by Katy Jordan
All was good.
So, what was happening?
“Unless they’re not in the bunker,” Sparrow suggested, rotating the camera, lowering the drone, rising it up again, trying to be sure. “Sparrow to everyone, the mission is a go. There’s another room underneath the bunker,” he whispered, watching Flare study the tablet.
“And there’s definitely movement in there.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Go for it, Bullet,” Sparrow said, as he centred his drone over the top of the warehouse getting a full and clear view of the entirety of the property.
Bullet checked her gun again before emptying her pockets to get a rough count of her ammunition one last time and clambered over the wire fence once again. She waited for the signal from Tide who was looking through her binoculars again.
“All clear.”
Bullet ducked down and ran through the field, retracing the steps that she and Youth took earlier. The metal spokes on the side of the pole were a little higher up than she realised.
Bullet swung her arms back and jumped, grabbing the spokes on either side tightly and securely. With nothing to plant her feet on, she wrapped her legs around the post and, very awkwardly and uncomfortably, shuffled upward, placing her feet firmly on the bottom spokes that she originally clung on to and began to climb.
Bullet considered how it never seems to look high from the ground, but as soon as she reached the top, the queasiness hit rather quickly.
Yet now, she had to jump.
And she had to be careful not to hit any other cables than the one she was aiming for. Or touch the ‘fuse box’ which, at that moment, was right next to her.
Bullet leaned out from the post, keeping her outstretched arm straight and her legs bent and began to swing from side to side while hanging on with one hand to the uppermost spoke of the pole
One. Two. Three.
She was mid-air for only a split second, but at that height, it felt like an hour. The wire fit snugly in the folds between her fingers and her palm.
“You okay, Bullet?” Youth asked, concerned.
“I’m all good,” she answered, looking at the ground far below her as she dangled from the phone line, “sort of.”
Bullet looked along the line that she was clinging to.
The warehouse seemed like it was miles away.
“It’s going to take me a while doing this monkey bars style, I take it I can put my feet up too?” she asked, trying hard not to look down at the field beneath her.
“Yeah, just don’t touch anything else,” Youth reiterated.
“Don’t touch anything? Gee, you haven’t mentioned that up until now.”
Like an acrobat, she effortlessly tucked her knees up to her stomach and latched her feet around the phone line. Locking one foot over the other, she pulled her body along like you would pull a rope downward and dragged herself across the field, over the perimeter fence, above the side of the warehouse, until she hit the topmost point of the roof.
Carefully and quietly, she dropped down on to the metal slates and made her way across the roof, looking for a way in.
“Sparrow,” she whispered, “how many exterior guards and what’s their twenty?”
“Uhhh…” Sparrow deactivated the thermal scanner in front of the camera on his drone and rotated it above the warehouse as he did a quick head count, “there’s been some re-shuffling since we arrived. There’s four in the front by the entrance which is the east side of the building, two to the north and south… Bullet there’s only one on the west side at the back of the warehouse.”
“Take him out,” The Spectrum chimed in.
Bullet couldn’t help but notice how his tone had changed since they all learned that Jack was there even though they didn’t find him the first time. Fair enough; it was because Neon let nothing slip.
Not even to Jack, whom he apparently trusted.
Bullet glanced quickly over the roof of the building and spotted the male guard a little to her left. She stretched out her leg to the side and leaned the rest of her body weight on top of it. The man was now directly below her.
Whistling.
She closed her eyes defiantly. This part she hated.
Bullet knew this man was most likely innocent; being bribed or blackmailed by Neon like most of the others who worked for him.
I wonder what he had on Jack, she thought.
Focus.
She positioned herself at the edge of the roof, quietly pulling her knife out of the holder on the inside of her jacket. Twirling the knife in her fingers making sure she had a good grip, she dropped from the roof. Bullet landed on the man’s shoulders, forcing him to drop firmly to the ground without any chance to let out a yelp, let alone a cry.
Immediately, she plunged the knife into the side of his neck, seeing the tip appear through the other side, and yanked it back out at another angle. The man let out a light gurgle on his own blood before going completely still. Silent.
Lifeless.
Bullet rubbed the man’s shoulder, bowing her head down and closing her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“What for?” Youth nipped in her ear, knocking her sideways with fright.
“Nothing, I was just… I hate killing people that I know nothing about. He didn’t do anything to me or anyone I know.”
“He stands between you and Jack. He did something. Now, keep going,” The Spectrum demanded.
“Yes, sir,” Bullet gave the obligatory response before heading to the only door on that side and carefully tugged on the door handle.
It clicked open and she slipped inside, closing it shut quietly behind her. The room she entered was one she had never seen before on any of Jack’s footage or Sparrow’s drone footage.
It was small; white walls and a plain concrete floor enveloped the room that only had a table and two chairs, one on either side, over to the right-hand side of the room.
Maybe Neon’s old office?
Another door, wooden with a frosted glass window, sat on the opposite wall to the left-hand side of the room.
“Okay, I’m in the warehouse. Tide, where am I in comparison to the main hall?” Bullet asked.
