Arcane Exfil Chapter 45

It was time to do what they do best.

Mack wasted no time in popping the hatch. The ward anchors came off with a satisfying snap – brass plates clattering across the rooftop like someone had just voided the warranty on expensive electronics. Thirty seconds, just like he’d promised.

The maintenance hatch squealed open on rusty hinges – would’ve been a scare if not for the torrent of gunfire drowning out all other sounds. Below, a ladder descended into darkness.

Cole dropped through first. The maintenance closet hit him with the stereotypical janitor’s cocktail – Pine-Sol’s Victorian cousin mixed with mildew and whatever made mop water smell like clinical depression. The metal shelving was crammed with the usual suspects: buckets that had seen better decades, rags that probably violated several health codes, plus bottles labeled in Celdornian that definitely weren’t OSHA-approved.

Mack and Elina landed behind him. The room was six by eight feet of intimate quarters, close enough that Cole could smell Elina’s lavender soap fighting a losing battle against Eau de Supply Closet.

Cole cracked the door. The hallway beyond was lit by crystals that were a lot closer to cheap office fluorescence than the replicated daylight they’d first seen at the castle. It was a lot more boring than he figured, but then again, the banality was probably the point. Forty feet of hallway with doors with plain labels – ‘Records,’ ‘Supervisor,’ the kind of mundane shit that made inspectors yawn and move on without so much as a second thought.

Hell, it would’ve gotten to him too if not for all the shitshows he’d been through – normal office buildings and homes turned into warzones.

First door on the left hung ajar. Cole shouldered it open, revolver tracking corners. Empty office, but someone had left breakfast next to an inkwell – some kind of local pastry with exactly one bite missing. Papers scattered across the desk in that way that suggested sudden departure rather than normal mess. The shipping manifests showed decent handwriting, the work of someone who actually gave a shit about keeping readable records.

Second office had tea that hadn’t even developed that gross film yet – the kind that made abandoned tea look like someone had sneezed on it. The owner couldn’t have been gone more than ten minutes. The cup still had those little wisps of steam that meant someone had just been sitting here, probably going through receipts. They must’ve been taken hostage mid-sip.

Third door was locked from the outside, which was interesting. Cole gave it a quick knock.

No response.

Conscious hostages would’ve at least reacted; given some sort of cry for help. Either the hypothetical hostages were unconscious in there, or there was simply nothing inside. Whatever the case might’ve been, checking could wait until after the immediate dangers had been neutralized.

Fourth and fifth offices were empty, which tracked with the skeleton crew theory. The sixth office proved why they always cleared every singleroom – some cultist pressed against the window like a spectator looking over a car crash. He was completely absorbed in watching his buddies exchange gunfire with the ship team. Rubbernecking was apparently a universal constant, transcending species and ideological alignment.

The cultist was so focused on the show outside that Mack was practically on top of him before spatial awareness kicked in. Too late, of course. Mack’s knife took him low in the throat, angled to catch the blood spray, other hand clamping over the mouth.

The guy’s eyes went wide, mouth opening for a scream that Mack turned into a wet gurgle with eight inches of steel through the larynx. Ice crystallized over the cultist’s lips for good measure – probably overkill given the severed vocal cords, but Mack had always been thorough. He guided the body down behind the desk, out of sight from the window.

Voices filtered through the walls as they moved deeper into the hallway – muffled shouting, someone saying it had to be the city watch, another voice arguing about whether to try the door.

The guard outside the break room looked like he’d reached his limit. His revolver was out but aimed at the floor, finger already inside the trigger guard because nobody had taught him better. He hammered on the door.

“Oi! Shut it! All of you shut your bloody mouths!”

Cole was about to put the sorry bastard out of his misery when a thought struck him. This was perfect timing – the guard had his back to the hallway, completely focused on keeping a bunch of panicked civilians from doing something stupid. The gunfire must’ve pushed his adrenaline into the red, but he was looking the wrong way.

