Episode 6 #2
Sevastyan knelt and opened the case on the floor, hands running over the contents.
Compact and high quality, it was more than satisfactory.
The lock-picking set was of a good size and weight.
The cuffs wouldn’t succumb to common methods of escape.
The roll of duct tape was a nice touch. The collapsible baton was not heavy but whippy.
It would do the job without creating a lot of additional weight.
He flipped the two knives around, assessing how they balanced in his hands, and nodded, pleased.
Ellisandre pointed to the map. “We’ll take the Pedway in two different directions and meet here. That’s where the first car is. The van is already parked and waiting.”
“And the van is for the extraction, delivering, and initial get away.”
Ellisandre nodded. “We’ll ditch it after. It’ll be stripped for parts by morning. Here, get changed. When we’re done, we can come back here and celebrate.”
Sevastyan started to pull off his sweater, raising an eyebrow.
Ellisandre made a come-hither gesture and walked towards the kitchen.
Sevastyan followed, stripping his upper layers.
Ellisandre opened the fridge and pointed to a cake.
It was covered in white frosting and dotted with preserved cherries.
There was a bottle of champagne beside it.
Like the American Valentine’s Day a couple of weeks early.
Sevastyan grinned.
The Chicago Pedway was a system of tunnels and bridges totaling more than five miles or a bit above eight kilometers, all designed to allow pedestrians to navigate the cold northern city’s downtown and business district without braving the elements.
In a place where evening temperatures in the dark months could reach negative twenty-eight degrees Celsius, or as the locals would say, negative twenty degrees Fahrenheit—Americans did stubbornly cling to their own measuring systems—it was a practical infrastructure choice to keep people flowing in comfort.
The walls were mostly white, as were the floors.
Sevastyan strode through part of the underground section, a scarf muffling his face and a no-name practical coat wrapped around his body.
All his hair was up under a winter hat. A pair of tinted glasses obscured his face.
Moving into the glowing whiteness of light after being outside in the dark always felt jarring, like becoming a lab rat in a scientist’s maze.
Sevastyan slouched and shuffled his way through the system, doing a good job of looking like a tired worker just heading home for the evening.
Ellisandre made it to the car first. They were in the driver’s seat waiting for him, already changed out of their walking disguise and into their tactical pants and black jacket. Sevastyan slid into the back seat and started doing the same as Ellisandre drove.
“I want to say this feels like old times,” Sevastyan muttered, lying down across the back seats. “Except this time we’re on the same side.”
Ellisandre chuckled from the front. “We did a few things from the same side.”
“Not many. Feels like more.”
“Intention, perhaps.”
Ellisandre parked the car several blocks away from where their target was hiding.
Kramer was holed up in a defunct school, several stories high, made of the classic regional brick Chicago had started favoring after the Great Fire.
Sevastyan knew that much from the local history museum he’d visited once or twice for functions.
He and Ellisandre approached from the alley, winter balaclavas over their faces.
The surrounding area was run-down but not empty.
Ellisandre pointed out the van parked up against the back of the building.
“We’ll leave through the window. With the doors open, no one will see us loading the van through the back. ”
Sevastyan checked the angles. There was only one streetlight at the end.
A few windows had lights on inside, but curtains were drawn across most of them.
No one was that close. It was mostly garages and back parking for apartment buildings, with dumpsters of trash.
It looked like trash day had to be coming soon, as the bins were all full.
There was a dirty mattress leaning with pieces of a bed frame against one of the back walls.
The two of them jumped through a broken window and crouched inside a trashed classroom. Sevastyan reached into his pack, pulled out the night vision goggles and palmed his gun. The weapon was one piece of equipment Ellisandre hadn’t provided. It was his regular carry.
Sevastyan and Ellisandre split up, clearing the rooms one by one.
While they had the location, they didn’t have exact knowledge of where in the building Kramer had concealed himself.
Rats scattered out of the way along a few of the external walls lining the alley.
The food across the road was probably providing abundant resources.
