Chapter 5
I spent most of the day casing the area while my new roommates acclimated to our now shared surroundings.
The warehouse was in the industrial park not far from the south side where Monica lived, an area filled with mostly defunct factories and semi-trailer storage facilities.
As for the building in question, it was smack dab in between the central access route and the residential access bridge. I had to park on the other side and head to the roof of an adjacent building just to get a good view with my binoculars.
As Monica helpfully detailed, it had round-the-clock security with guys making no attempt to conceal their submachine guns.
And then I got a text, one of many I’d gotten that day.
Giving them my phone number was arguably an error in judgment, as Monica had been texting me every hour to check in or ask permission about something.
I understood why. My actions directly impacted her life. She was all in, and given my abilities, her excitement leading up to this heist was palpable.
After I muted my phone so I could pay attention to scoping the place out, I noticed that the text was from Cassie this time.
Apparently, she’d gotten Monica to chill on blowing up my phone, proving it with a photo of her and Monica drinking cocktails in a bubbly immersion while wearing bathing suits. Black for Cassie, white for Monica.
They’d found the hot tub.
I gotta admit, I found myself checking out Cassie’s body a little longer than I intended to. She was cute as a button and sweet as hell.
Easy there, Tiger, you’re not her type.
The last thing I wanted to do was start crushing on a girl I had no chance with, shit, that was my policy with all women, but Cassie I had to be careful with.
And then there was Monica, who owned her attractiveness with unabashed skin exposure. A proper bikini with barely-there strings with her nipples poking into the fabric of her top.
They must have bought them when they went out to get food, not that I was complaining. Getting one more look at the guards out front, I put my phone away and took one more look through my binoculars.
There was someone looking at me.
And he had his own binoculars.
So much for secrecy. Again.
A distant bang followed; shot from a rifle. My binoculars exploded in my hands and whipped my head back as the bullet struck me in the forehead, a vision of red and white flashing through my eyes.
I saw the mixing of blood with clear fluid, the melding of cell membranes as they re-attached themselves to their original positions, until the feeling in my limbs returned along with my sight of the darkening sky.
“Ugh…” I sat up with a groan, my busted binoculars in my hand along with blood direct from my head. “Lucky shot.”
I pulled the bullet wedged in my eye socket out, then tossed it aside after inspecting it. High caliber rifle, straight into my eye. They tried to blow my brains out.
Wouldn’t be the first time.
But the corporate guys knew to stop once I started resisting things like fire and acid. All this sniper did was just up my resistance. I got to my feet and stretched as my alertness increased and my vision improved.
It wasn’t just sharper, but the colors were more vibrant, with the shadows lessened. Not quite night vision, but I’d definitely be able to stumble into the bathroom with no lights on.
On a hunch I reached up and touched my cornea.
“Ow!” I yelped after poking my own eye.
Nope, that shit still hurt.
And unless those guys intended to leave what they believed was my corpse to rot—which they might given the abandoned area—they were gonna come check to see who their Peeping Tom was.
“Whelp… time to go to work,” I said to myself as I took out a cylindrical cartridge.
Shimmering chrome metal on both ends, with a clear casing in the middle housing a little round ball of plasmatic electricity, suspended in the center. I loaded it into my custom gun, hunkered down, and then walked off the edge of the roof.
It wasn’t a graceful landing per se, I pretty much crashed into a pile of wooden pallets, but I was A-okay.
My skin wasn’t diamond hard, it still yielded like normal skin, but the tensile strength exceeded the strength of the splinters I would have had in my ass.
I climbed out of the mess I’d made, hunkered down, and took off. Two cars passed by me on the wraparound on their way to the warehouse, while I dipped between two cargo trailers on my way toward the building.
Every sentry out front had gone off in those cars to find my body on the roof.
“Heh. No be there,” I mused to myself.
Less guys to deal with; I’m sure their bosses weren’t gonna be happy, though. The sniper on the other hand? He was still on the truck dock looking through his scope, following the convoy of cars.
“Hey,” I greeted casually as I walked up toward the platform.
The sniper lowered his rifle and went pale when he saw me, dropping his jaw before reaching for his radio. I immediately aimed my wide-barrel gauss cannon at his face.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” I clicked my tongue while shaking my head. “Those were expensive binoculars.”
I casually reached for his and relieved him of it.
“Y-you… you’re dead!” he stammered.
“Yeah, not really,” I replied before tapping his radio with the barrel of my gun. “Radio your buddies and tell ‘em you just saw someone heading east.”
He stared in abject shock.
“No? Okay,” I said as I aimed my gun at his chest and pulled the trigger.
No loud bang, only a resonant hum and an incandescent flash from the barrel, its large bore slug blowing a hole through and out the back of the sniper’s chest, cracking the concrete behind him.
He died on the spot, after which I casually bent over his body and grabbed his radio.
“Now we’re even,” I said, right before imitating his voice as I used his walkie talkie. “Head’s up. I just spotted him going east.”
“Going east?” a voice replied. “I thought you said you shot him!”
“I dunno, man, he got up!”
After that I dropped the radio on its late owner and took his cell phone, then looked up at the docking door, where a security camera was aimed in my direction.
“Goddammit… Missed one,” I groaned to myself, then aimed at the camera and shot it, shattering its entire casing with the slug boring into the wall behind it. “Well, we’re on the clock now…”