled out across the ground, cutting through the dark like a blade. A man stepped into it, rolling his shoulders, cigarette already between his fingers. He laughed at sothing said behind him and turned his head back toward the noise inside.
Another shape followed him, slower, still half inside, adjusting his belt as if the night were nothing more than a break between amusents.
That was all the opening they needed.
Markus moved first. His hand ca up in a sharp, silent signal, and the n closest surged forward in one clean motion. One hand clamped over the smoker’s mouth, crushing the sound before it could exist. Another arm locked around his shoulders and pulled him back hard, away from the light.
Markus lunged with him, boot slamming into the narrow gap of the door. tal protested as it tried to slide shut, the chanism whining in resistance, but his leg held firm, muscles braced, refusing to give the gate what it wanted.
The man struggled once.
That was it.
The one holding him shifted his grip, forearm snapping up beneath the jaw, twisting sharply, decisively. There was a dull, wet crack, too quick to be loud, yet too final to be mistaken. The body went slack imdiately, weight collapsing inward as if all the cruelty had drained out of him at once.
The second man inside barely had ti to turn.
Hands were on him before his mouth could open, dragging him forward, and pulling him into the sa darkness that had swallowed the first. His eyes went wide, confusion flashing into terror, but it ended just as quickly. A blade slid ho beneath his ribs, angled up, precise. He sagged without a sound.
They didn’t let either body fall.
They used them.
The first corpse was shoved forward, shoulder wedged against the door, dead weight pressed into the gap where the security gate wanted to seal itself. tal groaned again as the sensors faltered and the chanism stuttered, unsure whether to close or yield.
Aht was already moving.
He stepped over the threshold without breaking stride, weapon raised, eyes sweeping the interior in a single ruthless pass. The sll hit him instantly: smoke, sweat, blood, sothing rotten underneath it all. Laughter echoed deeper inside the building, unaware, and uninterrupted.
Good.
That ant they still had seconds.
The n flowed in behind him, dragging the bodies with them, boots silent against concrete, spreading out along the walls as naturally as breath. Markus finally pulled his foot free, the door held open by flesh and bone instead of steel.
And inside, the monsters were still laughing.
If the outside had been careless cruelty, the inside was deliberate.
This place had been built to keep sound in.
Lights humd overhead, harsh and white, revealing corridors lined with reinforced doors and cages welded into the walls like afterthoughts. So were empty, doors hanging open. Others weren’t. Hands curled around bars. Eyes lifted at the sound of boots and froze. Just fear trained by repetition.
Aht’s shoulder burned where she had put the bullet in him days ago, the wound screaming now that his body was in motion again. He welcod it. The pain sharpened him.
A laugh echoed sowhere ahead. It was neither nervous nor drunk.
Probably amused.
Aht raised two fingers. The n split without a word, peeling off into positions they’d practiced a hundred tis in places like this. Markus moved at his flank, already scanning corners, and already counting exits.
The first guard rounded the corner with a cup in his hand, mid-sentence to soone behind him. He barely had ti to register surprise before Aht put a round through his throat. The body dropped soundlessly, liquid spilling across the concrete.
Another reached for his radio.
Aht shot him through the hand, then the head, the second shot pure punctuation.
Silencers coughed and imdiately, the monsters fell.
They moved room to room, thodical now. Doors opened to sights that tightened Aht’s jaw until it ached; people bound, people drugged, people staring at the ceiling because looking anywhere else hurt too much. So cried when they saw guns. So shrank back and were expecting worse.
"Easy," Markus murmured as they passed, voice low, steady. "We’ve got you."
Aht didn’t speak. He couldn’t. Every step deeper confird what he already knew: this wasn’t business that had gone wrong. This was an appetite. These n were wicked.
Another hallway. Another group of n playing cards beside a cage, weapons slung loose, arrogance thick on them. They didn’t even get to stand.
When it was done, when the last of them lay bleeding on the floor and the building finally fell quiet, Aht realized his chest hurt, not from the wound, but from how hard he’d been breathing.
He lifted his hand and gestured once.
The signal rippled through the n. Radios ca out. The van would be brought in fully now. Doors would be opened carefully. The captives would be moved first, wrapped, shielded, and removed before this place could imprint itself any deeper into them.
Aht stood in the center of it, surrounded by bodies that deserved worse than they’d gotten.
Tonight, he wasn’t leaving anything breathing that belonged to this place.
Once the van doors closed and the captives were secured, the convoy made its way back toward the Villa. Aht climbed into the front of his own car, hand automatically reaching for the comms.
"They’re moving the captives. No need to follow. You’ll stay with them and make sure they are taken care of for the night before I get back to the Villa," he said flatly, voice cutting through the static. "I’m heading to another warehouse."
Markus’s eyes flicked up at him, then down, and he jabbed a finger at Aht’s chest. Blood had seeped through the fabric of his shirt and jacket, trickling along the line of his ribs. It was dark, angry against the pale sheen of sweat.
Aht followed his gaze and studied the crimson stain for a mont. Then he leaned back, fingers brushing against it lightly, and said, voice steady, almost bored: "I don’t care."
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