Away from the back rooms, the place was silent and cold, nothing left but abandoned desks, peeling posters, and rubbish on the floor.
It was a misnomer that abandoned buildings were full of vermin.
Animals had to eat like anyone else. Even the spiders were holed up, only old webs left behind.
They cleared the first level, finding only abandoned signs of camp-outs by unhoused populations.
Ellisandre signaled for the stairs and pointed Sevastyan at the opposite staircase.
They split up. If Thaddeus Kramer saw one of them coming and started running, he’d be driven into the path of the other.
Their target wasn’t on the second floor. They moved up to the third, taking care as they climbed the damaged final stairway.
A heat signature showed as soon as Sevastyan turned the corner at the top.
A tarp shelter wrapped over a tent had been built inside the first classroom.
The temperature in the entire room was warmer than the rest of the school.
Two heat lamps glowed in Sevastyan’s vision.
He scanned the room. There was a generator and a can of gasoline.
Cozy. Thaddeus Kramer had come prepared or had help.
Ellisandre took up position by the classroom door. Sevastyan moved to a spot behind the shelter. He put his gun away, locking it into the holster, prepared for the hands-on portion of the evening.
Ellisandre pointed their weapon at the shelter and kicked the wall. “Police, come out with your hands up.
The shelter shimmied. Sounds of someone flailing about came through the layers, and a shape barreled out the back, away from Ellisandre and towards Sevastyan and the second door of the classroom behind him.
Sevastyan grabbed the rushing figure by their sleeve and spun them, kicking their feet out from under them, and taking them to the ground in one sweeping move.
The arm he grabbed stayed in his control.
There was a gun in the man’s fist. Sevastyan stomped his foot down on the back of the hand.
His target screamed, the gun loosening in his grip. Sevastyan kicked it away.
Ellisandre sauntered forward and stopped the spinning weapon with their boot.
They picked it up in their gloved hands and snapped the safety on, then ejected the clip, rendering the gun useless as anything more than a bludgeoning object.
Finished, they stalked closer, grabbed Sevastyan’s captive by the roots of his hair, and pulled his head up.
He was still struggling under Sevastyan’s grip, but stopped as soon as Ellisandre forced him to look up.
With goggles and a mask, Ellisandre couldn’t bring their usual demeanor to bear with their features, but their aura seemed to do it for them, even without a visible face.
“Thaddeus Kramer.”
Kramer swallowed convulsively. “You don’t look like police.”
“Consider us . . . bounty hunters. It’s not like anyone is going to care.”
“You . . . you can’t impersonate them. That’s illegal.”
“So is fucking your daughter, getting her pregnant, and then fucking her daughter.” Ellisandre slammed Kramer’s head into the dirty floor with calculated force. Enough to batter the piece of filth but not enough to break his brain completely.
It would be a pity if Kramer wasn’t found competent to stand trial, since they didn’t plan to kill him.
Sevastyan snorted. Breaking into a mental health ward to off someone who deserved it would be a new one for him, but he’d be happy to do it.
Actually, considering all the places he had killed people, it was a little odd he hadn’t done that one yet.
Ellisandre pulled out handcuffs and secured Kramer’s wrists behind his back, then chained his ankles together.
They ran a second chain from his ankles to his wrists.
Sevastyan kept the piece of shit down until Ellisandre was finished, then knelt up and jerked Kramer to his feet.
He was a good six or so inches taller than their captive, though he probably only had twenty pounds on the man.
For all that Kramer’s arms and legs were spindly, he had a gut that spoke of a sick liver and an over indulgence in alcohol. He smelled like it, too.
“You can’t do this!” Kramer spat.
Ellisandre pulled a muzzle out of their pack and forced it over Kramer’s face. There was a tongue suppresser. He’d drool, but he wouldn’t be yelling. The man deserved to be silenced.
Ellisandre flashed Sevastyan a thumbs-up. Sevastyan answered with a nod, both his hands still on Kramer. Ellisandre kicked down the tent and checked the contents. They came back with a laptop and a binder. “Let’s finish this before I kill him.”