CHAPTER 299: CHAPTER - 299

Chapter - 299

The silence in the ruined, smoke-filled, toilet-water-soaked bathroom was total. The hiss of the broken pipe and the distant, fading wail of sirens were the only sounds.

Rick, his hands raised in a classic gesture of "this-is-not-what-it-looks-like," was bathed in the blinding white beams of two police flashlights. He was covered in blood, filth, and soot. He looked like the final boss of a post-apocalyptic movie.

Officer Miller, the older of the two cops, had his revolver held in a shaky two-handed grip. "HANDS IN THE AIR! HANDS... what the hell?"

His partner, Officer Davis, who looked like he was barely old enough to shave, was visibly trembling, his Glock wavering. "ON THE GROUND! NOW! HANDS BEHIND YOUR BACK!"

"Officer, I understand this looks bad," Rick said, his voice a mask of calm, reasonable concern. This, he knew, was just making them more nervous.

"Looks bad?" Miller barked, his voice cracking. "Son, this looks like the end of the goddamn world! We got reports of automatic gunfire, explosions, a war... and I find you, looking like you just bathed in a slaughterhouse, stuffing a woman through a toilet window. What the hell is going on?"

From inside the bathroom, a muffled, furious wail. "He’s... he’s... just arrest him!"

"You heard her!" Davis shrieked, his trigger discipline vanishing. "On your face! Now!"

Rick didn’t move. He couldn’t be cuffed. He couldn’t be taken off the board. The System Quest timer for Nadia was a cold, ticking clock in his head. 5 Days, 17 Hours...

"Officers," Rick said, his voice projecting calm authority, "I am trying to help her. My name is Rick Smith. The woman in the bathroom... is Lieutenant Sharon Vintner. Portstown PD. Homicide."

This was the gambit. He’d either just saved himself or earned a warning shot.

The two cops froze. Their flashlights shifted from Rick’s face to the tiny, jagged window.

"A... what?" Miller said, lowering his gun an inch. "A Lieutenant?" He was deeply skeptical. "She doesn’t sound like a Lieutenant. She sounds like a... well, like a woman being stuffed through a window."

"He’s lying!" Davis insisted, though his own confidence was shaken. "Cops don’t get stuffed through windows! Right?"

A furious, sputtering, splashing sound came from inside the bathroom. "He’s... he’s not lying, damn it!" Sharon’s voice was a muffled, enraged scream. "I am Lieutenant Vintner! Badge number 4-7-7-2! Portstown... Homicide!"

The two patrolmen were now completely, hopelessly lost. This wasn’t in the manual. They’d gone from a simple arrest to a complex, inter-departmental... something

... involving a half-naked, screaming superior officer in a toilet.

Officer Miller, clearly the one who had to handle the paperwork, cleared his throat and aimed his flashlight at the window. "Ma’am? Lieutenant? Are you... are you decent? Can you come out?"

A long, agonizing pause. The only sound was the hiss of the broken pipe.

"...No."

Miller blinked. "...’No,’ ma’am?"

"I’m... compromised!" she yelled back, her voice echoing with pure, undiluted humiliation. "And I’m covered in... toilet water. Just... just secure him! And... and call my Captain! Captain Joyce! And tell him... tell him I’m going to need... a new uniform. And maybe a lawyer. Just... handle it!"

Rick saw his opening. He lowered his hands slowly. "Officers, I’m her... civilian consultant. We were working a case."

Miller, his mind scrambling, tried to regain control. He holstered his weapon. "A case? What kind of case results in... this?" He gestured with his flashlight to the parking lot, where they could now hear the shouts of other arriving officers. "We got four... maybe five... Jesus, six bodies out here! We got a burned-out car! And you two look like you went through a meat grinder!"

"It’s complicated," Rick said, with masterful understatement. "We were ambushed. The people who did this, the primary targets, they’re still at large. They took the hostage."

"Hostage?" Davis squeaked, his mind visibly breaking. "I thought she was the hostage! Who’s the new hostage?"

"It’s... look, it’s a long story."

"He’s right, Officer Miller. It is a very long story."

The new voice was calm, deep, and held an effortless authority that made the two patrol cops jump. A man stepped out of the shadows from the side of the building. He wasn’t in a uniform. He was in a pristine, black, three-piece suit that probably cost more than their cruisers. He was flanked by two other men in identical suits, their faces impassive, their hands clasped in front of them. They didn’t look like cops. They looked like the guys who move cops.

Miller and Davis instinctively tensed, their hands dropping to their holsters. "Who the hell are you?" Miller demanded. "This is a primary crime scene!"

The man in the suit smiled, a thin, professional smile. "I’m Agent Johnson. Internal Affairs. And as of... right now... this is our crime scene."

From inside the bathroom, a new, panicked sound. "Internal Affairs?" Sharon shrieked. "What the hell is IA doing here?"

Agent Johnson looked at the broken window, his expression one of mild disgust. "Lieutenant Vintner. You’re a hard woman to keep track of. You lied to your Captain about a ’personal emergency.’ You’ve been off the grid for 24 hours. And now you show up at the center of what looks like a cartel-level firefight, half-naked in a toilet. You, ma’am, are in a spectacular amount of trouble."

This was not a rescue. This was an execution. Rick’s mind raced. 5 Days, 17 Hours... He was done. Failed. He was about to be black-bagged by his own side.