This was actually ideal – controlled environment, single target, no crossfire concerns. Better Elina got her first human kill here than in the middle of the clusterfuck that was definitely waiting downstairs. He’d seen too many people freeze up when they realized humans leaked differently than training dummies. Combat virginity was like the regular kind – better lost in relatively safe circumstances than during the main event.

Cole tapped Elina’s shoulder and pointed. “Quick and silent.”

She understood immediately and drew her knife. Not fumbling like he’d half-expected, but smooth like the guard was just another monster that needed to be put down.

Good. She’d found the switch without him having to explain it. Either that or she really did see them as monsters who needed killing. Lord knows Cole wanted to feel the same way. But at the end of the day, she was as operational as the rest of the team, and that’s what mattered.

The guard remained completely oblivious to impending death, still banging on the door. “You think that’s your mates comin’? The constables? Well, they can have you back in pieces, can’t they? Look, I got no problem rippin’ out your bloody –”

The blade went in low, same spot Mack had used. Except Elina drove it like the guard was wearing armor instead of a cheap coat. The knife punched through the throat and probably eviscerated spine along the way, based on the sickening crack he’d just heard. She blinked – yeah, no surprise there. Humans were basically tissue paper compared to drakes and Nevskors.

Her free hand clamped over his mouth as if the guy had any chance of screaming through a throat that just got the Homelander treatment. The sorry bastard was dead on arrival – windpipe obliterated, spine severed, throat poetically ripped out, blood everywhere. She kept the body low as it dropped, keeping it from falling in a thud.

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It was far from the best work he’d seen. Hell, it was no doubt the sloppiest, but at least she was getting the hang of things. And not freezing or puking. That alone put her ahead of most rookies.

“Try using less force next time,” Cole advised.

“Right,” she murmured, flicking away the blood.

The break room had gone quiet. They’d just heard something they really didn’t want to identify.

“You’re safe now,” Cole said. “Just… try not to look at the blood. I’m coming in.”

Cole picked up the guard’s key and peeked into the door.

A dozen faces turned toward him, all somewhere north of thirty. Dock workers dressed in worn clothes and permanent squints, sitting around mismatched tables like this was just another lunch break. These were people who brought lunch in repurposed containers and complained about their backs but showed up anyway because the pay was steady.

Among them, a gray-bearded man with a split lip and hands like leather baseball mitts found his voice first. “The city watch? Here to rescue us?”

Cole nodded. “Even better, Slayer Elites. We’re with OTAC.”

Relief flooded their faces. “Thank the Lord,” the gray-beard said.

“How many of you? Anyone hurt?”

“Fourteen of us, nobody hurt too bad.” He wiped blood from his split lip. “Ought to be fifteen, though. Gerrick – young lad, skinny little thing, been here nigh on a month. Shouldn’t have been set to the heavy crates at all, but the foreman…”

The man sighed and shook his head. “Lad’s got no soul in this world, y’see. Been sleepin’ under the wharves, plain as day by the look of him. Half-starved, he was. Last I seen of him, he was making poor work of one of them great crates when these brigands came upon us. Pray God the boy heard the shoutin’ and took to his heels. Lord preserve us, what’s such a scrap of a boy to do against full-grown men? The lad’s seen hardship enough for ten lifetimes.”

The workers’ concern was touching – taking in some wharf rat and worrying about him even now – but it added another variable to an already complicated op. The description matched the teen they’d spotted earlier. Cole could only hope the kid was good at hiding.

“We’ll keep an eye out. Right now, everyone stays here.” Cole took a revolver and knife off the guard’s corpse. “Take these. Door stays locked, keep away from windows. We’ll be back once the building’s secure.”

“God be with ye,” the man said, nodding.

Cole pulled the door shut and turned the key before heading back out into the hallway.

They found one more cultist near the stairwell, hand on the door like he couldn’t decide whether to go down or stay put. Poor bastard was stuck in paralysis – wait for orders or take initiative. The gunfire had everyone’s decision trees all fucked up.

