Chapter 22 #2
They passed more blood-speckled walls and cold pools of blood on the floor. Everywhere they looked were spent shells and bullet holes. As they walked, Ruben lamented his pathetic employees.
“This is what I have been dealing with. Complete incompetence. Every time we show even the slightest sign of progress, the subject dies. These people have no finesse. No damn brains in their heads. I don’t have time to babysit them every second of the day and hold their hands.”
“Usually, when all the employees prove to be incompetent, the failure lies with the person in charge and how the employees are managed,” Adrian said in a light, singsong tone.
Ruben grunted. “Yes, I think you’re right. Yasmine might be enthusiastic about our goal, but she lacks the intelligence to run an operation like this.”
Adrian rolled his eyes at the back of Ruben’s head, and Haru had to swallow his dark chuckles. It was clear even to him that Adrian had been talking about Ruben, but the man wasn’t the type to see a fault in himself.
The central command center was a large room crammed with monitors and people frantically typing away.
Unfortunately, only a few of the screens were lit.
Elsewhere, workers had computers torn open, trying to fix things manually.
A tall, thin blond woman stood in the center of the madness.
Her hair hung in a lopsided bun while wild strands stuck out from her head.
Makeup was smeared around her eyes, and her lipstick was even smudged.
Sweat beaded on her forehead, and her voice cracked as she shrieked at her employees to work faster.
“Yasmine!” Ruben bellowed as he entered the room.
The woman jerked as if he’d backhanded her. Her once imposing figure now crumpled inward as she faced her boss. “Ruben! What are you doing here? I-I didn’t know you were coming for a visit.”
“I’m here to show our newest investor the progress you’ve been making, and I walk in on a fucking catastrophe!”
“No! No! It’s not my fault. We found one! We found one with magical powers. She used them in a panic, and it encompassed the entire facility.”
“And so you killed her?” Ruben screamed.
“It wasn’t like that. We were fighting for our lives! She was too powerful!” She sobbed, tears streaming down her face, leaving even more garish streaks on her cheeks.
“Your incompetence means that you underestimated your prisoner, left you and all your employees vulnerable, and you destroyed a perfect subject in the name of saving your own pathetic lives,” Haru drawled in a bored voice.
He turned his head and slowly blinked at Ruben.
“If this is the leadership that has been left in control of our most valuable assets, I can see that my time and money are being wasted. Your best option right now is to kill her and start over. She knows too much to be let go, and her incompetence keeps her from being repurposed elsewhere.”
“What?” she screeched. Her already high-pitched voice became piercing in her panic.
“Ruben, you can’t be considering this? Who is this guy?
You and I have worked together for years.
We knew that it would be rough in the early stages.
That-that it would take time, patience, and perseverance.
You can’t act too rashly.” As she spoke, she retreated from Haru, holding her hands up as if to ward him off.
She begged Ruben, but her eyes darted to Haru again and again.
“A failure like this will keep you from ever advancing beyond the early stages. It’s time to allow a professional to take control,” Haru interjected.
These words tripping from his tongue were not the Omari code, and he felt his soul being tainted as he spoke.
But they were the things the former leader of the Takahashi clan would have believed.
Drayce’s former family was all about ruthlessness and coldly calculated results.
If you failed, you failed the clan, and that meant your life.
Ruben grunted and gave the barest nod of his head.
“Mitso.”
Adrian’s fake name had barely wafted on the air when the man flew across the room.
He made a show of brushing his hands against his sides as if he were palming knives, but Haru knew he’d conjured them up with magic.
Yasmine gasped, but she didn’t have time to let out a scream.
With a couple of swift movements, Adrian had slashed her throat and stabbed her through the heart, ending her life in a flash.
She was one of the people who’d seen to the torture of those in The Pit of Voxmore.
The people they’d interviewed in Voxmore had mentioned seeing a tall, thin blond woman who acted like the boss.
Also, Shey had been here.
Yasmine had overseen the torture of Shey along with countless others. She’d murdered one innocent person through torture. This quick death was too good for her, but it was the only way to stop her from harming another.
