Divorced on Monday, Bought the City on Tuesday: The Infinite

The Predator’s Game

Chapter 27

The Hounds breached the Apex Estate through the third-floor skylights. They didn't shatter the glass; they melted the heavy reinforced hinges with concentrated thermal paste, lowering themselves down on silent micro-filament wires.

Twelve men. Twelve ghosts clad in matte-black, radar-absorbent armor.

Their leader, designated Alpha, touched the side of his helmet. He toggled his night-vision and thermal optics, expecting the dark mansion to light up in neon heat signatures.

Instead, his visor showed absolute, terrifying static.

"Comms check," Alpha whispered. His voice was transmitted via bone-conduction earpieces, entirely silent to the outside world. "Thermals are jammed. The target has military-grade countermeasures. Switch to ambient light amplification. Sweep and clear."

The squad fanned out with lethal precision, boots making zero sound against the plush carpets. They moved down the grand floating staircase, their suppressed submachine guns sweeping the pitch-black foyer.

Alpha felt a faint prickle of unease at the base of his neck. They had assassinated cartels, overthrown small-nation dictators, and vanished without a trace. This was supposed to be a simple extraction-and-execution of a local upstart billionaire. So why did the air inside this house feel so impossibly heavy?

Click.

A single electronic lock engaged. The sound echoed like a gunshot in the silent house.

"Bravo, check your six," Alpha ordered.

"Door just locked behind us, boss," Bravo replied, his breathing tight. "Heavy steel bulkhead. We're boxed into the East Wing hallway."

"Breach it," Alpha commanded.

Before Bravo could pull the thermal paste from his belt, the ambient temperature in the hallway plummeted.

A shadow detached itself from the ceiling.

Vera didn't drop; she flowed. She landed squarely on Bravo’s shoulders, wrapping one hand over his mouth while driving her high-density combat blade through the microscopic gap between his Kevlar collar and his helmet. The blade severed his spinal cord instantly.

Bravo went entirely limp. Vera rode his collapsing body to the floor in perfect silence, vanishing back into the suffocating darkness before the body even made a sound.

"Bravo, report," Alpha hissed into his comms.

Static.

"Delta, Echo. Collapse on Bravo's position," Alpha ordered, his pulse accelerating. "Hostile contacts in the dark. Weapons free."

Suddenly, a voice echoed through the mansion's surround-sound speakers. It wasn't the billionaire. It was a girl, chewing gum, her tone dripping with digital amusement.

"Flashbang," Nyx’s voice chirped.

Every single high-lumen LED light in the East Wing violently strobed to maximum capacity for a fraction of a second, before plunging back into darkness.

For men wearing ambient-light amplification goggles, the effect was catastrophic.

"Aargh!" Echo screamed, ripping his helmet off as the intense burst of light seared his retinas, effectively blinding him.

From the shadows, Arthur Vance stepped forward.

He didn't use a weapon. The Leviathan Marrow Serum humming in his veins made him the weapon. He closed the distance to the blinded operative in a blur of motion. Arthur’s hand shot out in the darkness, his fingers wrapping around the thick Kevlar plating of Echo’s tactical vest.

With a brutal, effortless twist of his hips, Arthur hoisted the fully armored, two-hundred-and-fifty-pound man off his feet and hurled him into Delta.

The two operatives crashed into the marble wall with the sickening crunch of shattering ribs.

Delta scrambled to raise his rifle, but Arthur was already there. Arthur brought his heel down on the barrel of the gun, pinning it to the floor, and drove a devastating palm strike directly into the center of Delta’s combat helmet.

The kinetic force bypassed the armor entirely. The operative’s brain rattled against his skull, shutting his nervous system down instantly. He slumped over, dead to the world.

Alpha heard the wet crunches over the open comms. The hair on his arms stood on end.

"Fall back to the foyer! Defensive formation!" Alpha roared, abandoning stealth.

The remaining eight Hounds sprinted back toward the grand entrance, forming a tight circle, their weapons aimed outward into the impenetrable blackness. They were breathing hard. The apex predators of the Capital City were terrified.

"You brought guns to my house," Arthur’s voice drifted out of the darkness. It seemed to come from everywhere at once, resonating with that terrifying, unnatural sovereignty. "How impolite."

Alpha fired a blind burst into the shadows. Sparks flew as the bullets ricocheted off a marble pillar.

"Show yourself, Vance!" Alpha screamed, his finger tight on the trigger. "You think you can take us all?!"

"I don't have to," Arthur whispered softly, right next to Alpha's ear.