15 After carefully surveying the abandoned hotel and finding no obvious traps or alarms around the exterior, the group finally began the operation.
Talia moved first, carrying her customized sniper rifle as she crossed the street toward the abandoned gas station opposite the hotel.
Using a dumpster near the wall as a stepping point, she quickly reached the roof, secured the most likely approaches behind her, and crawled into a concealed firing position overlooking the building.
Talia spent several minutes studying the hotel through her scope before reporting over the radio.
“Black Snake to team.
We have a problem.
Every exposed window and balcony has been bricked over, so I’m not going to have much opportunity for long-range support once you’re inside.” The upper floors were almost completely sealed, while even the main entrance had been blocked, leaving only a rear service door that appeared usable.
The disadvantage was obvious, but John immediately noticed the benefit as well.
If there was only one practical entrance, then the Collector would also have fewer ways to escape once the assault began.
“Copy that.
Black Snake, stay outside and watch the perimeter.
If you see the Collector leaving the building, put him down.” “Understood.” Orion took point as the Bison team advanced toward the rear entrance, with John, Kisch, and the others maintaining their formation behind him.
Lucello and five armed men from Peters’s security force followed several yards back, while Arkin remained trapped between the two groups.
The closer they moved toward the abandoned structure, the more uncomfortable Arkin became, but nobody gave him an opportunity to turn around.
When Orion reached the rear door, he struck the surface lightly with his knuckles and heard a heavy metallic response.
“Reinforced steel.” Arkin glanced toward the lock with the expression of a man expecting everyone to finally appreciate the usefulness of a professional thief, but before he could offer his services, Kisch was already jogging back toward the vehicle.
The heavy-weapons specialist returned carrying a portable cutting torch.
Within a short time, the damaged locking mechanism gave way and the reinforced door was pushed inward.
Arkin stared at it silently before muttering, “Well, I guess that works too.” “Move!” Lucello ordered as soon as the entrance opened.
He turned toward the five gunmen he had brought with him and pointed into the darkness.
“Miss Peters comes out alive and each of you gets another two hundred thousand.
If you don’t make it back, Peters will make sure your families are taken care of.” The five men immediately moved ahead.
Lucello wasn’t foolish enough to mistake his security detail for the main combat force.
John’s Bison team contained the experienced specialists he was relying on to deal with the Collector, but sending his own people several yards ahead gave them another layer of protection against whatever traps might be waiting inside.
Orion noticed the arrangement without commenting on it.
The sealed hotel wasn’t completely dark.
Emergency indicators and a handful of aging green lights still glowed along the corridors, throwing sickly illumination across stained walls and abandoned furniture.
Lucello’s five men and Arkin formed the forward group, while Orion, John, Kisch, and Lucello followed behind, every weapon pointed toward the next doorway or corner.
Orion suddenly stopped beside an exposed water pipe and tilted his head toward the ceiling.
“We can forget about surprising him.” Mounted almost invisibly in the corner was a small surveillance camera with no active indicator light, but Orion’s enhanced vision had picked it out immediately.
“He already knows we’re here.” Elsewhere inside the hotel, a broad-shouldered man sat silently before a bank of surveillance monitors.
His face remained expressionless as he watched the armed intruders moving through his home.
After several seconds, he opened a nearby case, removed his distinctive dark leather mask, and carefully pulled it over his head.
The Collector pressed a switch.
The hunt began.
Orion and the others continued deeper into the building, but the temperature gradually dropped as they moved away from the entrance.
The stale air carried an increasingly noticeable mixture of chemicals, rotting meat, and old blood, and even the hardened veterans became quieter.
Arkin’s breathing grew heavier because he recognized too many details from his previous captivity.
After turning another corner, the group entered a corridor lined with heavy wire cages.
Harsh ultraviolet lamps hung above several sections, while stained syringes and medical debris littered the floor beneath them.
Something moved inside the cages, and Orion’s enhanced eyesight immediately distinguished human shapes crouching behind the wire.
“Hold up,” he warned.
He was too late.
“Roar!” The electronically controlled cage doors snapped open.
More than a dozen pale humanoid figures burst into the corridor and threw themselves at Lucello’s men.
They wore crude half-face masks fixed against their heads, while their bloodshot eyes and mutilated mouths showed almost no recognizable sanity.
