Chapter 22

Pov Calla

I’m surveying my target building in Brooklyn from the roof of the warehouse next to it. It’ll soon be dark and my operation ‘findanswersandkilleveryone’ can begin.

The warehouse that the reporter mentioned is about five meters of height, fifty meters wide and forty meters deep.

I’m wearing black tactical pants with thicker cloth in the knees and combat boots I bought yesterday. I have a dark grey hoodie on and black latex gloves.

I have my shoulder bag filled with c4 with me and my pistol with four extra mags. I have the suppressor attached to the pistol and my combat knife, which I bought before I came here, is on my lower bag, slightly hidden by my hoodie.

I didn’t take the grenade launcher with me this time, as it would slow me down a bit and I think I can manage without it. I have only six rounds left for it, so I wish to save them for later.

I have counted eight men who circle the building in fixed intervals and I have timed their patrols to the second.

There haven’t been any people who have got in or out of the building but there must be something there, otherwise it wouldn’t be so protected.

I have to start this thing as silently as I can and when I have found the answers I’m looking for I can get as noisy as I want.

I’m contemplating should I kill the guards outside the building before I head in. I have confirmed that they say something to their radios every hour, so I think I’ll do it.

Less people to hinder me when I make my exit. If I manage to kill them silently, I would have one hour before they notice that they don’t respond anymore. One hour should be enough.

I expected better security detail for secret organization…

One-hour intervals for the check ins are much too long. It could be for the purpose that they aren’t spotted by other people so easily as there is some activity in the area. The area seems to be partly for industrial use and for warehouses so the traffic isn’t that much but it’s still there.

I once again check the time from my phone, as the guards check in using their radios. An hour has passed since the last time.

The next time they do that, I’ll start my operation as it’s going to be dark then.

I’ll start making my plans for the infiltration now.

There is a fence circling the building. There is only one entry point visible, that being the front door. Two men patrol outside the fence, four patrol on the large front yard inside the fence that has containers and boxes on it, probably only to disguise the place as some warehouse. And the last two circles the entire building inside the fence.

The men circling outside the fence take about ten minutes to walk around it, after which they stop for a few minutes next to the closed gate before continuing.

The men who circles the building inside the fence takes about six minutes to make the lap. The men at the yard just walks around without aim, stopping somewhere before continuing so I have to wing it how I get rid of them.

The men outside the fence are the first to go.

There are some surveillance cameras but they all point towards the front yard and there are many blind spots from what I can see. For the rest of the time, I study the blind spots, trying to burn them in to my mind so I don’t have to stop and think about them as I start the operation.

…

“Outer perimeter is secure.” I hear the man couple of tens meters ahead of me say to his radio.

The operation is a go.

He is alone, circling the building now. It should take three minutes for him to reach the front gate but he will never reach that far.

I’m not even hiding my presence as I’m running towards him.

I have my hood down and no weapons visible.

He looks warily back, towards me but turns ahead as he notices that I’m just a young girl on an evening jog.

He turns his back towards me as he keeps walking his patrol.

*shing*

As I’m passing him I horizontally swing my knife, severing his spinal cord at the base of his neck.

I drag his body to the shadows on the other side of the small street so that the inner perimeter guards don’t take notice of it.

I take his radio, turn the volume way down and hang it on my belt. Now only people with my hearing should hear it if someone talks to the channel.

I keep up my jogging routine as I circle the fence.

The other guard is walking towards me as I turn the corner. He too only spares me a glance as I’m nearing him.

This was also done in a test to see if they have been shown photos of me but I guess not. And why would they, as the Caturix shouldn’t have any clear images of me.

*shing*

“Aa-grrhhgl”

With a similar swing as previously, I cut his throat, severing his airways so he cannot scream before I stab the knife to his carotid artery and watch him fall down.

Heh… That brings the memory when I killed the men who blew up my cell block in J.A.T.F. in mind.

I drag his body a behind a dumpster and check if the men circling the building inside the fence are close. They aren’t but one of them should walk past this spot in a couple of minutes.