And it was just the first step. Soon, Ruben would join her ranks, but after they dug deep into the roots of this organization of death.
Adrian turned to Haru, a serene smile on his lips, but there was a dead coldness in his eyes that worried Haru. With open arms, he welcomed Adrian to him while turning his attention to all the workers watching them in frozen horror.
“Time to clean up this mess. Do you have surveillance cameras throughout this facility? Do you have any recordings of the events that took place here?” Haru called out.
“Umm…we’re working on recovering them, sir,” one brave soul spoke up. “The lightning strikes blew out several systems, and we’re still trying to get things sorted out. It will take—”
“Ten minutes,” Adrian snapped as he stood in Haru’s embrace. He lifted his head. “I want to see the dead woman.”
Haru returned the grin. Yes, that was a brilliant idea. “I wish to see the corpse of the woman who started this mess as well.”
“That would be a good idea.” Ruben pointed at one of the guards standing near the door and ordered him to take them to where the woman’s body was. It turned out she was still in her cell.
The moment Haru stepped into the room, he sucked in a harsh breath.
Magic. The room was overflowing with the spark and tingle of magic.
Not just one magic. But many. There had been multiple people in this room performing strong, powerful magic.
Even if half a dozen dragons had stood in here and shifted into their dragon form at the same time, it wouldn’t have felt like this. Who were these people?
“Yujian?”
Haru jerked his head up to find Ruben staring at him, furrows digging deep into his sloped forehead.
“Forgive me. The smell of death and waste is heavy in here.” Haru waved a hand in front of his nose as if trying to move the horrible smell away before continuing behind Ruben and the guard.
There were six cells in this block, with three on either side of the aisle.
Three of the doors stood wide open, seeming to indicate that only three had been occupied.
At the end on the left, they found a woman’s dead body sprawled on her back.
Blood pooled all around her while her eyes stared blankly at the ceiling.
She had been a beautiful, delicate creature, reminding Haru of a flower.
There was a residual power hanging in the surrounding air. An old magic that was similar to the power he felt in the Ordas.
“What about these two empty cells?” Adrian inquired, pointing to the two with open doors on the other side of the aisle. “Were those prisoners moved after she died?”
“No, sir. It looks like they were among those who escaped during the storm,” the guard replied.
Adrian lifted his gaze, and there was a wealth of meaning in those eyes.
Most importantly, there was hope. Real and true hope for the first time since they’d started on this mission for Caelan.
With all the magic in the air, Haru felt certain that Shey had been one of them and he’d escaped. Now, they needed to catch up with him.
“I want to see the video. Now,” Haru declared.
He didn’t wait for Ruben and the guard. He grabbed Adrian’s hand and pulled him through the winding white corridors to the command center.
A few more monitors were now on, and there were flickers of video, showing guards hurrying down hallways and prisoners escaping from their cages.
“Show me the video of the cellblock containing the dead woman,” Haru barked the second he entered the room.
People jumped into action. A clatter of fingers hitting keys reached a crescendo as they all rushed to do his bidding while Yasmine’s body cooled on the floor. No one had bothered to remove her. They hadn’t time to spare her corpse. They had to fix their computer problems or risk joining her.
After barely more than a minute, the main screen that dominated the south wall flickered on, and there was a long shot of the cellblock they’d just left.
The cells at the far end of the aisle were the hardest to see, but for now, Haru’s attention was all on the short, slender man who was gripping the bars and shouting at the guard as he roughly carried in the woman.
“Is there sound? What’s he saying?” Adrian demanded.
“There’s no audio, I’m afraid. We tried several times to get it working in that cellblock, but all we ever got out of there was static. Even the video was hit or miss,” one technical worker answered.
As the guard was leaving, they spotted movement at the far cell, opposite the woman.
Pale-blond hair and a hard, familiar face.
It wasn’t easy to make out, but Haru would always be able to spot Shey.
Adrian made a little sound, and his hand tightened on Haru’s.
They’d found him. Undeniable proof for the first time.
Not a dead body. Not a whisper or a rumor. Prince Shey of Caspagir. Alive.