“You go through that door and you’ll be in the main hall,” Tide said.
“Sparrow, any heat movement in there?” she enquired, standing behind the door trying to see any movement through the frosted glass.
“Nope, you’re all clear,” he confirmed.
Bullet walked through the door into the empty hall.
Three rows of tables were laid out just like the last time she passed through.
As much as there were no bodies, twelve patches of blood were spread out by the door to Neon’s bunker from when Bullet shot them before. She also clocked the door off its hinges leaning against the wall with bullet holes in it. No need for a locksmith anyway.
Bullet entered through the door to the top of the stairs that led down to the passageway, the heat from the fire torches lined down either side hitting her in the face.
Taking her gun out and extending it in front of her, she made her way down the stairs and along the concrete corridor. The door at the end wasn’t as she had left it. It was hard for her to see in the flickering light, but something was hanging on the front of it. She continued down the hallway, the shape slowly turning into something distinctive. A person.
A dead person.
It was a woman.
As Bullet approached the door, horror filled her from the bottom up like flood gates had been opened, her hands feeling numb and her arms began to shake.
“Oh, my God. No,” she breathed, unable to believe what she was seeing.
“Bullet, you okay? What’s going on?” Flare probed, worry shining through in the tone of her voice.
“It’s Anna,” she whispered as she felt herself welling up, “Anna… Anna Hamilton. I grilled her earlier and then spared her. I told her to run…”
“What’s wrong with her?�
� Rocket asked, although believing he already knew the answer.
“She’s dead. A nail has been hammered into Neon’s door and she’s hanging from it by a cord,” Bullet described, studying the woman she really genuinely hoped would run away and make a normal life for herself. “Her neck has definitely been snapped.”
“So, you’re in the passageway?” The Spectrum confirmed, as though he hadn’t heard anything she had just said; or worse, he didn’t care.
“Yeah…” Bullet replied, wiping the tears from her cheeks, “yeah, I am.”
“Good. Gecko, get in position,” The Spectrum ordered coldly.
“I’m just about to head in,” Gecko replied.
The Green Gecko walked up the road and turned into the warehouse grounds from the entrance.
Immediately, he held his hands in the air, offering surrender.
Every guard at the front aimed their machine gun at him, one shouting out into the night, and the others came around from the sides, also lifting their weapons and taking aim.
“Woah, woah, woah! Don’t shoot, please! Don’t shoot! I come in peace, I need to speak to Neon,” Gecko said, beginning his charade.
“You betrayed him,” said the guard closest to him, “we were told nobody comes in and nobody gets out. That order applies to everyone.” He leaned his head closer to the gun, taking aim, his finger hovering dangerously over the trigger.
“I know, I know. I made a mistake. I listened to that fucking idiot, Jack Burns. He told me to go with him, said he’d change my life. All he did was steal what little stuff I had and then fucked off and left me in the middle of the night,” Gecko lied convincingly.
“Oh, yeah? Where did he go?” asked another guard.
“I have absolutely no clue, hopefully in front of a train,” Gecko said, hating himself immediately and trying not to show it. “Can you take me to see Neon?”
The guards looked between each other.
“Pat him down,” the guard at the front gestured to another, and he came down to Gecko, swinging his gun behind his back via the strap and patted Gecko down.
“He’s clear,” he announced as he walked back to his colleagues.
“Come with us,” the man closest announced, turning his back to Gecko and walking to the warehouse. Two of the guards took Gecko by each arm and as good as dragged him into the warehouse behind who seemed to be the head of security.
“Do you not all need to go? Only three of you?” Gecko said, subtly dropping a hint to everyone; namely Bullet.
“There needs to be at least four on watch,” the guard to his left informed him.
They walked through the loading bay and into the main hall.
“Wow, this room is way bigger than I remember!” Gecko exclaimed, his squeaky voice bouncing off all the walls. The guards ignored him as they headed for the door down to Neon’s bunker, passing the patches of blood along the way.
“Holy crap, what happened in here?” asked Gecko, knowing full well what happened there.
“We executed workers for conspiring to run. We hung their leader on the front of Neon’s door. Wait ’til you see,” the head guard lied, opening the door.
“Jeez, it’s warm in here. Could’ve used a heating system like this in the living quarters,” he said, trying to seem cool and inconspicuous.
As they walked down the corridor, Gecko could make out the shape of the body that Bullet saw earlier, and sure enough, their feet didn’t seem to be touching the floor. This was one hell of a long passage.
Where the hell was Bullet?
She was supposed to be here.
An extremely calm Green Gecko began to panic immensely, seeing that his saviour wasn’t here.
“There she is. Little Anna. It’s a shame really, she was a good-looking girl. But, we decided to make a spectacle of her…”
A weird pinging sound was heard and the guard in front dropped to the floor.
It happened again, grounding the man on Gecko’s right. The remaining guard, confused beyond belief, did a 180 thinking someone was behind them until he was floored at the pinging sound too. Gecko found himself spinning round to the entrance, just as the guard had done.
