Hunnigan had quickly brought up the blackout program. It was something that she had been working on on rainy days for the past few years. More or less, it was a compact EMP device. She could set it up much like a WiFi signal, but instead of giving out free internet connections to all devices within thirty feet, it would knock out electronic devices. She was basically a rolling blackout.
The D.S.O backdoor was easy to get through. She parked her car five blocks from the building and took the round about way. Hunnigan had to place her back against the gate of the outer courtyard. She knew every piece of security the place had, she engaged the blackout program and it just took a little muscle to get the gate to swing open. Inside the courtyard, she ran at full speed. The bulk of the body armor, no matter how lightweight, took a toll on her. Constricted her movement.
Having to stop a few times to allow footpatrols pass by her, she was able to catch her breath before pressing on. There was a large hedge that she could get through. She pulled the collar of the jacket over her head and threw herself into the hedge. On the other side, was a chain-link fence. It was wired at the top, electric. She pulled out a pair of pliers, thick rubber installation and began to cut here and there until she was sure she could get through the opening. She was careful not to let her jacket get caught on the edges, bending them back and out of the way.
She rushed around the corner and found the cleaning staff entrance. The program on her phone disarmed the security panel next to the door and it slid open soundlessly. Inside, it was dark in the main hallway, though she knew there were still people working on the higher floors. Her colleagues. The trace program had come from one of the lower floors, below ground level. Hunnigan rushed to the elevator and pulled her phone out of her pocket, she lowered the blackout program to its lowest setting. A scanner was at the top of a panel of buttons. She initiated the black and white code and the scanner confirmed the code was to Suit 9. Suit 9 was the personal floor of Adrian Waters, an old friend of Derek C. Simmons. They had worked together in the Secret Service back in the early eighties.
The elevator descended in total quiet. Her heartbeat bounced off the walls as the numbered lights ticked. The floor above Suit 9, she raised the blackout program to its largest range and the elevator shorted out and the emergency lights kicked on. She has to get into the corner and push herself up using the handrails around the box to get tot he roof and push open the panel. She left it open and began crawling down the emergency ladder to the lower floor. The doors below slide open effortlessly.
Nothing moved inside but she could hear the far off sounds of jazz music wafting through the floor. Hunnigan kept herself tight to the walls and moved around until she saw light spilling out of once of the main offices. Inside, Waters was working on her computer. She moved closer and she heard the music begin to skip and struggle as the computer lost power. The lights in the room stayed on, though the dimmed as she circled around the room to get a feel of where he was.
"Great, a power surge." Waters grumbled. She heard his chair squeak as he pushed it back from the desk and get up. He walked over to the internal phone and lifted the receiver. He clicked a few buttons and that was when she called out to him.
"Put the phone down, Waters." Try as she might, her voice did not come off as hard as she had wanted it.
"Who the hell is here?" He called out then seemed to address whoever was on the phone. "No, not you. There is someone in my su—" She dipped around the corner and threw one of the needles at the phone. The metal bit through the plastic body of the receiver. He looked down and then towards her. Hunnigan had already shoved the second needle through the Erinyes, pulled it and sent it towards his shoulder. It pierced his shirt and red began to spiral slowly out from the wound. "What the hell?" He yanked the needle from his shoulder and threw it to the ground.
Waters dashed to his desk and pulled a silver Glock and aimed it at her. She dove back through the doorway and fell to the ground just before bullets ripped through the air above her head. She scrambled on her hands and knees to get away from the doorway as she could hear him rushing after her.
Hunnigan stood and ducked into the open doorway of a meeting room. He followed her.
"Who is here? Who are you?" He demanded.
"I am a ghost." She lowered her voice, it was on the cuspid of comical but she was trying.
"You are going to be dead in a few moments if you don't tell me who sent you…what did you do to me."
Hunnigan had been crawling carefully between the legs of chairs under the long meeting table but now she looked out from under the table, around a chair and saw that his left arm, where the needle had hit, was hanging limp at his side. She crawled along under the table and grabbed the next needle. She pierced the poison and held it out as he walked by. She struck quickly and drove the needle through his pant leg and caught him in the calf.
He yelped in pain and fired at the ground. A bullet ricochet off the ground and licked at her cheek as it embedded itself on the underside of the table. She slapped a hand on her cheek and it came back red. Waters stumbled in pain and fell to the ground. The poison was coursing through his veins and he struggled less and less as she watched him from under the table.
She crawled away and ran back to his office. On his desk was a roll of transparent tape. She pulled several strips off the roll and covered the cut on her cheek, trapping her blood behind a thin veil of cellophane. She dug around and found a lighter and a bottle of pen ink, then she retrieved both her needles.
Gathering her courage and suppressing her want to be sick, she returned to the meeting room. Waters was right were she had left him. He began grunting loudly as she walked past him. The meeting table was heavy but with some finesse she got it to tip over. On the underside, the bullet still lay. Hunnigan used the needles to work the bullet out of the wood. She pocketed it then doused the underside of the table in the ink and set the lighter to it. The flames moved quickly, burning away her blood that had been soaked into the wood.
She turned to the man. She pressed her foot to his upper arm and pushed him over. Hunnigan crouched down and looked him in the eye.
"You are a member of The Family, correct?" He moved his head back and forth slowly. She jammed a needle into the open wound in his shoulder. He groaned. "You are a member of The Family, correct?" She repeated. He shook his head again. She stood and took the needle to the wall. In the wall, she carved the serpent emblem of The Family and pointed at it. "Your family crest, correct?"
He was quiet. She held her breath as she struck out, sending her foot into his side. He didn't recoil in pain, but grunted loudly. She did it again, fighting not to show compassion.
"You are a member of The Family, are you not?" She punctuated the question with a third kick. Something cracked. She fought a wave of nausea. "Are you not?" This time he nodded, as best as he could. "How many of you are there?" He didn't move but tried to mumble words.
"You will close your eyes when I reach the correct number." She waited for him to nod. "One…Two… Three… Four… Five…" It continued on until she got to the point of skipping in fives. "Forty-Five… Fifty…. Fifty-Five…" He closed his eyes for a few moments then opened them.
"About fifty-five?" He closed his eyes and nodded.
"How do I find them?" He stared at her, unmoving. "Fine, I will find them on my own, just like I found you. They will pay just like you, Waters."
Hunnigan noted the fire beginning to spread past the table and onto chairs around the area. The smoke alarms would be going off soon and whoever Waters had talked to on the phone would be trying to get down here. Only her hold on the elevator was keeping them out. She leaned over and held the tip of the needle to his throat.
"You killed the woman I love. Your Family will mourn you only until I kill every last one of them." Hunnigan stood and took up the gun that had been just beside his hand the entire time. She pointed it down at his face then turned her own face away from him, and pulled the trigger. It was an ear-piercing bang then and wet smack of matter spraying over the floor.
She could not allow herself to look at him. Running to the elevator, she climbed up the emergency ladder as far as her arms could carry her. She exited on the fifth floor and took the stairs back down to the cleaning staff entrance and rushed through the courtyard.
Once she was back in her car, Hunnigan fell apart. She sobbed hysterically as she wiped at the blood on her hands and hid the gun in her glove compartment. She cradled her head in her hands for almost half an hour before sirens wailed past her towards the D.S.O. She collected herself and drove home. Taking her shoes off outside her house, she walked into her bathroom and got into a hot shower, fully clothed. She lay under the water until she passed out from exhaustion.