Rage and Ruin | 2

4 | 7

J A K E

"Shires, what exactly did he say to you?" I asked the serious boy, needing to know more about the intruder that Hundsen had sent yesterday.

"Not much," he said, seeming much more calm about this than I would have expected. "He only said something about how Hundsen had sent him as a warning to...well, all of us, but mostly you. He wasn't sent necessarily to kill you, but he was intending to do as much damage as he could to the rest of us."

"And you took care of him?"

"He's dead." Interesting. I wouldn't have pegged Shires as a killer, but then again, he was different after what had happened with his brother. It happened to the best of us.

      "How did he get in?" Hunt asked, inspecting the damage done in the room.

      "Through an open window, we think. Riley saw it before I did."

      "Riley and Finn," Arlo asked the director, "How are they doing?"

      Hunt shook his head as he spoke. "They're both still being watched over for their injuries. Riley has a concussion and Finn had to get several stitches. But with enough rest and healing, they should be fine."

     As if he'd suddenly remembered he had them, Jaxon pulled the Scorpion blueprints out of his back pocket and handed them to Hunt. "We found these when we went to investigate the weapons factory. Before we destroyed them, they had to have had at least twenty finished ones."

      "We spoke to one of their engineers," the assassin added. "He informed us that there are many other factories working for Imperium just like that one. They have countless other weapons just like those." She gestured to the papers in Hunt's hands. "He didn't go into detail."

"I'll bring these to some of the engineers I have back at the ONNT. Maybe they can make sense of this weaponry Imperium is building." Hunt placed the papers in a pocket inside his coat. "Until I have more information on these weapons they're creating, stay here. If you're out and they try to attack you using these weapons, we'll have no information on how to combat them. It shouldn't be more than a few days."

The others kept talking with Hunt about trivial things that weren't necessary to me. So I went upstairs to my room, intending to jot down a few notes involving what had happened the past few days so that I could piece the information together perfectly. I needed to know exactly what Hundsen was planning.

Closing the door behind me, I turned around, only to see a body bag lying on the ground near my desk. Narrowing my eyes at it, I wondered whose body lay inside. Everyone in the crew was accounted for, even if they were in various places and circumstances. There was no one else that was necessary to me, so why would Hundsen kill someone and place them in my room?

     Without wasting any more time, I approached the bag and unzipped it. The familiar smell hit me first: the stench of death. It followed wherever I went.

      As I stared down at the woman's ghostly pale face, I realized that it was the ex-Club member I'd been intending to speak with the night Hundsen's men jumped me. Hundsen had known where I'd been headed.

      Like the assassin that had attacked the compound when I'd been away, this was another warning from Hundsen. He'd somehow gotten into the compound and placed the body inside without the others realizing. It was an insinuation that he could do the same thing again, this time to kill or kidnap me. Hundsen had known that I wasn't home. He could have attacked any day, but he chose the time that I wasn't present. It was another way to show me his sheer power.