I take the leather jacket of the dead man, noticing that he really had a holstered weapon under his armpit, and throw it on top of the fence. There is a barbed wire there so this way I can climb more easily.

I put my hood on. Mox had me bought a blank white mask also, but I’m not going to wear it for this as I don’t intend to leave anything behind to identify me.

I climb the fence and start circling the building to the direction my next victim should appear from. I’m at the back of the building now as I keep close to the wall so that the cameras don’t get a visual on me.

I stop by the corner and wait.

*step*

*step*

I ready myself and take an inverted grip of the knife.

*step*

I stab the knife just below his sternum in an angle so that the knife penetrates his heart.

The next guard who circles the building should come from the opposite direction so I start making my way there, circling the building counter clockwise.

I am not even holding my pistol now, because if I were to fire it, it would alarm every one of my presence.

I once again wait by the corner.

As the corner I’m now waiting by is the corner for the sidewall and front wall I cannot kill the man like I did previously.

The front yard guards would notice.

I have to be fast.

The knife is in my left hand in a normal grip and the corner is on my left side, as I’m standing by it with my back against the wall.

*step*

*step*

I wait for the guard to come closer and just as he is about to turn the corner I stab him directly to the throat, blocking his airway and destroying his vocal cords.

With my right hand I grab his clothes by his chest and jerk him behind the corner. He falls down to my right side, and I fall down on top of him, his back against the ground.

I grab the knife which is still stabbed in his throat with my right hand also, and strongly swing it to the right.

The cut severs his arteries and veins, splashing his blood to the wall on my right and staining my clothes.

I stay on top of him without moving and listen.

It doesn’t seem like anybody noticed what happened.

I stand up and edge to the corner, glimpsing behind it to verify the positions of the guards.

As I see an opening I rush to the front yard, avoiding the areas which are visible for the cameras.

I hide behind some wooden boxes and peek at the two men who are standing few meters ahead of me side by side, facing to the left.

They are talking and smoking cigarettes without worry. They have no idea that death is looming just few meters to their right, thinking about the quickest and quietest way to dispose of them.

“This is the most boring job ever. Nothing has happened in years. I thought that the reporter would bring some excitement to our lives but he’s probably already dead.” Target number five says.

“That’s how it is. The operators have all the excitement nowadays while mercs like us are put to guard duty.” Target number six answers.

I’m about to bring some excitement to their lives but it’ll be so fast that they don’t have the chance to enjoy it.

I wait for the moment when the other guards aren’t looking at this direction.

The further of them is at the other side of the yard next to a shipping container and the closer of them is by the gate, in front, and slightly to the left of me, about fifteen or so meters away.

Now the remaining two guards, aside from the ones in front of me, don’t have a visual to this position. The one by the gate is facing a different direction and the other one just walked behind the container.

I rush out from my hiding spot.

Three meters to go.

The closer guard starts turning his head towards me, probably hearing my steps.

Two meters to go.

I ready the knife on my left hand with a reverse grip as the closer guard has vision of me.

One meter to go.

The guard is about to open his mouth as his other hand reaches for his jacket but I’m close enough and I…

*Shluk*

Stab the base of his neck, killing him instantly as I simultaneously kick with my right leg to the back of the knee of the other guard.

The other guard falls to his back as I quickly regain my balance from the swift kick and…

“Arghl”

Stomp on his throat with all the force I can muster.

I pull the guard whom I stabbed to the ground using my knife as a handle. I pull the knife out and finish the other guard quickly by jumping on top of him and slicing the already crushed throat, before he manages to get his gun.

“…”

I’m crouching down on top of the dead man, listening if the other two makes any indication that they noticed. I don’t hear anything like that so I carefully raise my head and look at their directions.

The other one is still behind the container, and the other one is…

Just turned his head and is looking at me!

As he is reaching for his gun I shift the knife to my right hand and throw it at him.

The knife penetrates his neck, just above his breastbone. He falls down with gurgling sounds as I run towards him.

I arrive to him, take the knife and finish the job by cutting his throat from ear to ear.

