Chapter Five—Green Haven

Were Max and Staxx as good as the news made them out to be? John didn’t think so. Sure, Max and Staxx has access to a lot of fancy tech gear and weapons, had some skills in tech. The combination made for a powerful skillset.

But in the end, it was their bravado. Max and Staxx were a brash pair. They did things other criminals didn’t, and they succeeded. What was a guard to do when a fine-looking man in a business suit suddenly and without warning revealed a silenced pistol?

They were trained for their jobs, but when it really happened, there was always that split second of shock and indecision that only the most hardened combat soldiers and Special Forces police who trained every day for those scenarios could outplay.

John walked into the reception at Kyle’s side, their shoes lightly tapping against the polished black tiles.

The desk man sat up. He wore a suit and his hair was trimmed like he was some kind of ex-military or something.

“Can I help you?” he asked of them, evidentially not recognizing who they were.

“Um, yes,” Kyle said, completely natural.

“Damn I gotta take a piss!” John said, jerking his suit pants away from his crotch. “You got a bathroom in here?”

“Yes sir. Down that hall and to the right.”

John nodded and walked off toward the toilets. What was bad about the floor plan in this place was that the security booth was down the same hall, break left.

Kyle said something to the guard of which John couldn’t understand. As soon as he was out of sight, he took that left hall straight toward the security booth and looked at his wristlet.

Behind that, he had a magnetic breacher strapped to his arm. It was high-grade military gear supplied by May and her people.

His wristlet beeped.

Without delay, John aimed his fist at the security booth door and activated his magnetic breacher. A little arm lifted from the gauntlet and shot forth, shooting a stream of energy against the magnetic log, disabling the electronic components and taking hold of the door.

John swiped his arm to the side and the door slid open.

The men at the security booth turned around, their eyes widening as John pointed his silenced pistol at them.

One got up, moving for his sidearm, but John, or Staxx rather, put a nickel in his forehead and he flew back, arms sprawled into the control console spilling hot coffee everywhere.

The second guard put his hands up. “Don’t shoot!”

By now Max had taken down the desk man, so John had nothing to worry about.

“Please,” the guard continued. “I’ve got family. Two little girls.”

“Lucky man,” John said, then backhanded the guard into unconsciousness. Of course, unless he affected some brain damage, the guard would wake up in a matter of minutes, and John wasn’t going to let that happen. He removed a tin from his pocket, containing some pharma and jabbed a tiny syringe into the unconscious guard that would put him out cold for at least three hours.

He’d have done the same for the first guy, but the moron had drawn on him.

Oh well, he thought. That’s the fate of the lapdog.