Hayden’s mind instantly filled with a million questions.
“His fiancée flew all the way to Rookwood City for a massive concert, but Marcus chose to spend his night getting drunk with club models?” Marcus’s depravity truly exceeded Hayden’s imagination.
Just how obsessed was that rich kid with the nightclub scene?
Ten minutes later, Hayden pushed a heavy utility cart up to the loading dock of the international theater.
A gray maintenance uniform draped loosely over his frame.
He deliberately hunched his shoulders, making himself appear several inches shorter and entirely unassuming.
“ID and clearance!” Four burly Aegis Vanguard mercenaries blocked the steel doors.
They glared at Hayden through tactical sunglasses.
Hayden silently held up a forged maintenance badge.
The mercenaries gave it a cursory glance before waving him through the checkpoint.
Hayden pushed his tool cart inside and turned down a dimly lit backstage corridor.
The theater’s interior was a labyrinth of dressing rooms and technical corridors.
However, relying on the digital blueprints Valerie had sent to his HUD, Hayden easily navigated around the active security cameras.
The wheels of his utility cart squeaked softly against the linoleum.
The sound mingled with the muffled, distant tuning of a symphony orchestra.
“Electrical maintenance.
I need to inspect the breaker boxes in Sector B,” Hayden muttered to a passing security patrol.
The squad leader sized Hayden up, gave a curt nod, and hurried past him.
The radio on the guard’s tactical vest crackled constantly with dispatch orders and perimeter updates.
Hayden turned left into a wide hallway.
After passing through a set of heavy acoustic doors, he reached the stairwell leading to the catwalks above the main concert hall.
From the ceiling mezzanine, he would have a perfect sniper’s nest overlooking the entire auditorium.
“Miss Lancaster, your violin has been tuned.” A woman’s voice echoed from just around the corner.
Hayden stopped dead in his tracks.
He pressed his back firmly against the wall.
Through the half-open door of a VIP dressing room, he saw a striking woman sitting at a vanity mirror.
It was Victoria Lancaster, the fiancée of Marcus Vance.
She wore a breathtaking, pale blue evening gown with a daringly high slit that highlighted her long, elegant legs.
The exquisite design of the dress captivated the eye, blending high-society elegance with undeniable allure.
“Thank you.
You may leave now.
I need to touch up my makeup,” Victoria said, her tone dripping with aristocratic indifference.
Hayden lowered his head, waiting silently in the hall for her assistant to exit.
“Is Victoria Lancaster on our bounty list?” Hayden whispered into his encrypted earpiece.
His finger drifted instinctively toward his concealed pistol.
“Negative.
She holds no actual power within the Vance Corporation,” Valerie replied, her tone laced with immediate concern.
“Are you planning to kill her?
Eliminating a high-profile civilian offers zero guild payout and will draw the absolute fury of the federal government.
She is not a sanctioned target.” At that exact moment, the heavy footsteps of an approaching patrol echoed from the far end of the corridor.
“Who is out there?” Victoria snapped.
She spun around, her sharp gaze cutting through the open doorway.
Hayden cursed his own hesitation.
He instantly smoothed his expression into a mask of nervous subservience and pushed his tool cart directly into the doorway of the dressing room.
“Excuse me, ma’am.
Emergency electrical maintenance.
I was told the outlets in this sector needed to be inspected.” Victoria looked Hayden up and down.
The initial alarm in her eyes was instantly replaced by a look of sheer, condescending disgust.
“A repairman?” A mocking sneer twisted her perfectly painted lips.
“Cannot you lower-class grunts wait until the performance is over to do this kind of menial labor?” Hayden quickly bowed his head, letting the brim of his cap obscure his eyes.
“Get away from me.
You reek of the streets,” Victoria spat, pinching her nose in extreme revulsion.
The squad of Aegis Vanguard mercenaries finally reached the open doorway.
“My deepest apologies, ma’am.
I will leave immediately,” Hayden stammered nervously.
He backed out of the room and pushed his cart down the hall.
He glanced back out of the corner of his eye.
The elite bodyguards had already dismissed him as a pathetic laborer.
