Chapter 172: CLXXII

Levi's POV

I took a hit to the right shoulder from a man who was significantly enhanced, enough that the impact moved me two steps sideways. I recovered and put him down on the third exchange, and moved to the next.

At the monitoring station on the raised level, two of my men had run into resistance that required my direct involvement. I got up there in time to turn the engagement before it went wrong.

The whole operation from entry to control of the facility took eighteen minutes. Afterwards, the space was quieter. Several of the rogues were unconscious and being restrained by my team. Three had sustained injuries serious enough to require medical attention. Our side had injuries that were concerning but not critical.

The information team went immediately to the monitoring station and the document storage they had identified along the south wall.

And then something happened that I had not planned for.

The rogue nearest the door of the south wall storage, who had been restrained and appeared subdued, moved.

Not toward us he reached into his own clothing and produced a small capsule, the size of a tablet, and before any of my team could reach him he had bitten down on it.

He was dead in forty seconds. The capsule had contained a poison that worked with a speed that told me it had been specifically formulated for rapid effect, possibly to prevent the kind of interaction that followed capture.

I watched him go down and understood what I was looking at.

"Check everyone," I said immediately. "Check every one of them. If any of them have those capsules, I want them secured before they have the chance to use them."

My team moved quickly but we were three seconds too late for two more of the conscious rogues, who had used the moment of distraction to do what their colleague had done.

Three dead in the time it took to recognize what was happening and respond. I stood in the middle of the facility and looked at the three bodies and understood the communication embedded in that action.

These were not just enhanced rogues operating for resources or territory. These were people who had been given or had chosen to accept a protocol that prioritized operational security over their own survival.

That level of organization and commitment did not come from rogue leadership. It came from something considerably more structured.

"Get everything you can from the storage," I said to the information team.

"Every document, every device, every sample container. The compound production setup: document it completely and then shut it down. Destroy what can be destroyed without chemical hazard."

"And the remaining prisoners?" Marcus asked beside me.

"Transport to secure holding," I said.

"Medical attention for the injured ones, the unconscious perimeter guards too. I want everyone who is currently alive to stay that way."

We spent another forty minutes at the facility, the information team working through the storage while the rest of my team secured the space and managed the prisoners. What they found in the storage was significant, enough physical documentation and electronic data that it would take days to fully process.

But we had it. We loaded everything and everyone into the vehicles and left the facility dark behind us.

On the drive back I sat in the front vehicle with Marcus driving and the sounds of the operation settling into the particular quiet that followed extended combat, the specific exhaustion that was different from physical tiredness, the kind that came from running at full operational capacity for a sustained period.

My shoulder was complaining about the hit it had taken. I would have it looked at when we got back, or possibly tomorrow if it turned out to be manageable, which my initial assessment suggested it was.

I was going through the mental debrief in my mind, the sequential review of every decision and every outcome, when my phone rang.

Adrian.

I looked at the time. It was nearly three in the morning.

Adrian calling at nearly three in the morning had the same meaning as Zoe calling at unusual hours, which was that something had happened that overrode whatever time it was.

I answered.

"Levi," Adrian said. His voice had stripped back to the version that appeared when things were actually serious.

"I need to tell you something and I need you to not do anything sudden when I tell you."

"Tell me," I said.

"Father is on his way to your apartment," Adrian said. "He left the estate about two hours ago. He has four of his personal security team with him."

I said nothing for a moment.

"He called me twenty minutes ago to inform me," Adrian continued.

"Not to ask to be informed, he said he had received information about your current living situation and that he needed to address it in person."

"What information?" I said.

"He knows about the woman," Adrian said.

"And he knows about the child. Someone told him I don't know who but he knows, and he is not coming for a conversation, Levi. You know what his face sounds like when he's decided something is that."

I looked out the windscreen at the dark road ahead.

Isabellla was at my apartment. Aria was at my apartment. Both of them asleep, both of them unaware that my father was two hours into a drive that ended at my front door.

"How far out is he?" I asked.

"He called from the road," Adrian said. "My best estimate is forty minutes. Maybe less depending on his driver."

Forty minutes.

"Adrian," I said.

"Yes."

"Thank you for calling me."

A brief pause. "Just handle it, Levi. And be careful he is not coming to negotiate."

The call ended.

Marcus looked at me briefly. "Problem?"

"My father is forty minutes from my apartment," I said.

Marcus said nothing for a moment then."Drive faster?"

"Drive faster," I said.