While the hostages and Lady Smallwood attempted to process everything that had happened Artemis remained outside with the rest of the Reapers and Hades' generals as was her place. Hades had no motto, no creed and they took no oath. It wasn't one for all and all for one, just all for Hades itself; any diversion from that and one would be considered a weakness and pruned away from the tree.
The office didn't look turned over like one often found in TV shows, in fact the whole room appeared entirely untouched save for the rich, red blood which soaked into the cheep carpet. She stepped over Mycroft's dead body to approach Nix, a woman in her thirties with a naturally hard face. Not an eye flicked to the now deceased British Government, not Artemis' nor anyone else's in the room; no, to them he was little more than a stain on the carpet now. Unimportant. A picture that had hung on the wall so long nobody looked at it any more but all knew it was there. Artemis tucked her Beretta away once more to await new orders like a good, obedient, little assassin.
"We had begun to suspect you had turned on us but now we see you are a true Reaper."
Nix's words didn't come across as praise exactly, Hades wasn't capable of that, no, it came across more of a statement of fact akin to how someone would calmly state the color of their coat or what their dinner order was. To these people emotion and personality was like color television, pretty and different but ultimately pointless when black and white worked just as well. In a strange and convoluted way they'd conquered selfishness, narcissism, cowardice, frivolity, sexism and a whole host of other negative personality traits people hated but they'd killed life as well, killed humanity, they weren't people, not any more, they were just shells; little more than better coordinated zombies.
"With Kerberos dead we are in need of a new general." Styx pointed out while she efficiently reloaded her weapon; her eyes never flicked up to Artemis once.
"He proved himself weak." She replied as she remembered the blade he'd stabbed into her gut while screaming 'traitor' at her.
"Indeed he was." Said Charon, their chief general. "132601, you are clearly far more capable than Hades has believed. Much more than a simple specialist, and with his death -" Charon loosely gestured to Mycroft body as it continued to do little more than occupy space. "- you are loyal to us unwaveringly. You are to be our new Kerberos. We expect you to control your continent better than your predecessor."
"I am not so weak as him and no traitor." Artemis told the bearded man easily.
The other generals knew Mycroft and MI6 had been behind the base attacks, they didn't need to know Artemis had been the one to kill the former Kerberos, and they certainly didn't need to know she'd let them in. Kerberos had been weak though, clearly, otherwise one Reaper and a bunch of puffed up English soldiers wouldn't have been able to take over an entire Hades HQ with only twelve losses. If that was how Hades intended to run their operations Holmes the elder wouldn't have really needed Artemis' help after all.
Yama nodded, a short curt movement that seemed highly unnatural to her and everyone else. "Yes, probably why you fooled the Iceman so easily."
"I told him at the very beginning I might have been fooling him but he disregarded it instantly. Not an hour into my mission and he had sealed his own death. I thought he was supposed to be a smart man."
It was all true, Artemis had pointed out on several occasions she could have been conning him, had kept putting it back into his mind just to test if he truly trusted her or not, but each and every time Mycroft had sent the idea packing, she'd hardly needed to do anything to make him trust her. It had almost seemed like he'd had an innate faith in her.
"Did you have sex with him?" Asked Nix without a single hint of curiosity.
Artemis nodded. "Yes, he would have grown suspicious had I not. I had not expected him to be quite so good at it though."
A blond foot soldier attempted to grab the bloody suit clad body by the left leg and drag Mycroft out into the hall so he was out of the way, however, he'd hardly gotten more than two feet before Artemis turned her attention to her new subordinate, those dazzling green eyes lifeless once again.
"There are a set of detention cells in the east sub-basement, the gate code is 3089216, put the corpse in there. It's cold and we might need body parts for any biometrics."
The Reaper nodded and hoisted the dead Holmes up onto his shoulder fireman style before he headed out of the office room, Mycroft's arms dangled lamely with the Reaper's movements. The Mighty British Government reduced to little more than a meat puppet; good job he was dead or he'd have been horrified by the damage done to his suit. If ghosts did exist, Mycroft would return as one to the land of the living just to lament his blood covered suit.
Once the door closed behind the Reaper and the body Charon reached for his radio, raised it up to his mouth and spoke in a gruff voice.
"Charon to Hydra, come in."
"Reading you." Came the other male general's voice quickly; not out of worry for consequences of being slow but due to efficiency. Cold-hearted efficiency.
"Do you have Project Tesla secured yet?"
Hardly a single second passed before Hydra responded, his voice carried a German accent but it almost certainly fake and just left over from his last job. "We have a problem." Well that didn't bode well. "The file was here and the access code was accepted but this work is incomplete and clearly not our target. Holmes changed the file out."