“Gecko, help me down from this, will you?” Bullet said dryly.
He about turned again, suddenly noticing it was Bullet hanging from the door.
“What the hell?” he said, running to her and hiking her up and lowering her down, “I thought you said that girl was hung from the door; even the guards said…”
“As soon as I heard you asking the guards not to shoot, I lifted her down and unbound the cord from around her neck and I carried her into Neon’s room,” Bullet explained, cutting him off. “Come on, you ready?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be,” he replied, straightening his glasses on his face.
“Here, take this,” Bullet instructed, handing him her bloody knife.
Reluctantly, Gecko took the knife.
“I really don’t want to know who your knife is wearing,” Gecko said.
“It’s a good thing I wasn’t going to tell you then, isn’t it?” Bullet said as she took a hold of the door handle and twisted it.
“Wait,” Gecko said and lifted a torch from one of the metal holders on the wall, “we’ll need this, remember?”
Bullet pushed the door open and flung her gun up in front of her, aiming it about the room, checking behind the door as Gecko never left her side. He immediately clocked the woman lying on the floor just in from the doorway, quite clearly placed gently down. If it weren’t for the fact that she quite clearly had a broken neck, Gecko would have considered that she was merely sleeping.
“Clear,” she announced, “Sparrow, we’re in the bunker. You’re sure there’s another room underneath?”
“Positive, Bullet. There’s definitely a room underneath you and there’s definitely someone in it,” he replied.
Bullet walked by the speaker, which was now silent, and across the room looking for an anomaly to suggest a trap door or pressure panel. Gecko went over to the desk and had a rummage around.
“I don’t see anything that could lead us downward,” Bullet informed everyone.
“Well, don’t look for anything fancy, Bullet. There’s no electricity down there, remember?” Youth reminded them.
“So, it’s most likely something that’s concealed or… dressed up to look like something else,” Gecko walked around the edges of the room running his hand across the walls but flapped his hand by his side from no result.
“Nothing.”
“There has to be something,” Sparrow snapped, “keep looking.”
“It’s a room. A square room. There’s only so many places you can look,” Bullet retorted.
“Well, there’s obviously something you’re missing. Think like Neon, Bullet. What would he do?” Youth said calmly, trying to diffuse the tension.
“If he was down here all the time and had a secret room that no one was allowed access to, he’d put the entry somewhere nobody could go,” she thought out loud.
Bullet looked at the desk sitting in the middle of the room. The stone slabs that sat underneath it were very misplaced in here. It didn’t go with the rest of them.
They were bigger.
So, maybe it wasn’t meant for decoration.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gecko and Bullet lifted the table to the side, and hastily kicked the chair away to expose the larger slabs. The empty space revealed that one of the large slabs, unlike all the other ones that formed this section of the floor, had an iron hoop to one side.
A trap door.
“We’ve found it,” Bullet informed.
“Great!” Youth shrieked with glee. “Well done! What’s the plan now, sir?”
“Bullet, get down there. Gecko, pull out,” The Spectrum ordered.
“Pull out?” he asked, confused. “What was the point of me coming in here?”
“To take out more guards. Come back out so we can take out the rest.”
“Do we really need to take them all out? Some of them are most likely innocent,” Gecko pleaded, looking to Bullet for her to step in.
She didn’t know what to say.
Bullet had never heard The Spectrum talk like this.
It was as though something had really ticked him off or even tipped him over the edge. She tried to think back to everything that had happened to figure out what it could have been.
Nothing stuck out.
Bullet began to get annoyed, angry even. She couldn’t understand why he was being like this, and now she was wasting time thinking about it when Jack needed her.
“Look, sir, I don’t know what’s wrong with you but, Gecko’s staying here. We’re not killing anyone else other than Neon, that’s not what we’re about. We can hand them over to the police when we’re done and frame them for the fire or whatever. Now, we’re going down. Flare, get ready to strike.”
Giving her boss orders wasn’t exactly how Bullet saw this mission going, but Jack was her main priority, and The Spectrum was being extremely counterintuitive when it came to the details of this mission.
With no further thought, Bullet lifted the trap door.
It revealed stone stairs that led into nothing but darkness.
Trying not to let it bother her she began to descend the stairs, clicking the button on her torch and lighting up the tight, narrow stairway. It went on straight for a while and then curled to the left, making it difficult to navigate around. After they turned the bend, a door stood in front of them. The screams on the other side were imminent, loud and particularly identifiable.
Jack was still alive.
Before Bullet could kick the door in, Gecko shuffled down in front of her awkwardly, trying to stay as quiet as possible.
“Go back up the stairs a little, I have an idea,” he whispered to her perplexed expression, “just follow my lead.”
“Gecko, what’re you…”
“Just go!” he hissed at her.
Stunned at his attitude, and a little black affronted for giving in to him so quickly, Bullet backed up as she was instructed and crouched on a step just before the bend, clicking her torch off. Gecko tried the door quietly, Jack’s scream making him jump with fright.