The last guard must have heard something so I take the knife and keeping to the blind spots of the cameras, I make my way towards him.

He comes from behind the container with a radio in his hand but I predicted that as I took my radio to my hand also.

“We have an intrud…” He starts his sentence but notices that I’m jamming the channel by pressing the ‘talk’ button of my radio.

He takes his weapon from under his jacket and I hastily throw my knife towards him before he can make a shot.

*clang*

He blocked it with his gun, dropping it in the process as the knife made a cut to his fingers.

I start running towards him as he looks around for his gun.

He chooses to fight with fists as I’m already closing in and he hasn’t got the time to pick the gun up.

He takes a regular boxing stand as I’m closing and when I’m about to enter his reach he takes a wide right hook toward my head.

I forcefully stop my momentum just outside his reach, missing his fist by millimeters. I take a quick step forward and…

“arghl”

… use a left jab to hit him to the throat.

He is large adult male so I have to go for the weak spots.

He puts his left hand to his throat as he lets out the noise and he makes a panicked frontal kick with his right leg.

I dodge to the right, grabbing his ankle while doing so and holding it up.

With my right leg I kick his supporting leg’s ankle, bringing him down.

The knife is too far away and I want to finish this before he’s throat has recovered enough to scream so I jump on top of him, mounting him between my legs.

He tries to hit me with his right fist but I parry it with my left arm. I punch him with my right straight to his nose.

His head hit the hard ground under him and he is disoriented enough to drop his defenses.

I grab the back of his head with my left, and take a hold of his jaw with my right.

*crunch*

With a painful sounding noise I break his neck.

“haaaah” I let a large breath out.

I look at the empty yard and check the camera angles again, confirming that I stayed out of their vision.

I stand up, my heart still pounding in my chest.

I look for my knife and see it few meters away from me.

I walk to it and pick it up, and look at the yard with bodies again.

I stayed out of the cameras and so did the bodies.

That was intense towards the end.

Is this the excitement the two dead targets were talking about?

Avoiding the cameras, I start moving towards the entrance of the building. It’s a simple wooden door on the center of the concrete wall.

When in front of it, I press my ear against it and listen. I cannot hear anything from inside so I open it carefully.

I peek to the insides and see that it is empty. Only a small room in the center of it, nothing more. There are no visible cameras inside the room so I go in. I head towards the small room in the center of the place and open the door.

Inside of it is only stairs heading down. That where the facilities must be.

I walk the stone stairs downwards, keeping to the left side of the stairs.

When I come to the bottom I see that the wall that starts on the left is made of glass.

I plant a c4 on the stairs in the corner of the floor and a stair and take a peek what’s behind the glass.

I see two guards sitting behind a desk with monitors. It must be the surveillance room that shows the cameras and where the guards report to.

I still have forty minutes before the guards are supposed to call in but I don’t know how much time I have before they notice the absence of guard activity outside.

I don’t see any cameras inside the facilities so I get low and walk past the window so that they don’t notice me from behind the desk.

The corridor I’m on has white walls and ceiling. It divides in to two few meters ahead of me, the other one going to the right in a ninety-degree angle and the other one heading straight.

I see three doors on the one heading straight, two on the right side and one on the left.

I gather that the door on the left is the way to get to the security room, but I don’t intend to go there

I don’t see any activity inside the corridors but I can hear that there are multiple people here. I walk past the door on the left and see that the corridor heading straight turns to the right couple of tens meters ahead of me.

I switch to the right side of the corridor and go to the first door on the right and carefully open it. I come to a room with oxygen tanks and medical supplies on the walls. There are a lot of cabinets circling the room and the tanks are placed at the center of it.

Behind the tanks are IV-bags filled with some serums. In the bags is the number ‘9’.

I’m starting to get a feeling what this is all about and the idea of it sickens me.

I place a c4 inside the room, and start opening the valves of the oxygen tanks. The oxygen should spread through the facility so that when it is time to detonate, it will cause a flash burn in the facility, hopefully burning everything inside.

