Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
Roy Valik stomped down the hall toward the Enigma Project labs, energized by a few hours away from the lab, and ready to find success in the face of failure. Sapphire Angel may have escaped, but they still possessed her items and other samples, such as hair and blood. He swiped his fingerprint and hurried through the door, punching the light switch and turning to the case displaying Sapphire Angel's costume. Except it wasn't there. The door hung open, and the case sat empty.
"Fuck!" Valik yelled as his knees went weak. The stunned man stumbled to the case, staring at it and trying to process what he was seeing. He turned and rushed about the room, opening drawers and cabinets, searching for the costume and accessories. He found nothing.
How was this possible? Treachery by one of his men? The costume of the famous superheroine was a trophy of unimaginable worth, and would fetch a ridiculous price from the right bidder. One of his scientists, or one of the guards, might have decided to cash out.
Or the superheroine returned and took the costume herself, but that seemed unlikely. When he had last seen her, she had been naked and running scared, likely weakened from all the experiments. If she had recovered by now, she had no way to get back into the building. She had gained access the first time because they had allowed it, unbeknownst to her. No, the missing costume must be an inside job.
Valik needed to know for sure. What if the costume was important to her powers somehow, and she had found a way back into the building to get it?
He moved to his computer and accessed the lab's surveillance footage. He found a large gap in the footage from a few hours earlier. Worse, the access logs, which showed who entered each door in the facility, contained gaps for the same period.
This sealed it. It had to be one of his men. Network security at WarTech was impregnable, except for Valik's own secret backups sent to his home. He started thinking through his roster of employees, to figure out who might have made off with the superheroine's costume. Just like with Sapphire Angel's secrets, though, he came up empty. Roy Valik was unaccustomed to coming up empty.
Now what? He couldn't tell Devlin. At least not yet. The CEO would be furious about Sapphire Angel's escape, and almost as angry once he learned someone had pilfered the heroine's costume. Valik would need to tell his boss at some point, but for now he would put it off. The black rock would arrive soon, and perhaps he would learn something from it. Or perhaps, with the data already in his possession, he might still discover Sapphire Angel's secrets before Devlin returned. That would certainly lessen the blow. The late hour didn't matter. He would get to work, but alone, since he didn't know who he could trust.
Beth loved being back in her costume. Perhaps she had taken it for granted, but the loss of her costume and powers had been a wake-up call. The feel of the smooth fabric against her skin sent energy and excitement coursing through her body, and tempered the memories of the men stripping it from her.
Beth and Conner crouched within a copse of vegetation, monitoring activity on the WarTech grounds. People occasionally entered the large research facility and patrolled its exterior, but activity at the nearby warehouse — Building C, according to Stanley — was sparse. Stretches of at least ten minutes passed between guard patrols around the building.
After being lured into a trap last time, Sapphire Angel would not rely upon visual confirmation alone. Stanley, through his access of the WarTech network, had confirmed the timing of the guard patrols. He also would replace WarTech's surveillance feeds with bogus footage and notify her when her approach to the warehouse would be safest.
As they waited, she looked off in the distance, to her left, at the research and production facility, and a shiver ran through her. Thoughts came to her unbidden of being captured, stripped, and subject to the scientists' experiments. The memories gave her pause, as doubt crept up from within her, but she forced the thoughts aside and turned her attention back to the area around Building C. A moment later, she turned to Conner as he raised a hand. He held his iPhone to his ear and gave her a nod.
"Now!" Conner said. "Your ten minute window of time just started."
She sprinted toward the fence, feeling like an actor in a reshoot of a movie scene. When she was twenty feet away, she crouched and leapt over the fence with ease. After sprinting to the warehouse and pausing to listen, she glanced back to Conner's hiding spot. Even knowing where he lay hidden among some shrubs, she couldn't spot him. Good. Despite her early capture, she was more worried about him than herself.
She crept along the wall of the warehouse, worked her way to the entrance door, and pulled out her cylinder device. The device made quick work of the lock, and she opened the door and peeked inside.
Wall sconces illuminated an open area in front of her, and a stacked row of crates formed a temporary wall to her left. The crates started on the wall thirty yards away, and extended across the structure to the opposite wall, creating a makeshift room in this end of the building. Several openings between the crates led deeper into the structure. The glowing orange coils of ceiling heaters were visible above the crates as they ran off into the distance.
A long table sat in the open area in front of her, with darkened light fixtures hanging over it. Someone had arranged five folding chairs beyond the table, facing a television on a rolling cart.
Sapphire Angel slipped into the building, pulled the door closed, and hurried to to the wall of crates on her left. She moved along the crates, looking through a few of the hallway-like gaps to see a huge room beyond, neatly laid out with more tall rows of stacked crates.
