Aristide's safe room turned out to be a small lab on the third floor. Stokes went first, checking the room with a quick sweep of her submachine gun. "Clear." She reported when no one jumped out.
Satisfied that there was no immediate threat, Keira took a look around the lab. White fluorescent lights filled the room with a bright light that turned everything into sharp angles and pitch black shadows. There was a computer on a desk nestled in a corner and it was there that Aristide went after making sure the door was locked.
"What are you doing?"
"Colonel Vanek's men have started jamming the radio waves, that's why you're not able to talk to your squad." Fingers flew over keys, windows popped up and programs executed, "Mapes once showed me a way around the jamming, don't ask me to explain, the science is utterly beyond me but it should give you five, maybe ten seconds of radio waves."
"That's barely enough time for a status report." The Delta operative remarked.
"Perhaps, but it is enough time to send a message." Aristide muttered.
"What message?"
Sergeant Michael Beckett finally relaxed as the elevator doors closed. This mission had gone to hell since the Delta Force team first set foot on Genevieve Aristide's luxury suite. First the ATC black ops that had shown up out of nowhere on what was supposed to be a quick grab and bag.
that should have been the clue that this was going to be a nightmare
Even with the unwelcome arrival of ATC tangos, his team had still done well. They'd managed to locate Genevieve, in fact, they'd been only minutes away from a safe extract and then…boom.
That little girl in a red dress, the one he'd seen the Aristide's room, it was like she was the raven from that poem that one guy had wrote, something about "nevermore".
No, he corrected, when you start hallucinating creepy little girls in red dresses, that's when you know this is going to be FUBAR'd.
He hadn't told the others about his little follower, he didn't want them to think he was cracking-
His earpiece crackled and a woman's voice came over the line, "Beckett?"
Beckett breathed a sigh of relief and pressed a finger to the earpiece, "Oh it's good to hear your voice, LT." He'd lost contact with her for a while, in this madhouse he'd wondered very hard if she was dead.
"Nice to hear you're among the living, Sergeant," Stokes sounded just as relieved as he was, "Listen we don't have much time, I'm here with Genevieve Aristide-"
In a secured room three floors up, a group of ATC operatives had established an operations center for the mission. One of them, a pasty looking fellow recruited right out of college suddenly jerked his head up,
"Colonel Vanek!"
"What is it Simmons?" Colonel Vanek was an imposing figure, built like a barrel with a razor straight military cut and a rather threatening looking moustache that bristled like the hackles of an angry dog. Some people might have seen all this and called it comical. Some people, if they said it in his presence, might suddenly be the victims of an impromptu castration.
Without anesthetic.
"We're picking up some radio chatter from those Delta Force Operatives Alpha team encountered in Aristide's suite." The tech officer held up a spare earpiece which the Colonel snatched and stuffed in his ear.
He listened in grim silence to the conversation the two oblivious Delta Force operatives were having. Then he slowly lowered his hand from his earpiece and finally allowed himself a very small feeling of satisfaction. "Gotcha." He muttered. "Taylor!"
A competent looking ATC mercenary looked up from where he was loading a submachine gun, "Yes sir?"
"Take Bravo Team and meet our party crashers at the T.A.C. lab." The mercenary captain nodded and began issuing orders to his squad. For the first time in the past forty-eight hours, Vanek finally felt like he was getting a grip on this whole fuck-up that Armacham had plopped in his lap. The really incriminating evidence was being torched and Menodza and his boys were placing charges even now. Even most of the Delta Force operatives were here, and now he knew where Genevieve Aristide was headed.
"Simmons!" He barked.
The tech officer looked up frantically, no doubt wondering what he'd done.
"…Good job soldier." The colonel said finally, "I'll make sure to mail you a bonus when we get out of here."
"-We're on our way to the T.A.C. lab, see you there!"
Unit 237 paused to listen in to the conversation. He'd had to abandon the stairs after finding the upper floor impassable from debris. Now he was scaling the steel cable of an empty elevator shaft. He made a small sound, an electronic buzz that could be the equivalent of a pleased grunt, and resumed his climb.
He was pleased that the woman was still alive, very pleased. Something about her kept drawing him in, and he'd have been disappointed to find out she'd been killed. Of course ATC were probably also listening in.
The Replica Assassin paused in mid-climb as he considered the ramifications of that. Then he started climbing again, much faster than before.
If ATC got there before he did, he'd be very…disappointed, and if the woman died…
No more fun, his mind thought morosely.
Especially if he wasn't the one to kill her.
"Hey, have you heard?" Two ATC black ops soldiers walked down an empty hallway, doing one last sweep for any survivors. They had orders to render swift assistance to any non-ATC Black Ops personnel they discovered alive.
In this case swift assistance meant swiftly assisting them to a quick death.
"Heard what?" The other grunted, still keeping an eye on the hallway.
"Samuels said they've located Genevieve, you know what that means?" The more talkative one asked.
The quieter one rolled his eyes, "We tell her she's been a naughty little girl and make her promise to never, ever do it again?"
"Ha, ha. It means we finally get to leave this insane asylum." He stopped suddenly, "Speaking of little girls…"
In the dim light of the fluctuating bulbs, a little girl with long black hair stared curiously at a blank wall.
"Son of a bitch." Quiet swore, "What the hell's a minor doing here?"
"Hell if I know," Talker answered, he unslung his submachine gun and stepped forward.
"Damn, killing surgeons and nurses is one thing, but little girls?" Quiet shook his head as he followed. "This is some fucked up shit."
"Tell me about it, I'll just be glad when we get out of here." Talker muttered. The girl never ran as the two heavily armed soldiers approached her.
"Sorry about this, girl." Quiet apologized as he pulled out a Seegert ACM46 sidearm, "You won't feel a thing, promise."
The girl turned, and looked at them.
"Do you see what I see?" She asked them.
The air turned the color of the blood.
A/N: Sorry for the short chapter, right now I'm just trying to lay out all the pieces. Also, I know in the game that Beckett never, ever talks but I'm pulling out my artistic license card and making him talk for this story. Next chapter should be when the action resumes.