*creek*

The door is opened and a man walks in to the room wearing a white coat.

I managed to get behind the tanks so that he didn’t see me. He walks past the tanks and heads for the IV bags.

I kick the back of his knee when he walks past me and place the knife to his throat.

“Shut up or you die.” I quietly say to him as he freezes from the sudden assault.

“How many more men are the inside.” I ask him

“I’m no-not sure” He fearfully replies to me.

“Please don’t hurt me. I’m only a scientist.” He says.

I change the knife to a pistol and take a step back and continue with my questioning.

“What are you people doing in here?”

“We do research.” He answers.

I’m getting impatient.

*klick*

I pull the hammer of my pistol back.

“What research?”

“Genetics.” He says.

“Show me.” I say as I prompt him towards the door by signaling it with my pistol.

We come to the corridor and I see there is no one in it. He turns right and I follow, keeping my pistol on his back.

“You will not get away from here alive.” He says.

“Shut up.”

We come to the next door on the right and he opens it.

“Did you get the serum Ed? Hey, what are yo..” The other man in the room says but I interrupt him:

“Shut up or die.”

I look at the center of the room, keeping my gun pointed towards the men.

There is a pregnant woman laying in a hospital bed with an IV-bag attached to her arm. The same kind of IV-bag that was in the storage room.

I study the room and see that there are scans of the woman’s stomach on the wall, showing two embryos.

I take my knife and swiftly swing it with my left hand, cutting the throat of the man I met in the storage room.

“What ar..!” He starts yelling but shut ups as I point my gun towards him.

“Talk if you want to have the slightest chance to live. What’s all this?” I say to him, my expression promising death.

“Okay, okay I’ll talk.” He says while holding his hands up.

“This is genetic research. We are enhancing the embryos.”

“How?”

“We use different kind of serums to make slight changes to their chromosomes and to their protein uptake by…” He explains it in medical terms briefly but that doesn’t really tell anything to me so I continue:

“To what end?” I ask

“…”

“To what end!” I raise my voice to the end of my sentence, starting to lose my cool.

“To make them better! To increase their reaction time and senses. Make their muscle tissue tenser and elastic. And to…” He starts lowering his voice towards the end.

“And to?” I prompt him to answer.

“And to diminish their emotional responses towards a more passive state, although there are some inconsistencies in that department still.” He answers.

Is this what I am? A genetic research.

Diminished emotional responses?

“Why?” Although I know why. To make weapons like me. But I want to know what he knows.

“I don’t know anything about the why. I’m here just for the research.” He answers me.

“And who is this?” I ask, pointing to the unconscious woman.

“That’s the series nine host.”

So was I too born in a facility like this?

“Why twins?” I ask, this time pointing towards the ultrasound images.

“…”

“Why twins!?”

“It’s more efficient. The host’s die after the birth as their grown bodies can’t handle the serums and we need to start doing the changes to the children while they are still in the womb. The women who’s genetic markers are fit for the modifications so that they can live through the pregnancy are very rare, so having twins is more efficient.” He finishes his explanation.

“We make sure that one of the baby’s is a boy, and the other one is a girl to see the differences in results caused by the gender.” He continues.

This makes me sick.

And I have a brother? Is he still alive and with the Caturix?

“Who is in charge here? Who leads the research?” I ask him

“We only know him as White. He comes in from time to time to survey our progress and with additional data for the research.” He says.

White?

“What does he look like?” I ask him. I already have an idea who it could be.

“A man in his late forties. We call him dr. White” He partly confirms my suspicions.

I take my phone out and show him the picture of Vinny Cooper.

“Is this him?” I ask

“Yes.” He confirms my suspicions.

“Are there more of these facilities?”

“I don’t know. I think there is as some of the data dr. White has brought with him is from other subjects. They don’t tell us anything. We just monitor the Nine-series host and follow the procedures we are instructed to follow.” He answers. It doesn’t seem he is lying.

Has this man outlived his usefulness to me or is there something else I could ask?

There is a moment of silence as I think about is there anything else.

“Who are you?” He asks.

