The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (30 page)

"Yeah, I'll be careful—you too."

I proceeded at a fast walk until the darkness swallowed up the gate and then broke into a run, rifle slapping against my leg. There were plenty of eyes between the compound and the barricade to see what I was doing and wonder what was going on, but none of them were the ones I had to worry about. I kept my speed down to something that a normal human in peak physical condition could have managed, but even so managed to cover the distance to the southern guard post in less than five minutes.

I wasn't wearing one of the balaclavas we'd been sporting on my last visit to the guard post, but that just meant that the lone guard manning the exterior door was less nervous as I approached.

"State your business."

I patted the large pocket along the side of my left leg. "I've got a message to deliver to the basement."

His eyes went wide. After I'd had such an easy time getting out of the compound I'd assumed that Jax and Tyrell hadn't spread the word about my incarceration, but this guard's reaction nearly had me convinced that I'd been wrong.

I thought for a moment that he was going to go for his weapon, but instead he just grabbed me. I was a fraction of a second away from slamming my elbow into his chest with enough force to shatter his ribs, but he got his words out first. They came out in a low hiss.

"We don't talk about the basement out here. I don't care how new you are, if you know about the basement you should know that. That's how rumors start. Now get inside and thank your lucky stars that things are too crazy right now for me to track down your supervising officer so that I can file a complaint."

I stumbled as he pushed me towards the door. I was as shocked as he thought I was—just for different reasons. I'd been lucky—much more so than I'd had any right to expect.

There was only one guard inside instead of the two I remembered from last time, but I still would've had a hard time explaining my presence but for the fact that the first guard had all but escorted me into the building. The guard inside the door gave me a wry smile.

"You look like someone who just had the riot act read to them."

"Yeah, I just mentioned the basement when he asked me why I was here. Nobody gave me the proper countersign to get inside—I figured I just needed to tell him where I was headed."

"Don't worry about it. The odds of anybody out there understanding the significance of what you said are pretty minimal. Just don't let it happen again and I'm sure Yuri will forget about it by the time the week's out. You know where you're headed?"

"Yeah, I think so. Isn't it down the hall to the right?"

The guard smiled. "Yeah, but make sure you've got your orders out where the boys down there can see them. They're even more jumpy than Yuri is."

I nodded my thanks and hurried down the hall, conscious of the fact that someone could arrive at any moment with word of my escape. Part of me hadn't actually expected to make it this far, but now that I had, I was grateful that the last pair of guards were located so far away from the outside door.

It was going to be hard enough to take down two guards who could see me coming. At least this way I shouldn't have to worry about alerting the guard I'd just left behind—unless somebody got a shot off before I managed to neutralize them.

A few seconds later I came round the last corner separating me from the final pair of guards. I made sure I was walking quickly and tried to give myself the air of a junior officer on a new assignment who was worried she wasn't going to get the job done quickly enough.

"Hold up! You can't come running up on us like that. Where are your orders?"

I made a big show of sliding to a stop—made it obvious that I was stopping as soon as he started talking—but doing so in such a way that I actually covered several more feet before coming to a complete stop.

It had gotten me close, but not close enough to do the job without risking one of them getting a shot off and alerting the other guards in the building. There was nothing left to do but try to sell them a lie.

I reached down to my pants pocket as though planning on fishing out the requested orders, and then gasped when my hand came up empty. "They were just there—I swear I just had them."

I let myself stagger to the side as I sped up my breathing. "What am I going to do? Jax himself gave me those orders. He said he needed the insurgents down there to create a diversion. One of the other territories kidnapped Brennan and I just ruined any chance of getting him back because I couldn't keep hold of a simple set of orders."

I'd been hoping that Jax would play the news of Brennan's kidnapping close to his chest, but I'd known it was a long shot. Rather than both of them gasping and dropping the rifles as I'd been hoping, only one of them seemed affected by the news.

The closer of the two guards took a step towards me as though planning on shaking me to get the truth out. "Wait, what are you talking about?"

The further guard didn't take his eyes off of me. "Can it, Stikes. You have no idea whether or not she's telling the truth, and even if she is, it doesn't change our job."

"That's just it, she has to be telling the truth. There's no other reason why they would draw down all of the forces that are usually stationed here. If someone else has Brennan, then all bets are off."

The further guard took a step forward as though planning on trying to calm down his partner. "Pull yourself together—"

I didn't give him a chance to finish his sentence. I'd needed him to be just a foot or two closer to me and now he'd obliged. I sprang forward and slammed my palm into the throat of the first guard as I went past.

He dropped his weapon and reached up to his throat with both hands, but I noticed that only in passing as I lashed out with my foot and blew out the knee of the second guard. The second guard was the tougher of the two of them, but tough didn't even enter into it at that point. The joint was structurally incapable of supporting his weight, but that didn't stop him from trying to get his weapon up where he could fill me full of lead.

I wrapped my hand around the breech of his rifle, simultaneously controlling where the muzzle pointed and pulling it out of battery far enough that even if he did pull the trigger, the weapon still wouldn't discharge. A slight tug on the back of his neck finished off his balance and as he fell forward I slammed my knee into his face.

That was a devastating attack when administered by someone with normal strength; if I hadn't pulled the blow I probably would've killed him. I knew as he recoiled from the impact that he probably wasn't going to still be conscious when he hit the ground, but that didn't stop me from slamming my fist into the side of his neck. I didn't hit him hard enough to break his neck, but even a relatively weak blow to that location would cause his body to temporarily stop pumping blood up to his brain.

As the second guard dropped bonelessly to the ground, I spun back around and put a sleeper hold on the first guard. If he'd been smart he would've gone for his weapon—dangling uselessly from his sling—but instead he clawed desperately at my arm for the ten seconds that it took for his brain to shut down from oxygen deprivation.