“Well, Victoria Lancaster is certainly a lot different in person than her sweet television persona,” Valerie chuckled through the comms.
Hayden completely agreed.
“People who grow up smothered in wealth and elite privilege are physically incapable of treating others as equals.
To them, the working class are just insects waiting to be crushed.” “Yet in public, they meticulously craft this gentle, philanthropic image,” Hayden added coldly.
He knew this breed of arrogance intimately.
Marcus Vance was cut from the exact same cloth.
“So you are just going to let her insult you and walk away?” Valerie prodded.
“Of course not,” Hayden whispered, a ruthless glint flashing in his eyes.
“My target tonight is Richard Vance.
As for Victoria, I have a much better way to deal with her.
I have already plotted it out.” As he spoke, Hayden pushed his cart toward the heavy cast-iron gate blocking the stairwell.
An Aegis Vanguard mercenary stood guard right behind the bars, a cigarette dangling lazily from his lips.
“Emergency maintenance,” Hayden grunted, keeping his head down as he flashed his forged ID card.
The mercenary leaned in.
He narrowed his eyes, comparing Hayden’s shadowed face to the laminated photo.
He stared for two agonizing seconds.
A deep frown creased his forehead.
He reached for his radio.
“Hold on.
This photo does not match…” Hayden did not give him a fraction of a second to finish that sentence.
He violently shoved the heavy tool cart forward.
Bang!
The steel cart slammed the mercenary directly into the concrete wall, pinning his waist.
The guard gasped in pain.
The cigarette dropped from his lips as he frantically reached for his holstered sidearm.
In a blur of motion, Hayden drew his suppressed Browning pistol and pressed it directly against the man’s temple.
Pfft!
The hollow-point round scrambled the mercenary’s brain.
The light vanished from the man’s eyes instantly.
He went completely limp, collapsing into a lifeless heap.
Hayden quickly checked the corridor behind him.
It was completely empty.
He dragged the dead mercenary into an adjacent utility closet, locked the door, and slipped through the cast-iron gate.
He reached the base of the metal stairs leading to the ceiling catwalks.
Suddenly, two more armed figures rounded the corner above him.
They slowly descended the steps, their assault rifles raised.
“What was that crash?
Report status,” the lead guard barked.
Hayden frowned.
The impact of the cart against the wall had been too loud.
“Everything is fine,” Hayden called out, masking his voice.
“My hand slipped and I ran the cart into the doorframe.” “Who the hell are you?
Keep your hands where we can see them,” the guard demanded, raising his weapon and stepping into the light.
Pfft!
Pfft!
Hayden smoothly raised his right arm and fired twice.
Two lifeless bodies tumbled down the metal stairs, landing in a bloody heap right at Hayden’s feet.
He was entirely out of patience for stealth.
He stepped over the corpses and hurried up the stairwell, pushing through the access door into the ceiling mezzanine.
Hayden stripped off his gray maintenance uniform.
Crouching low, he slowly crept out onto the massive steel support beams spanning the auditorium.
His footsteps were completely silent.
The concert hall below was pitch black, with all the stage lights focused entirely on the performers.
High up in the rafters, Hayden was practically invisible.
Down on the stage, Victoria Lancaster was playing the violin with intense, sweeping passion.
She had just entered the third movement.
The symphony was building toward a massive crescendo.
Hayden opened his inventory.
A sleek, rugged sniper rifle materialized into his waiting hands.
It was a vintage Martini-Henry rifle.
It featured a heavy octagonal steel barrel and a polished dark-walnut stock.
As a breechloader, it required the user to manually eject and reload a massive cartridge after every single shot.
It was an antiquated, incredibly unforgiving weapon.
Yet, Hayden had fallen in love with it the moment he saw it in the broker’s catalog.
The System had assigned it a godly modifier.
[Absolute Precision].
When the user held their breath, the bullet became entirely immune to wind resistance, gravity drop, temperature, and humidity.
Wherever the crosshair rested was the absolute, mathematically guaranteed point of impact.
Hayden silently loaded a massive, heavy-caliber round into the breech.
He rested the barrel against the steel beam, peering through the high-powered scope to scan the VIP audience below.