Mack crept up behind him. One blade into the kidney and the cultist locked up instantly, pain overloading every other signal. Before the guy’s brain could catch up to what was happening, Mack had already opened his throat.

They left him where he dropped and finished clearing the floor. The last two offices were empty, and the other locked room held nothing but paper and cleaning supplies. The third floor was theirs.

They made quick work of dragging the bodies into closets and empty offices. Three corpses got tucked away like dirty laundry, but the blood pool where Elina had basically decapitated that guard… Yeah, that was another story. It looked like someone had thrown a gallon of red paint at the wall and floor.

Well, there was nothing they could do about that except hope nobody came looking before they finished downstairs. At this rate, whoever did inventory was going to need serious therapy, or maybe just a new job, depending on how thorough OTAC’s cleanup crew was.

Cole moved to the stairwell door, pressing his ear against the metal. Voices reached up from below, one talking fast and nervous, words tripping over each other like someone in their first interrogation. That had to be Conway.

The other voice stayed calm, professorial even. Like a university lecturer explaining something obvious to slow students. Whoever this was had given this speech before – or rehearsed it.

Time to put faces to those voices.

The door to the second floor opened onto industrial refrigeration, temperature drop hitting Cole like he’d just walked into a meat locker. He pulled his collar up against the chill. They all ran a bit of thermal enhancement through their hands – just enough to keep fingers flexible on triggers.

The second floor was warehouse chic at its finest – water stains mapping unknown territories across the concrete, rust bleeding through where the roof had given up on being waterproof. The smell hit him immediately: mold going twelve rounds with industrial cleaning supplies and losing on points.

Which made the organization even weirder. These crates were stacked with military precision, each one labeled and coded by someone who apparently gave a shit about inventory management. Like finding a library card system in a crack den.

The first two cultists were doing inventory twenty feet in, one marking a clipboard while his buddy checked ward anchors. They knew they were on borrowed time. Every few seconds one of them would jerk toward the windows like the gunfire might suddenly come through the walls. All that worrying about the noise outside when the real threat was already sharing their air.

Mack and Elina handled them with the same efficiency as upstairs. Two more bodies for the pile. Cole was starting to lose track of which closets had corpses and which just had cleaning supplies.

Mack took the clipboard guy while Elina lined up on his partner. At least this time she didn’t try to decapitate anyone. Her knife went through the man’s throat with only slightly more force than necessary.

Two bodies joined the general ambiance of the place, tucked behind crates where they wouldn’t trip anyone up.

Another cultist appeared from between crate stacks, walking the world’s most pointless patrol route. He died confused, which was probably how he’d lived. Body number three.

Finally, after reaching a gap in the maze that opened into a clearing, they found their targets: Conway and the cultist boss. Conway was about as nervous as he sounded earlier, sweating through his suit despite the freezer temperature and clutching documents like they were divorce papers.

The cultist boss was Conway’s bureaucratic mirror in terms of getup, but a complete antithesis in terms of composure. Clean-cut, well-groomed, like a respectable salesman. In fact, everything about him projected respectability, all except for the eyes, which now bore down on Cole.

How he’d spotted them was anyone’s guess – peripheral vision, magical warning, or just that predator instinct that kept evil bastards alive longer than they deserved. Probably the last option, since there was something truly off about that gaze.

Discernment hit before Cole’s brain could catch up. The eyes were flat and empty as a doll’s – or a televangelist who sold his soul to the devil, a look that made him understand why people throughout history believed in demonic possession.

And now, those same eyes stayed flat as a shark’s while his hand went for the wand like every quick-draw champion who’d ever lived.

Well, so much for taking him alive, and sayonara to stealth.

Capture orders were cute in theory. Not so cute against a cultist with a megachurch stare, reaching for what may very well be a WMD.

Loss of an important intel source aside, Cole didn’t mind putting down a wolf in sheep’s clothing. He opened fire.