The guard left the room, and a breath later, the small man slammed his hand against his cell door. Static and snow filled the screen, but only for a second. When the image returned, the man was racing out of his cell and across to the woman’s.
“We think that this is where the facility was hit with the first bolt of lightning. Some lights went out and that prisoner’s door malfunctioned.”
Haru bit his tongue. That wasn’t lightning.
It was magic. The stranger had used magic in an act of desperation to get to the dying woman.
He could see it in the fierce anger and pain etched into his face.
This man had known the woman. They couldn’t hear it, but Haru knew that he’d pleaded for her life. For these bastards to save her.
For several minutes, nothing happened. They could see the other man’s back as he held her.
At last, he placed her on the floor, climbed to his feet, and stepped into the aisle.
He appeared to be arguing with Shey. As he was stepping away from Shey’s cell, the entire screen went white. The video ended.
“Lightning struck the building, and we lost almost all our surveillance cameras and the power. The backup generators kicked on a minute later,” the guard continued.
“Do you have anything else for those two men in that room?” Haru inquired, fighting hard to keep the excitement and fear out of his voice.
“Some snippets.”
The screen showed brief clips of the two men as they hurried through the hallways.
Shey was always in the lead with the stranger following close behind.
As expected, Shey deftly took down guard after guard.
Sometimes with his bare hands and sometimes with a confiscated gun.
But Haru’s gaze remained locked on the unknown prisoner.
He projected an air of fear and made himself as small as possible as he followed Shey.
And yet, Haru could pick out a slight movement of his hand just before Shey would land a perfect hit or kill a guard with a single bullet.
Each time they paused, the man had only to glance at the surveillance camera, and the video would end a heartbeat later.
Who was he? Why did he have magic?
Was he a danger to Shey?
Haru was determined to find the answers to these questions and kill the man if he was a threat.
“That’s the man I was hoping to show you,” Ruben grumbled beside Haru.
“He struck me as the most promising during my last visit. Very strong, confident. We think he has some ability to control the weather, but he hasn’t said a single word to admit it.
We know atmospheric conditions change at opportune times for him. ”
“Much like this storm,” Haru drawled.
“Yes, very much.”
Haru cocked his head to the side as he watched the video clips play again. “What about that other man with him?”
“Pfft. Useless. He called himself Ty and claimed to be a fortune-teller. Traveled all around Damardor. Our people picked him up on a whim near Bellcairn. He should have been dead long ago, but always seemed to slip through the cracks. He was easily forgettable. I don’t even want to waste the manpower on him.
It’s not like anyone would believe him if he reached civilization again. ”
Haru said nothing. Ruben was a fool. He’d had his hands on someone very interesting and dangerous but overlooked him because he was small and unassuming.
Shey exuded power in his bearing and personality.
It had nothing to do with the magic flowing through him and everything to do with the fact that he was raised as royalty.
“Ruben, this has been interesting, but I will leave you to organize your disaster. Mitso and I will borrow one of your vehicles and a driver to take us to a hotel in Milway. I’m too tired to travel all the way back to Bellcairn today.
You can reach me at my hotel in Bellcairn tomorrow if you need some advice on managing these affairs. ”
“You’re leaving?” Ruben gasped. He spun to stare at Haru with his mouth hanging open and his hands held out to his sides.
“We’re leaving?” Adrian echoed with a different shock and horror.
Haru sighed extravagantly while clamping down on Adrian’s arm.
“There is nothing I can do here. You need someone to clean up bodies and fix computers. I’m sure you know how to hire for that.
I must find a restful place to think about how you can improve your operations.
This is too loud and messy for clear thinking. ”
Without another word, he turned and pulled Adrian with him as he walked out of the building into the fresh, humid air. The clouds were parting and hints of sunlight were breaking through, allowing them to see the extent of the damage to the building.
“We’re seriously leaving?” Adrian demanded between clenched teeth in a low voice.
“Mn,” Haru hummed in the affirmative. “We’ll return when Ruben and his people aren’t watching us.” They were so close this time. They would find Shey at last and take him home.