Page 77

Mirage

The four convened for about twenty minutes, but they were seasoned at this and knew their roles.

At midnight, they left Mirage’s apartment and proceeded to the twentieth floor. From there, they climbed into the air ducts to go down the two levels to the director’s floor.

Mirage couldn’t crawl behind Grace, so he used a secured line on their comms devices to countdown the arrival of the two guards making their pass.

When he got to one, Meridian and Grace dropped from the ceiling, landing with a soft thud. They clapped their hands over the guards’ mouths and, with a swift flick of their wrists, produced syringes full of a strong sedative and stuck them into their necks.

The guard’s eyes widened in shock a second before their muscles slackened and the sleep agent took effect.

Grace hefted one, Meridian the other, and they dragged the two deadweight guards and flung them into the conference room to their left.

Once done, he and Ex leapt down and pinned their backs against the wall, staying out of view of the cameras.

Mirage watched the live feed on his compact device, keeping his fist up in a “hold” gesture until the director and they assumed the “investors” he’d mentioned meeting with earlier left his office.

After Mirage gave the go, they each darted down the hall. By the time security thought they’d noticed something, they would’ve already disappeared.

Meridian and Grace stayed outside the director’s office while he and Ex went inside, wasting no time before they got down to business.

Mirage pulled his tablet from around his back, plugged it into the director’s computer, and feverishly typed commands into his device, hacking into the organization’s assassin records.

Once they were all downloaded, next were the recent mission details for Zelmir Benton.

Ex broke into the file drawers in the next room and confiscated the ones he felt most relevant for their investigation.

A minute later, there were several rapid thumps against the wall before a man came flying through the door headfirst and slammed into one of the chairs in front of the director’s desk.

“Fuckin’ fuck, Meridian. Are you out of serums?” Ex hissed. “The definition of covert is to get in and out unnoticed .”

“Nope. Got plenty of serums,” Meridian said matter-of-factly. “But this one had the audacity to try to sneak up on me from behind.”

All of the guards were supposed to get injected and wake in three to four hours, not knowing what happened. But now the director had a goddamn hole in his door and a broken chair.

Mirage sighed in exasperation.

“Look, there are a lot of team members frightened for their lives trying to find answers regarding the details of Germany. Fear can make a person act recklessly. Anyone could’ve done this. And the last person the director would have the balls to accuse without solid proof would be us,” Meridian explained.

Grace dragged the two sleeping guards inside the room, dropped them like gym weights to the floor, and turned to glare at Meridian.

“What?” Meridian shrugged.

“He said next fuckin’ time, leave them all to him if you can’t control yourself,” Mirage stated without looking away from the computer screen.

“Oh, did he now?” Meridian chuckled as he turned to go back outside and keep watch.

Once they finished, they closed up and raced six floors down the stairwell to the lab.

Mirage was already a master at getting in and out of there.

Grace, Ex, and Meridian stayed cloaked in the darkness of the quiet room while Mirage slipped into the lab.

He hacked into the system and searched for all who’d gone through the program…who weren’t Blacks or Browns.

Once he finished downloading their own files, another couple came up.

“Holy shit,” he muttered.

There’d been two more after him and Grace.

It appeared they’d received the physical enhancements—pretty fuckin’ unique ones—but hadn’t completed the entire program. Most of their emotional reconditioning had been left incomplete.

A third generation.

The Greens.