“Seven” I answer

He widens his eyes as I answer.

“HEL..” He starts to yell.

*bam*

The suppressed shot is heard as I put a bullet through his head.

They must have heard that. I drop a c4 here also and go for the door with my pistol ready.

*ba-bam* I shoot the guard that was rushing down the corridor.

I decide to check one more room as the alarms go off.

The white light’s turns in to red and sirens starts blaring.

I walk the corridor deeper in to the facilities and make the right turn at the end of the corridor. There is only one door at the end and I go in.

“Please don’t shoo..”

*bam* I shoot the scientist that is in the room.

The room has medical equipment and different scientific stuff, which I don’t recognize.

I go for the only computer in the room and decide not to test my recently learned computing skills as I grab the external hard-drive from it.

I’m too pressed for time.

I drop two c4’s in the room and go out.

*BRATATATA*

A three-man team is coming from the room next to the surveillance room and opens fire as they see me at the end of the corridor.

I managed to dodge behind the corner before they started firing.

I wait for them to proceed closer, and when they are close enough so that I can dodge their aim I jump from behind the corner…

*BRATATA*

…they fire but I dodge to my right. They are in a formation with one man at the front and two behind him side by side.

I grab the automatic weapon of the first man and pull it pointing to my left while I punch his face with the barrel of my pistol and fire…

*bam*

The blood sprays to the man behind him on the left, blinding him for a few moments before he can wipe the blood from his eyes.

The man on the right is aiming at me so I kick from the right side of the legs of the man I just killed, making him fall to the right…

*BRATATATA*

The bullets the man aimed at me hit the man I just used to block his aim…

*bam*

I shoot the man who was wiping his eyes and…

*bam*

… I shoot the last man on the right when my first victim of the trio has fallen out of the way.

I drop a c4 for to the corridor and keep heading towards the stairs.

*bam*

I shoot immediately when a man comes from the left side of the stairs, where the corridor divided in to two.

There are probably more behind him so I keep aiming to the direction as I keep advancing.

I place some more explosive in the corridor as I keep walking ahead, nearing the stairs.

I’m next to the window of the security room and see the two guards still inside it. They are looking at me with panicked expressions but as they aren’t going for their guns I deduce that the window is bulletproof.

I plant one of the c4 on the window, grinning at the men inside before continuing.

Their faces were priceless.

The other corridor is to my left. It’s only a ten or so meters long with a door at the end of it.

The door opens and I can see there is few men inside of it and the room that has at least a table and some cabinets.

*ba-bam*

I shoot the first man who came from the door, scaring the others to take cover.

I throw a c4 towards the door as I start climbing the stairs.

I can smell from the air that the oxygen levels are going up because of the opened valves. With that I can give an estimation that the facility isn’t that big and the rooms I left unchecked doesn’t probably lead anywhere else. I’m just glad that the levels aren’t big enough to start a fire from the gun shots.

As I climb the stairs, while hearing footsteps from behind me I drop my last two c4’s on the stairs.

*ba-bam**bam* I shoot the last of my clip at the bottom of the stairs so that the men don’t have a change to open fire yet.

I rush the rest of the stairs up while changing my magazine and arrive at the empty building.

I want a little more distance.

I rush through the door of the building to the front yards, not caring about the cameras anymore.

I hear that the steps are now at the stairway so I decide to detonate.

*BOOOM*rumble*

The explosion is heard as the ground shakes.

Cracks appear at the walls of the building as fire rushes out from the stairway.

From four different places on the front yard, pillars of fire explode towards the sky from vents for the underground facility that I did not notice before as they were partly hidden under the boxes and covered by some bigger pebbles.

Fires start at the yard because of the vents and part of the fence falls, as the ground collapses under it. It must be the spot of the biggest room where the scientific equipment was.

I make my way out of the yard using the partly collapsed spot where the fence has fallen and disappear in to the shadows.

I learned something. I killed something.

Operation ‘findanswersandkilleverything’ complete.

Operation ‘killVinny’ is the next one on my agenda.