She turned her attention back to the table, chairs, and television. Atop the table sat computer laptop, with a single cable running to the television screen. A WarTech screensaver scrolled across the screen. The superheroine frowned. Based on the radio transmission she had overheard in captivity, she had expected to find a “product” or “products” here.
The heroine stepped to the laptop and jiggled the mouse attached to it. The screensaver disappeared, replace with a login screen.
She sighed, wishing she could talk with Stanley. But even if Stanley were able to bypass the jammed transmissions, they hadn't wanted to risk an interception. So she took her cylinder device and pressed a button, extending a USB-C plug from one end. She inserted it into the side of the computer and waited for the device to do what should have been impossible — cloning the computer's hard drive. Such matters weren't impossible for Stanley. With information from WarTech's network, he might be able to decrypt the laptop’s storage drive even if it contained military-grade encryption.
As she waited, she found the remote for the television and pressed the power button. When the screen came to life, it displayed the same screensaver as the laptop display. With a shake of her head, she turned back to the laptop and glanced at the cylinder. A green light would illuminate when it finished, but it would otherwise give her no progress indicator. She had to wait.
As she sighed in frustration, the lock on the exterior door rattled. Someone was coming. Sapphire Angel tapped the power button on the television remote, dropped the remote onto the table, and leapt through the air toward a gap in the crates.
No sooner had her heels clicked down on the concrete floor of the warehouse, than daylight flooded the building through the opening doorway. She heard several sets of footsteps enter before the door closed and the dim light returned. Moments later, the building was awash in bright light as the ceiling fixtures came to life. Sapphire Angel slipped further back into the row of crates, moving into a gap between two crates.
"It looks all clear," a male voice said.
"Yep. Radio it in," another voice replied.
A radio squawked, followed by the first voice saying, "Base, this is Squad Two. All clear in Building C. Over."
The guards, two or three in number, had come sooner than expected. Stanley would be very disappointed in himself.
"Roger, Squad Two. Alpha Dog's flight has landed and he should be there soon. Continue your patrol," was the reply over the radio, before the device chirped off.
"Okay, fellas, let's get—" the first voice said, but halted mid-sentence. "What the hell is that?"
"What?" another voice replied.
"On the laptop there. That cylinder. It wasn't there when we set up this gear earlier, and there shouldn’t have been anybody else in here."
Sapphire Angel balled her fists. She needed the data on the cylinder, and couldn't let them remove it from the laptop before it had mirrored the computer's drive.
"I'm going to call this in," the first voice said.
There was no time to wait. Sapphire Angel stepped out from behind the crates and leapt forward, throwing caution to the wind. In midair, she surveyed the situation, and realized she would land in the middle of the guards. Except there weren't two or three of them. There were eleven.
Other links:
Sapphire Angel, Superheroine (Book 1)
Power Play (Book 2)
Deconstruction (this book - Book 3)
Okay, never mind, I might have to retract my previous statement from last chapter; Valik may not be a dead man walking after all. His chances actually look more balanced now, though; he lost both Sapphire Angel and her costume, but gained several hair/blood samples and the black rock that’s on its way. Let’s hope he can get to the bottom of Sapphire Angel’s capabilities in time, or else it’s likely not going to be looking good for him.....
So happy to have Beth back in the costume again after everything else we’ve been through. But.....don’t tell me we’re about to have a failed infiltration attempt again. Then again.....even though there are eleven guards, this is a head-on fight, from the looks of it---no hidden traps, no one lying in wait to ambush her once she attacks them, nothing. Nothing except eleven guards. .....I think. She can take them, right? Plus, even if by chance they do have guns on them, she’s immune to that stuff.
If they do get her, though......Valik---and the other men who are due to be meeting with him---are going to have quite the nice surprise. I highly doubt it, though.....I think she’s going to pull through just fine, once the initial shock of the guards’ numbers passes her.
In a way, it’s darkly amusing how Sapphire still doesn’t realize that she’s the product meant to be sold off to Nassar and Azari, but I have a feeling she’ll find out in due time. Maybe one of the eleven guards will let it slip, or she’ll find out through some other way. Anyway, looks like we’re either about to have an epic fight or a tragically-quick curb-stomp battle on our hands. Hope it ends in Sapphire’s favor!
I love the sheer amount of descriptors you’ve used in the text.....a lot of my later books put an increased focus on dialogue, interaction, and connection more than surroundings (much to my regret) but I’m hoping to pick it back up after learning some tricks with how you write your stories.
Been dealing with a bit of heartbreak recently, so I’ve just been chilling on my couch eating ice cream for the past few hours. Reading a new chapter of the novel was the perfect thing I needed to distract myself from it. And it’s so close to Valentine’s Day, too.....
See you on Thursday for yet another chapter! We’re.....just over 10 chapters away from the end! Been a wild ride so far!