Evenfall (158 page)

===

The building Sin was in turned out to not only have one sublevel, but three, and the lower two were once again hidden and difficult to access. The staircase he'd found ended up leading to a floor that was relatively innocuous and looked a lot like the rest of the house. It had the same architectural design, same flooring and even the same wallpaper except for the fact that it wasn't as opulent in its decorations. Although there was a hallway and multiple rooms, it was relatively small in comparison to the rest of the house, which wasn't saying much since the rest of the building was incredibly large. It made sense though; digging into the hill to create extra levels had probably cost a fortune and making them as spread out would have only made it costlier and more time consuming. However, the size made it simultaneously easier and more obnoxious to sneak around in.

While he could cover the area in a much shorter amount of time without having to spend so much effort searching entire wings, it also made it more difficult to stay hidden and because of that he'd had no choice but to kill yet another operative immediately upon entering the area. They'd essentially run into each other as soon as he'd made it down the staircase and he'd responded instantly, slamming the heel of his hand repeatedly against the man's nose until there was nothing but a gaping hole in his face from where the cartilage had shoved up into his brain.

It had been pure luck that no one else had been in the immediate area but as he dragged the body quickly to one of the empty rooms, he realized with increasing frustration that if he had to kill anyone else there really would be nowhere to hide a body for long. As soon as someone actually found one of the poorly concealed corpses, the whole place would be on alert. It was aggravating but he really had no choice; people kept getting in his way and it was a lot simpler to just get rid of them rather than knocking them out and hoping they didn't wake up until after he found Thierry. He resented having to go through all of this trouble for the French moron anyway; knowing his luck he'd have taken all of this time and effort and the idiot had already gone and died. What a waste.

Feeling rather resentful about the entire affair, Sin had begun his search of the top floor and was rather irritated to see that the only things of note it seemed to contain were a couple of spare rooms, some offices, a conference room, what appeared to be the security center which held the monitors that were connected to the cameras on the outer walls of the estate and a bathroom. He'd just received Boyd's transmission that he'd also found something and had almost come to the conclusion that if Boyd was actually on the track to finding Thierry and all of this secretive hidden shit was just to conceal a couple of rooms then Clemons was a complete tool of a man, when he realized that something was very off.

Other than the man he'd run into after coming down the staircase, he'd nearly come into conflict with two others although he'd managed to hide from them in time to avoid it. However, the odd thing about the last pair was that they had appeared rather suddenly. The ceiling and walls did not appear to be soundproofed, as he could hear footsteps resounding above him and the idle conversation of the men sitting in the security room, but for some reason he had neither heard these people coming downstairs or seen them in any of the surrounding rooms as he'd made his initial once over. It didn't make sense.

The only thing that did make sense was that there was yet another hidden area inside of this hidden area and honestly, the conclusion caused him to become rather fed up with Clemons and this whole irritating mission. The whole estate had been one out-of-control study in paranoia after another and in his opinion it was going too far now. He felt like he was in some kind of bad haunted house or detective movie, but he was neither clever nor patient enough to be attempting to figure shit out and why couldn't people just have the balls to be sneaky and underhanded out in the open instead of going through so much trouble to hide it anyway? People were really annoying.

He'd just about decided that there was most likely just another doorway in the security room, the only area he hadn't searched yet since it was occupied, when he heard loud footsteps above him. He had just enough time to duck into the hallway, half in the darkened doorway of one of the spare rooms when an agitated looking blonde woman came storming down the staircase, shoes resounding angrily against the floor and ponytail swinging against her back like the tail of an angry cat. She strode through the main room stiffly, walked past the security room without looking twice and headed down the hallway without even noticing that she'd passed within inches of where he'd effectively blended in with the darkness of the room behind him. For a moment he'd assumed she was heading to the office to use the phone, the only thing in it that could be operated, but instead she went directly into the bathroom and closed the door behind her.

Sin stared at the door blankly for a long moment, waiting for her to reemerge, but when she didn't his suspicion immediately rose. Without much hesitation he crossed the hall and opened the door to the bathroom, hoping he wasn't about to bust in on her sitting on the toilet but deciding that it was worth it to check either way. However, not only was she not on the toilet, she also wasn't anywhere in the room. He closed the door and turned slowly in a circle, noting that there wasn't anything but a toilet, a sink, a cabinet and a tall mirror.

Dark brows furrowed and he opened the cabinet only to find a bunch of towels and toiletries. The ceiling was painted white and really had no space for a hidden door or passage. It was as he stood there glaring at his reflection in the full length mirror that he realized the mirror, which so perfectly framed his entire body and was vaulted to the wall, had to be the answer. And it was.

It took more patience than he knew he possessed to figure it out, but as he felt along the sides, he found a small latch that was very well concealed. When he pulled it, the mirror swung open like a door which led to a short hallway, another doorway and yet another set of stairs that led down. It was definitely beginning to be too much for him but it was here that he realized there were two other levels to the building and it was here that his body count slowly began to rise.

As he went deeper into the building though, Sin slowly became less irritated and more anxious about the entire situation. While he knew he wasn't in an entirely enclosed area, the knowledge that he was going deeper into a hill and that he was most likely surrounded by rock and earth disturbed him more than it should have and it made his patience even thinner. The fact that the area was more populated and well-lit didn't help the situation very much since that meant he had limited places to duck into and gave him very little hope about the plan of somehow sneaking out with Thierry undetected; although he'd never really had much faith in that possibility in the first place.