Less than twelve seconds after I made my move, both of the guards were on the ground unconscious and I was gathering up their weapons and ammunition. A minute after that, I was slipping through the last vault-like metal door that separated Victoria's freedom fighters from Brennan's southern guard post.

I'd been half afraid when I hatched this plan on the way up out of the bore that I would find the parking garage empty, but my luck held up better than expected. There weren't just one or two insurgents waiting down there when I arrived, there were nearly a dozen of them—and Victoria was among their number.

To say that they were surprised would've been an understatement, and I didn't miss the way that several of them lingered by the rifles they'd been practicing with. Victoria didn't order them away, but she did step forward and give me an appraising glance.

"Unless I'm very much mistaken, you shouldn't be here without Brennan."

I gave her a humorless grin. "You're not at all mistaken, but I have a very good reason why I'm here alone. Slightly less than two days ago, Piter had a team grab Brennan and smuggle him across the border. Given that Brennan is currently being held captive inside of Piter's headquarters, there isn't any way I could've brought him along with me."

A flash of alarm crossed Victoria's face. "If that's true, then why am I hearing about it from you?"

"Because Jax and Tyrell are convinced that Piter didn't do it. They think some gang called the Muertos is responsible. I suspect that they've probably already started their attack on the Muertos, but all that's going to do is weaken Brennan's army so that Piter can swoop in and expand his territory by three or four times what he currently holds."

She shook her head. "Impossible. Piter knows better than that—he still hasn't finished subduing and integrating Jenks' territory. Even if he had, Jax would have to lose nearly half of his people before Piter would have any kind of chance of pulling something like that off. I know next to nothing about the Muertos, but I have a very hard time believing that any one territory is going to be able to inflict those kinds of casualties on a group as deadly as the one Jax will be leading into the assault."

"Sure, Jax and Tyrell will probably roll right over the Muertos, but they will lose people and they won't find Brennan, which means they'll have to go into another territory, and another, and another. Eventually they'll get worn down enough that they'll start taking serious casualties. Once that happens, Piter will be waiting to walk in and take over not just Brennan's territory but also the territory of everyone that we just finished stomping all over. It's the perfect plan—a much better one than kidnapping Brennan and then trying to ransom him back to us."

Victoria was silent for several seconds as she did the math. "So what, you're here hoping you can convince us to follow you into some kind of suicide mission? All based on the off chance that you're right about where Brennan is being kept? Do you have any idea what we sacrificed to be here? If we go up against Piter and lose, it won't be just us who will die. He'll have his goons torture and kill everyone we've ever cared about."

I shook my head. "First of all, I'm not guessing about what went down when they grabbed Brennan. He's here in your territory, in Piter's building. I wouldn't be here talking to you if I wasn't positive of that fact. Second of all, with your help I can all but guarantee that we will be able to decapitate Piter's command group.

"He's trying to make it look like he doesn't have extra people on the border so as not to spook Tyrell and Jax, but all of the buildings along the border have got to be crawling with enforcers right now. He can't be strong everywhere, which means there's probably nothing more than a token set of guards around him. We'll start from inside his outer perimeter and he'll never even see us coming.

"Thirdly, even if we did somehow fail, Piter and his men can't torture and kill everyone you care about tomorrow because they already killed some of those people yesterday or last month or last year. This is a chance to both save Brennan and avenge the people you've already lost. The only question is whether you're going to take it."

I could hear various people shifting around in response to my words. I'd considered lying and telling her that I recognized one of Piter's enforcers in the group that had grabbed Brennan. It had the benefit of being mostly true—after all, I had been there when Brennan was grabbed—but that would've begged the question as to why Jax and Tyrell hadn't believed me and prepped their assault on Piter's territory.

No, telling her the truth—at least as much as I could tell her without revealing that I was a spy—was the better, safer option, but I wasn't thinking about that at the time. I just told her the truth because that was what felt right. I was getting tired of lying to everybody.

I kept my eyes locked on Victoria until she broke the staring contest and turned back to her people. I followed her gaze and saw a group that was obviously torn. Victoria met each of their eyes and then reached over and grabbed one of the guns I'd just taken from the guards upstairs.

"You've all been complaining that we didn't have enough weapons for everybody. We still don't, but once you add what Skye just brought us to the rest of what Brennan has had delivered recently, we're darn close. I don't know if Skye is lying or telling the truth, but she's right about one thing. Without Brennan none of what's happened could've been possible. If there's even a slight chance that he's a prisoner and we can get him out, then I could never live with myself if I didn't at least try.

"Let's go kill Piter."

Chapter 24

I hadn't been sure what to expect with regards to Victoria and her crew. They'd obviously trained with the rifles that Brennan had supplied them, but that did not automatically make them experienced covert agents. I'd figured the best I could hope for, was that they would know the territory well enough to avoid the worst of the regular patrols, and that they would be able to put bullets downrange and on target when the time came.

It turned out that I'd been woefully underestimating them. Within five minutes Victoria had half of her people armed and ready to go. Every magazine Brennan had provided them with was already loaded, but that still left nearly a thousand rounds of ammo sitting in the familiar metal boxes that Jax's men used to transport munitions.

We all filled our pockets with loose rounds and then three of the guys who hadn't received rifles each picked up an ammo box and we all set out. The old me probably would've taken a spot at the back of the group simply because I'd spent so long believing the highest virtue was not questioning authority. The new me wasn't having any of that.

I took a spot at Victoria's side as we set off through the parking garage, surrounded by pools of illumination from the lanterns that they'd been using as a light source.