The Man In The Chair

Chapter 26

With a plan in place, we started moving into our places, with all of us except Jules going down the fire escape to reach the bottom. Then, we split off, with Teddy running in the alley for a couple more blocks to get closer to the Eastside bridge while the rest of us ran within the shadows to get behind the parked cars, across from the facility.

Once we reached our spots behind the cars, I radioed to Teddy and Jules to see if they were ready.

"You guys in position?"

"Yep, I'm about to whoop these guys' asses so hard, they won't know what hit him," Teddy responded back.

Jules commented right after, "Nice to hear that, Teddy, but remember we've got to do this quietly."

"Oh yeah, I know, I'm just hyped that I finally get to take down these bastards."

"Don't get too hyped because we still got to finish the mission; before you can go boasting about your body count."

"True. Now, do I go right now or what? Cuz I'm getting antsy over here just watching them."

"You can take em out."

"Sweet, talk to you in a minute," Teddy said with excitement.

A minute later, Teddy's ecstatic voice came back into our comms.

"The two guards on the bridge are out for the count, and it looks like the guards on the front door didn't notice."

"Good. Now, sit tight while we take out the rest."

After we talked to Teddy, Jules returned to the comms to say, "The guards on Westside have been neutralized."

"Perfect, we'll take out the guards at the front door, now."

At that time, I gave Olivia and Cam a thumbs up, and we jumped out of our hiding spots, with Cam springing around the right side of the car with his silenced LMG. And shooting a couple of shots at the two guards on the right side of the door. The guards didn't have any time to react as they soon were hitting the ground with bullets through their heads. While Olivia shot one of her electrified arrows at one of the guards on the other side, to disable them both.

At the same time, I ran from behind the vehicle to the terminal at the door. And from such a close distance to the terminal, I was easily able to connect, hack, and open the door using my forearm tablet.

Everything was going according to plan, just like I hoped it would. But, of course, I knew that at some point soon it would go wrong. Especially since we couldn't get eyes inside of the facility from Jules' drone.

"Got it! We're in."

"It's about time. It took forever for you guys to take out those guards." Teddy called into comms.

"Slow and steady wins the race," Olivia then remarked.

"Not that slow, though." Cam interrupted as he walked over to Olivia's guards she disabled in a non-lethal manner and shot them in the head.

After Cam did this, Olivia suddenly lost her cool and got angry with him.

"Cam! Why the hell did you that? He was down already!"

"Cuz he needed to die, that's why," Cam answered with no emotion.

"But why? He wasn't going to hurt anyone, and he would have been out until tomorrow."

"Why you so pissed, Olivia? I was just making sure, not killing him wouldn't bite us in the ass. Plus, didn't you kill that sniper on the roof?"

"Well... not really. I hit him with an electrified arrow to the chest. I tried not to kill him and stun him like these guys, but you never know; it might have given him a heart attack for all I know."

"God Damnit, Olivia! Do you realize what you've done if he wakes up?"

"He's not going to wake up! Is he, Dak?" She shot back.

"Well...Cam does have a valid concern, but I trust you know what you're talking about. But if it bites us in the ass, then it's on you."

"Fine. Now let's get in there before I shoot Cam with one of my arrows."

"Sounds good."

We slowly walked into the building with our weapons ready to fire. The room was a wide, blank floor with no visible guards in it. Yet, the strangest thing about the room was that it had no lights on. With empty tables all around that reminded me of a haunted high school cafeteria. But blocking our view of the elevator on the other side was a single table in the middle of the room, with a computer console engrained into it.

The darkness made me uneasy, so I switched on the flashlight on my weapon and instructed everyone else to do the same. Then, I tried to contact Jules and Teddy on the outside but immediately had to take out the earpiece after hearing a high-pitched screech that almost destroyed my eardrums.

"Damnit! Our comms are jacked!" I exclaimed.

"Nah...uh, let me try it," Cam said before also throwing his earpiece aside.

"Fuck! You're right, what do we do now?"

"We keep on going. That's what we do. I'm sure Jules and Teddy will be able to handle themselves." Olivia assured him while taking her earpiece out to save herself from our painful mistake.

"She's right, so here's what we're going to do," I said before continuing.

"I'm going to check out that console at that table to see what information I can gather from it. Meanwhile, I want both of you to spread out and cover me from behind."

I didn't know if the console was a trap or if it was something that could help us find out more information about the facility, but I had to investigate at least. So, I jogged to the table in the middle of the room with Olivia and Cam covering me, not knowing if this spooky room's console would lead to our downfall, or if it could be the key to our success.

When I came up to the console, the screen showed an upside-down, glowing blue triangle. It looked exactly like the symbol on all our B7 devices, which I found kind of odd, but I had no time to think about it. So I tried to connect my command tablet to the console using a USB-C cord to ensure a better connection. But as soon as I connected the cord to the console, the glowing triangle turned into a bright red "X." and made a loud horn sound that rang throughout the building.

In an instant, the door we entered through shut with a thunderous Bang! Then after that, armed robotic guards dropped from the ceiling. Surrounding us with red dot lasers aimed at our chests and cornering us with a sense of fear that made the robots in the simulation, look like a cakewalk.

Because unlike the robots from the simulation, which had claws and a figure that was reminiscent of the Terminator, these robots were holding what looked like sub-machine guns built in place of their hands. Each having body armor that made them look like mini Pacific Rim Jaegers, that were ready to kill us on sight.