Chapter 5 - Darkness in the Mansion
Total, suffocating blackness swallowed the grand ballroom.
For a fraction of a second, the string quartet continued to play a hesitant chord before a chorus of gasps and nervous laughter rippled through seven hundred wealthy guests. Emergency backup generators kicked in across the estate, but instead of bright chandeliers, a sickly, amber-tinted low-voltage glow washed over the mahogany floors.
“What did you do?” I whispered to Nora, keeping my rifle raised.
“I didn't touch the power,” she said, her eyes darting across the shadows of the executive lounge. “The main breaker box is in the sub-basement. Someone else just dropped the grid.”
Before I could process her words, the heavy reinforced oak doors of the executive lounge clicked open.
Three men in tactical gear stepped inside, their night-vision goggles casting an eerie green glare across the room. They weren't looking for intruders; they were moving with the cold, deliberate precision of an assassination squad executing a secondary protocol.
“Target is mobile,” a harsh voice rasped over an encrypted radio frequency. “Vale gave the order. Zero witnesses in the executive wing.”
I grabbed Nora by the tactical vest, yanking her down behind the heavy mahogany wet bar just as a hail of suppressed gunfire splintered the glass partition above us. Shards of crystal rained down like glittering diamonds, burying our boots in glittering debris.
“They’re sweeping the room!” Nora hissed, unholstering her revolver and returning fire with three rapid, calculated shots through the wooden base of the bar.
A heavy thud echoed across the floor as one of the mercenaries took a round to the shoulder and dropped. The remaining two scrambled behind the velvet sofas, returning fire with blistering automatic rounds that chewed through the expensive imported wood of the bar with terrifying ease.
“We’re pinned!” I yelled over the deafening clatter of gunfire.
“Not for long,” Nora shouted back. She tossed a small, cylindrical canister across the floor toward the center of the lounge.
A flash-bang grenade detonated with a blinding white flash and a concussive shockwave that rattled my teeth. The two mercenaries screamed, their night-vision goggles amplifying the blinding light into a blinding wall of white pain.
I vaulted over the splintered bar, the stolen carbine snapping to my shoulder. I placed two rounds into the chest of the nearest mercenary, sending him crashing backward into a glass display case. The second man lunged at me with a combat knife, his face twisted in rage.
May you like
Before his blade could find my throat, Nora’s steel-toed boot caught him square in the throat, crushing his windpipe. He collapsed to his knees, gasping for air before falling face-first into the carpet.
The room fell deadly silent, save for the distant, muffled strains of classical music still playing through the ballroom speakers above us.