Upon hearing such news most evil men's faces would have grown hard and angry, maybe they'd have lashed out, thrown the radio at the wall or shot someone. Charon didn't do any of that, he remained perfectly stoic and unreadable, honestly, that was far more frightening than the anger. People understood anger, saw it coming and knew what to expect, but Charon's lack of personality and rage meant he was capable of literally anything and the unknown always scared people more than what was right in front of them even if it was a gun or a rabid bear. Imagination had always been man's true source of horror.
"Maybe Holmes was smarter than we gave him credit for. This is not a problem though, there is still another with the details of Project Tesla and thanks to Kerberos we still have usable hostages." He told Hydra through the radio. "Find Lady Smallwood."
"Of course. Hydra out."
The radio fell silent and Charon returned it to his belt. He looked around at the small army of Reapers still awaiting orders with deep-set brown eyes and straightened up to his full height; maybe just a little taller than Mycroft.
"We break into units and find her, kill anyone in your path but take her alive. The silent alarm was triggered allowing the upper floors to escape so we don't have much time remaining until they attempt to send in re-enforcements. You-" Charon pointed to the Reaper closest the supply closet; a dark-haired man around Artemis age. "- guard the hostages."
Without another word from the American sounding man the remaining foot soldiers and specialists broke down into smaller units and each followed one of the generals out the room until only the guard Reaper remained. They'd find Lady Smallwood, cut, bleed, bruise and burn her until they had what they needed, which Hades didn't imagine would take all that long to be frank, she was just an old woman after all who they doubted could hold out as long as Holmes and he'd broken quick enough. As soon as they had the real Project Tesla they'd claim their coin and move on to the next job. Hades had no motto but if they did it would be that; finish a job and move on to the next. Once they had their fifty-one million – of which they'd already earned thirty million of with Mycroft Holmes' death – Hades would vanish back into myth and legend.
The only difference afterwards being that Artemis now controlled the entirety of Africa's contracts. Mycroft had been correct about one thing, Artemis didn't always play by the rules, he'd just been wrong about how she'd use that ability. Where everyone had expected her to have broken her programming, freed herself, regained her humanity, they'd all come to see that Artemis had just used it to gain a better position within Hades. The other generals had named her Kerberos, given her an entire continent to control. She'd prevented herself from ever being suspected of disloyalty again and provided herself the best way to one day take over from Charon since the generals chose a Charon from within the six of them. Artemis had put herself straight into the path of taking Hades for her own and it was all thanks to Mycroft Holmes, thanks to his touch starved nature and desperate urge to be loved.
Before all of that though they needed to track down Lady Smallwood and access the real Project Tesla. Artemis – or Kerberos as she'd now be known – didn't imagine it would take all that long to track the old woman down and take what they wanted from her. She imagined the woman was probably cowering somewhere under a desk or in a cupboard. Artemis knew Lady Smallwood had been in the lower levels so there wasn't a chance she'd escaped the building when the silent alarm had been triggered. Priority ultra clearance and yet neither Mycroft Holmes nor Lady Smallwood had proven to be all that intelligent; hadn't noticed the wolf wandering around their field of sheep with its teeth on show. No, Lady Smallwood was little more than a rat in a maze, Hades would track her down, they were the cats in this little game. She had her expensive shoes and ability to blindly give orders, but Hades had guns, tactical knowledge, no pain and had killed everyone she could have ordered. Everything she did until the moment they found her was just time-wasting and pointless semantics; a scared woman trying to bide herself time until someone came to her rescue. Security was dead, the three field agents in the building were dead, Mycroft Holmes was dead, all hope was dead. Sooner or later Lady Smallwood would realize she was as well. It was like Artemis had told the British Government all those years ago, death was inevitable so she'd best resign herself to it. She'd always had a thing for the taller Holmes maybe he'd pay more attention to her in the afterlife.
Artemis marched down the hall with four heavily trained Reapers – all of them men – no more than four steps behind her as they cleared out the remaining rooms and darkened hallways in search of Lady Smallwood. It hadn't taken more than two sentences between the generals to split the lower levels into quadrants which they'd each then led a team through. Artemis had spent months in these halls, had essentially had free access to just about everywhere so she knew these corridors like the back of her hand; knew even the smallest places to hide a body. Mycroft may as well have given her a key, a map and a head start.
"Spread out and search the cubicles at the back. People can cram themselves into very small places when their lives depend on it." She orders as she slipped her Baretta back into its holster.
"Yes, Kerberos." Responded the men as blankly as they answered everything else.
She glanced around the darkened room, the four men with their backs to her then glanced down to her watch. She'd have rather their plan had moved a little faster, still, she a job to do and she'd damn well do it. Artemis looked back to her new subordinates, all had their backs to her, no wonder the Lesotho base had been so easy to clear out. They practically invited her to snap each of their necks in turn. Something had to be done about these foot soldiers.