Chapter 154: Before the Clock Strikes Twelve! 2

Micah’s POV

Sunny turned her head, casting a terrified glance toward the heavy steel blast doors at the far end of the bunker. A group of five guards was lounging around a folding table, drinking cheap whiskey straight from the bottle, their loud, vulgar laughter echoing off the concrete ceiling.

Sunny leaned closer to me, her voice dropping into a desperate, terrified whisper that made my blood run ice-cold.

"Micah... you don’t understand," Sunny stammered, her lips quivering. "We don’t have much time."

I frowned, my chest tightening. "What do you mean?"

"The boss in the navy suit... the man who runs this place," Sunny whispered, her eyes wide with unadulterated horror. "He only comes here to check the headcount in the evening. At midnight, he leaves to attend his political meetings."

She swallowed hard, a fresh tear cutting through the dirt on her cheek.

"And once the clock strikes twelve... once he’s gone... those men start drinking," Sunny choked out, trembling so hard her teeth clicked together. "Every single night, once they get drunk, they come over here. They drag people into the back storage rooms. They don’t care if you’re a girl or a boy, Micah. They beat them, they assault them, and they throw them back into the dirt before sunrise. Nobody can stop them."

My heart stopped beating.

The blood drained from my face so fast that my vision blurred with cold, dizzying static.

Men or women. They didn’t care.

Bernard left them to rot, completely indifferent to what his hired animals did to the hostages in the dark.

I snapped my head toward the large digital clock mounted above the security door.

The red LED numbers glared back at me: 11:05 PM.

Less than an hour.

Fifty-five minutes before Bernard walked out of those blast doors. Fifty-five minutes before those drunken, armed beasts started dragging people into the back rooms.

Panic exploded through my veins like poison. I pulled against the nylon ropes binding my wrists, but the knots held firm.

Noah... Damon... I prayed desperately in the silence of my mind, my fingernails digging into my palms until they bled. Please... you have to find me before midnight.

Noah’s POV

The command center of the Whitfield estate hummed with cold precision.

Rows of multi-screen computer terminals glowed with live city surveillance feeds, satellite imagery, and municipal transit maps. Six elite cyber analysts from my private syndicate network sat at the consoles, their fingers flying across keyboards with rapid, rhythmic clicks.

Damon Silver was pacing back and forth across the polished concrete floor like a caged predator, his jaw clenched, his knuckles cracked and bloody from the fight at the arena.

"We are running out of fucking time, Miller!" Damon roared, slamming his fist against the edge of a steel desk. "It’s been two freaking hours since the game ended! How the hell can a multi-million-dollar syndicate network not track a single damn van?!"

I didn’t answer him.

I stood leaning over the primary glass display terminal, my left hand clamped tight against my lower ribs.

Underneath my clean black shirt, the thick bandage was already soaked through with dark, sticky blood. The stitches David had put in were completely shredded after I beat George Jenson into the stairs. The pain was a blinding, white-hot fire tearing through my side, but I didn’t give a single fuck about my flesh.

My brother was in Bernard’s hands.

"Status, David," I commanded, my voice dropping into a sub-zero register that cut through Damon’s yelling.

David stepped to my side, his tablet displaying ten pulsing red icons radiating out across the city map.

"Bernard anticipated our surveillance sweep, Master," David reported calmly. "The moment the arena was evacuated, the syndicate deployed ten identical black commercial transport vans from the southern parking tunnels. They scattered across ten different municipal transit corridors simultaneously. It is an evasion grid designed specifically to scramble police tracking and divide our intercept units."

"Ten vans?" Damon cursed, running both hands through his hair in pure frustration. "Are we supposed to guess which one has Micah?!"

"Shut your mouth, Silver," I snarled, my cold blue eyes narrowing at the digital map.

I tapped the screen, bringing up high-definition highway toll camera feeds.

"Bernard is methodical, but his drivers are lazy," I said, pointing a bloody finger at the screens. "Filter the highway toll weigh-in sensors for all ten vehicles. An empty decoy van weighs approximately five thousand pounds. A transport carrying seven abducted athletes and four armed guards adds at least two thousand pounds of cargo weight. Look for rear suspension compression on the high-speed transit cameras."

"Executing filter now, Master," the head analyst replied.

The monitors flashed. Eight of the ten red icons instantly turned grey as the algorithm eliminated the unladen decoy vehicles.

Two red beacons remained.

"Cross-reference their routes with syndicate-owned properties," I ordered, stepping closer to the glass.

The keyboard clattered frantically for five seconds.

"I got a hit!" the analyst shouted, throwing his hands up. "Van number seven just exited the eastern bypass! Camera 409 captured it turning onto the industrial spur near Sector 9! It bypassed the public toll and entered the old municipal water filtration warehouse!"

A high-resolution satellite feed flickered onto the primary wall screen.

The satellite image showed the black van pulling into a heavily fenced industrial lot, driving through a rusted metal hangar, and disappearing directly into the structure.

Surrounding the perimeter were four armed guards in tactical vests.

It was the main distribution hub for Plan Mayor.

Damon took a sharp breath, his dark eyes lighting up with a feral, bloodthirsty gleam.

The burning agony in my ribs vanished, replaced by an inferno of pure, lethal adrenaline. A slow, chilling, merciless smirk curved across my lips.

I reached down to the weapon rack on the table, picked up my heavy semi-automatic pistol, and racked the slide back with a sharp, metallic CLACK.

"Good," I whispered, the words carrying the finality of an execution. "Let’s go get my brother."