2026-10-29 17:03:50"Hold on," Soren said, as Howard's hand moved toward the ignition. "Let's see what this is first."
Out on the street, five vans had swung hard into the hotel's service road and braked along the curb in rapid succession. The doors burst open and more than thirty men poured out, armed with steel pipes and short blades, their faces set with the particular ugliness of people who had been paid to hurt someone and were looking forward to it. The one leading them was lean and wiry, a sleeveless
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Chapter 061
The smoke was still thick when the shooting started.White haze rolled through the aisles of the warehouse, clinging to the shelves in pale drifts, and somewhere inside it, a second figure moved. Soren caught the muzzle flash before he caught anything else, two bursts of orange light cutting through the murk, and he was already moving, dropping low and shifting his position as the rounds punched through cardboard boxes and sent splinters of wood spinning into the air.He returned fire. Controlled, deliberate, sweeping the barrel toward the sound of the shots. The bullets chewed through shelving and packaging, and neither of them hit anything that mattered.Then both guns ran dry at the same moment.The double click of empty chambers rang out in the sudden silence, two hollow sounds nearly identical, nearly simultaneous. Soren ejected his spent magazine without thinking, his hand already moving to the fresh one at his hip. He seated it, reached for the slide relea
Chapter 060
The fourth-floor corridor of Briarcrest Medical Center had gone quiet in the way that only happens after gunfire stops.Soren was on his knees, chest heaving, both arms locked around the last operative's head. The man had stopped struggling. With a sharp, wrenching motion, Soren twisted hard.The crack of vertebrae was loud in the stillness.He held the position for a moment, making sure, then let the body drop and pushed the dead weight off his legs. Around him, three other operatives were already on the floor, each one down for good. Soren pressed a hand against his ribs and pulled in two slow, deliberate breaths. Something in his chest ached with the particular sharpness of a bruise that hadn't decided yet how serious it wanted to be.He'd burned through every round in the Glock 17 taking down the first three. The fourth had closed the distance before he could reload, and the pistol had ended up leaving his hand at high velocity aimed at the man's face. It had
Chapter 059
"So you've already located Asset X-017?"Soren kept his voice level, watching Nora's face for the flicker that would confirm what he already suspected. It wasn't a difficult calculation. If she had been embedded beside Nighthawk long enough to earn his trust, she could have moved against him at any point. She hadn't. Which meant the mission had only become urgent now, and there was only one reason for that."That's right." Nora didn't bother hiding it. She met his eyes with the calm steadiness of someone who believed the game was already over. "Asset X-017 is nearly at MI6 headquarters as we speak. Nighthawk, it's finished. All of it."A brief silence settled between them."Perhaps," Soren said.He let the word sit there, quiet and noncommittal. But behind it, the math was already done. If he wanted the full completion bonus on this Career Instance, the intelligence couldn't reach MI6. It absolutely could not reach Dax Carter. That left him exactly one optio
Chapter 058
Nora was looking at him with the same expression she always wore at this moment: careful, warm, professionally concerned. It was a good performance. If he hadn't watched her put a suppressor-fitted Glock 17 against his head twice already, he might have found it genuinely disarming.He rubbed the bridge of his nose and let exhaustion settle into his face, which wasn't entirely an act."Sorry," he said. "Just tired. Bad dreams.""Bad dreams?" A small, curious tilt of her head. "Did you sleep poorly last night? Let me get you some water.""Thank you, Nora."She turned toward the water cooler. In the same motion, unhurried and quiet, Soren closed his fingers around the scalpel he'd palmed from the instrument tray behind him. He held it loosely at his side, blade inward, and waited.She came back with the paper cup held out in both hands, the picture of attentive care. He took it from her with a smile and set it on the counter beside him without drinking.
Chapter 057
Sable Plaza in the last days of summer had the unhurried quality of a city that didn't yet know it was about to have a very bad evening. The air was cool, carrying the faint promise of autumn, and the streets around the square were thick with the usual mix of tourists consulting their phones, office workers loosening their ties, and locals who moved through the crowd with the easy confidence of people who belonged there.Soren moved with them, white coat gone, right hand wrapped around the grip of his Glock 17 beneath his jacket. He kept his pace measured and his eyes moving, scanning doorways, parked cars, the gaps between buildings. He needed a clothing shop. Something with a back exit and enough foot traffic that one more person browsing a rack of jackets wouldn't register on anyone's radar.He was still running the calculation when a child's voice cut through the ambient noise of the square."Mum, look! Birds!"The woman beside the boy tilted her head back, s
Chapter 056
The first two mission achievements were straightforward enough. Thirty kills, fifteen simultaneous opponents, both brutal in their own way but at least legible. The third one was the problem.Ensure the safety of Asset X-017.Soren turned the phrase over as he moved. What was Asset X-017? A document? A drive? A person? He had no idea, and the system hadn't seen fit to elaborate. What he did know, based on the way the other doctors had greeted him this morning and the easy familiarity in their voices, was that he'd been working at Briarcrest Medical Center for a while. Long enough to have a routine. Long enough to have a home.And if he had a home, there was a chance he'd left something there worth finding.The open-air car park outside Briarcrest Medical Center was quiet in the way that places go quiet just before something goes wrong. Soren came through the hospital's side exit at a jog, his white coat still on, his personnel file tucked under one arm. He hadn't
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