The Collector had taken human captives, tortured and drugged them until their minds collapsed, then turned them into vicious guard animals.
“Contact!” Gunfire erupted through the corridor.
One of Lucello’s men reacted a fraction too slowly, and a captive slammed into him before sinking his teeth into the side of his neck.
Blood sprayed across the wall as the gunman screamed and fired desperately into his attacker at point-blank range, but several body shots barely slowed the drugged man.
Bang!
Orion raised his rifle and put a round through the attacker’s head.
The body immediately collapsed beside the dying security man.
“Headshots!
Put them down with headshots!” John and Kisch adjusted instantly, while Lucello drew his pistol and joined the fight.
Within moments the confined hallway filled with deafening gunfire, but the trained team quickly overcame the frenzied captives.
When the last attacker finally collapsed, one of Lucello’s men was dead from the bite to his neck, while several others had suffered scratches or minor wounds during the struggle.
“What the hell are these people?” Kisch asked as he nudged one of the bodies with his boot.
Under their flashlights, the attackers looked almost corpse-like, with deathly pale skin, bloodshot eyes, mutilated mouths, and pieces of crude masks attached to their faces.
“They’re acting like fucking zombies.” “They’re alive.” Orion crouched briefly beside one of the syringes scattered across the floor without touching it.
“Probably drugged into this state.
Whatever the Collector has been pumping into them has destroyed their ability to process pain and turned them violently aggressive.” That fit what Arkin remembered.
The Collector didn’t merely kill people; some victims were tortured, conditioned, and drugged until almost nothing recognizable remained.
The pale attackers weren’t supernatural undead, only human beings who had been deliberately reduced to something horrifyingly close.
“Guys…” Arkin suddenly whispered from behind them.
“Look.” Everyone’s flashlights shifted toward the rear of the cage room.
A mound of human remains had been dumped against the far wall like garbage.
Arms, legs, torsos, skulls, and partially decomposed bodies had been piled together without any sign that their killer considered them human beings.
Some appeared relatively recent, while others had clearly been sitting there for much longer.
“Ugh!” Arkin doubled over and vomited onto the floor.
He had already experienced the Collector’s cruelty personally, but even he hadn’t seen the full scale of what was hidden inside the hotel.
“I told you.
That bastard isn’t human.
He’s a fucking demon.” “Keep it together,” Lucello said, although his own expression had become noticeably darker.
He checked the surviving gunmen before looking toward the corridor ahead.
“We keep moving.
He bleeds, which means he can die, and we have more than enough firepower to make sure that happens.” The group resumed its advance, moving carefully through several floors while avoiding anything that looked remotely suspicious.
By the time they reached a fourth-floor corridor, everyone was tense enough that the smallest sound immediately drew several weapons.
Then a weak voice came from somewhere ahead.
“Help…” A naked young man stumbled into the corridor.
His body was covered with cuts, bruises, and dried blood, but his face remained surprisingly handsome beneath the injuries.
He staggered several steps toward the team before collapsing onto his knees.
“Please…” Blood dripped from his mouth as he looked desperately toward them.
“Help me.” One of Lucello’s remaining gunmen cautiously stepped closer while keeping his weapon trained on him.
“Stay where you are.
What happened to you?” The wounded man’s expression twisted strangely between crying and smiling.
“I didn’t become one…” The gunman frowned.
“Become what?” “Part of his collection.” The man suddenly raised his head.
Nobody noticed the small explosive device concealed beneath the blood-matted hair at the back of his neck until it was already too late.
Boom!
The explosion ripped through the corridor.
The two security men closest to the prisoner were killed instantly, while the remaining gunmen were hurled backward by the blast.
Smoke, blood, and debris filled the hallway as everyone instinctively dropped or searched for the next threat.
“Move!” Orion suddenly shouted.
He grabbed John and Kisch and violently pulled both men backward.
Whoosh!
A sharpened steel pipe plunged from the ceiling exactly where they had been standing.
Before anyone could recover, more heavy spikes dropped toward the two wounded security men on the floor.
The steel shafts punched through their bodies and pinned them together against the ground, killing them instantly.
For several seconds, nobody moved.
The Collector had just wiped out nearly all of Lucello’s men without ever showing himself.
And they had barely entered his lair.
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