So he moved quicker, scanned areas faster and to his frustration but not so much surprise, found that many doors and areas were locked. After his initial search he saw a door that obviously led to a bottom level, the third sublevel, but the door required a password to get through and he didn't want to spend time trying to figure it out when he hadn't even thoroughly searched the entire second level yet. The floor lacked the innocuousness of the one above and although it didn't look like a torture chamber or prison, there was
an
institutional quality about it that reminded him of the Fourth floor of the Agency and he was sure that anyone would pick up on how intimidating and disturbing that could be. This area spread out more than the first sublevel but without a key or a way to sneak around effectively to find one without completely blowing his cover, he didn't have very many options.

What he ultimately found were two corridors which held several locked rooms and most of which appeared empty from what he could see through the small window at the top of each door. There was a third, shorter corridor but this one was guarded by three armed Janus operatives and that alone told him that he'd found what he was looking for and that there was no way things were not going to get messy. In the space between him actually coming to that conclusion and him actually starting to make his move, once again the damned radio went off.

"Back up needed in the North building! We have an intruder and a man down!" A man shouted urgently, sounding very similar to the one who'd radioed earlier.

The guards looked at each other briefly, then three sets of eyes simultaneously turned to him and things began to happen very fast. The man closest to him was the first to react and charged forward even as the other two began to reach for their weapons. But before any of them could do anything, one strong hand grabbed the man, twisted him around and Sin effectively used him as a shield as the other two began to fire. The guard went slack against him and he grabbed the man's twin Browning Hi-Powers before quickly unloading them into the two agents by the door. He could hear the distant crackle of the radio in the background but he ignored it; trying to remain undercover really wasn't an option anymore and that's all he needed to know.

Sin let the body drop, ignoring the blood that had sprayed across his face and quickly crossed over to the door to peer inside. Sure enough, what appeared to be a terrified Thierry was cowering in the corner of the barren white room. He turned away and quickly searched the guards for the card key needed to enter just as he heard shouts and the sounds of footsteps running in his direction.

He swiped the key and opened the door, glaring at Thierry impatiently as the sounds grew closer. "Get up."

Thierry looked far different than he had over a year ago in Paris; he was skinnier, incredibly pale and his eyes had a slightly haunted quality about them that only seemed emphasized by how frightened he currently seemed. However that aside, other
than
a few bruises and what appeared to be a split lip, he was relatively
intact
.

"Wha-- Sin?" he stammered, confused. Sin made a face and grabbed Thierry by one surprisingly thin arm, dragging him out of the room but Thierry's bare feet slid in the blood that had pooled out on the floor and his blue eyes widened in horror as he tripped over the bodies that lay sprawled across the corridor. "
Putain de merde!
"

Before they could get any farther than that, the advancing operatives rounded the corner and began firing at not only Sin, but at Thierry, with no hesitation. Sin slammed his shoulder into the shocked looking French man and sent him flying back into the safety of the room as Sin threw himself backwards on the floor just in time to avoid the flurry of bullets that embedded themselves in the wall behind him. He rolled out of the way of the continuing gunfire, grabbed one of the Brownings he'd lifted from the dead guard and eliminated two of the four before he even came to a stop.

"Kill Beauvais!" One of the remaining men, a tall burly blond, shouted furiously as Sin pinned himself against a recess in the wall created by a doorway. The other agent seemed too thunderstruck by the five dead men at his feet to immediately comply and the hesitation cost him dearly as Sin sent a bullet directly between his eyes.

He aimed at the blond only to find that he was now out of bullets, but instead of wasting his own, Sin ran faster than seemed humanly possible back across the corridor, dodged bullets the man sent his way and then jumped at him with a flying tackle, landing squarely on his chest and sending the gun skittering across the hall. He snapped the operative's neck and got to his feet, eyes immediately zeroing in on Thierry, who seemed more terrified than he had moments ago.

"Get the fuck up now," Sin snapped impatiently as the other man cowered from him in fear.

"Yo-you--" Thierry stammered, his accent seeming heavier and more difficult to understand as he became more hysterical. His hands curled into fists, fingers digging into his palms as he pinned himself against the wall. "You're going to kill me too!" he cried finally.

"If that was the plan it would have already happened. Now get your fucking ass moving,
now
," Sin snarled but once again didn't wait for Thierry to comply before he stormed into the room and dragged the other man out violently. He took off running down the hall, half dragging, half carrying Thierry as he navigated his way back the way he'd come. As more shouts echoed off the walls ahead of them, Sin sent a brief transmission to Boyd to inform him that he had Thierry and that things were about to get a lot more interesting.

===

Rick pulled Boyd to an abrupt halt at the intersection of one hallway and another. Dana kept walking, not noticing or not caring that they weren't beside her anymore, and within seconds she had disappeared. Boyd looked at Rick questioningly but he was steadfastly ignored so he decided it was probably better not to ask aloud what was happening. It was likely that they didn't want to show him some sort of code or entrance or even specifically which room they were going to down the hallway, in case Clemons was not there.

He could hear a faint knock in the direction Dana disappeared, followed by a low conversation. He'd been wondering why they had just assumed Hale Clemons would be available at this time of night and, more importantly, that he would be interested in dropping everything to deal with him. He suspected that finding the people on Janus' list was something that would result in rewards not only for those who found them but also for their supervisors, like Clemons.

It was odd; he'd gone along with Rick and Dana because it would potentially give him more information but standing there as he waited for the conversation to end, he felt a sense of uneasiness coming over him. In the context of his own health, this was idiotic. He should have just incapacitated Rick and Dana when they were alone and no one else knew about him and he should have run.