Johnson looked at Rick, his eyes cold. "And you... you’re the ’civilian consultant’? The one who’s been leaving a trail of bodies from here to the shipyard? You’re coming with us. Both of you."

"Wait!" Sharon yelled, and then a moment later, she appeared in the shattered bathroom doorway.

It was a sight that would be seared into the brains of everyone present.

She was wrapped, toga-style, in the moldy, disgusting, plastic shower curtain, which was covered in some kind of cartoon-duck pattern. Her hair was plastered to her head, still dripping toilet water. She was streaked with blood and soot. She was holding her pistol in one hand and her badge in the other. She looked like a terrifying, half-drowned, roman senator who had just lost a fight with a septic tank.

"You can’t just..." she panted, her eyes wide with fury. "Who are you people? This is my case!"

Johnson looked her up and down, from her bare, muddy feet to her dripping hair. His face was a mask of professional pity and utter revulsion. "Lieutenant," he said, his voice soft, "you look like the losing contestant in a hobo-themed reality show. You are not a police officer right now. You are a material witness... and a potential suspect. You’re coming, too."

He nodded to his men. One of them pulled out a set of zip-tie cuffs and advanced on Rick.

"Hands behind your back."

This was it. Rick was calculating the odds of taking on three agents and two cops at once. Not good. He was tensing, ready to try...

"Officer Miller, Officer Davis," Johnson said, turning to the two cops. "Good work securing the scene. You’re relieved. Go get a coffee. A lot of coffee. You didn’t see anything here tonight. This was a... a jurisdictional matter. A-9 clearance. You understand?"

The two cops, completely baffled but also terrified of the men in suits, just nodded. "Y-yes, sir." They holstered their weapons and backed away, disappearing around the corner.

The second they were gone, the entire atmosphere changed.

Johnson’s two men didn’t cuff Rick. They simply... stood back. Johnson himself let out a long, weary sigh, and the hard, professional mask melted from his face. He looked... tired. And annoyed.

He looked at Rick, then at Sharon, who was still clutching her shower curtain.

"He’s right, you know," Johnson said, his voice now that of a normal, stressed-out guy. "You are in a spectacular amount of trouble."

Rick and Sharon just stared, completely wrong-footed.

"What... the hell... is going on?" Sharon breathed, her gun still wavering.

Johnson ran a hand through his hair. "My name is not Johnson. Well, it is, but it’s not important. And we’re not IA. We’re... let’s call us... a ’concerned third party’. A-9 clearance is just a string of nonsense we use to scare off local LEOs. Works every time."

Rick’s mind was racing, re-calculating everything. "You’re not with Croft. You’re not with Warner. Who are you?"

Johnson let out a real, genuine laugh. "We’re the people who own

Marnus Warner. Or at least, we’re supposed to. He’s an employee—a very, very senior one—who’s gone rogue. He’s been using company resources for his own unauthorized side-hustle, which, as you’ve just spectacularly demonstrated, involves con artists, stolen laptops, and small-scale urban warfare."

He looked at Rick with a new, appraising respect. "You two have just, very loudly and very messily, pointed a spotlight at his entire unauthorized operation. You’ve done more damage to him in 48 hours than our entire internal audit has managed in six months. We’re... fans. Big fans."

Sharon, still clutching the shower curtain, was just shaking her head. "I... I don’t understand. Who... what...?"

Rick’s mind, however, was already there. "You’ve been helping us."

Johnson nodded. "Running interference. We were the ones who made the ’anonymous tip’ about the shipyard’s security being lax. We were the ones who knew Nadia had a ’retirement fund’ in that container and ’accidentally’ left a few helpful... ’cleaning supplies’... in a golf bag that we knew she’d steal. We were going to help you get out of the motel, but... well..." He gestured to the smoking, ruined building. "You two handled that with all the subtlety of a tactical nuke. The bomb? Inspired. Truly. The kiss..." He winced. "...we’re still analyzing the tactical benefit of that one."

Sharon turned a shade of crimson so deep it almost matched the blood on her face. "You were watching us? In the container? In the bathroom?"

"We’ve been watching everyone," Johnson said, his face serious again. "Nadia, Warner, Croft. You two just... stumbled into the hornets’ nest and decided to punch the queen."

Rick cut to the chase. "You said ’System’. When you were talking to the cops."

Johnson frowned. "Did I? No... wait. You mean your System. The quests. The pop-ups. The leveling."

Rick froze.

Johnson just laughed. "Oh god, no. We’re not that good. We don’t know what that is. That’s... that’s all you, kid. We just feed you information and point you in the right direction. You’re the one who hears the ’Dings’. We’re just the guys who put the opportunities in your path and clean up the bodies afterward. You," he said to Rick, "are a fascinating, terrifying, and extremely useful anomaly."

"So what now?" Rick asked, his mind reeling from the revelation. "You’re arresting us?"

"Arresting you?" Johnson looked genuinely baffled. "Mr. Smith... we’re here to hire you. We’re here to unleash you."

He became all business. "Warner has Nadia. He has the real laptop—the one this was all a test for, to see who was smart enough to retrieve it. The one you found was just a copy. He’s holding Nadia in his penthouse at Warner Tower, and he’s about to scrub his entire operation, erase all the data, and disappear. We cannot let that happen."

"The trade..." Rick said. "The one at Grand Central."

"Is a diversion. A sideshow. He’s not going to be there," Johnson said. "He’s at the tower, personally overseeing the data wipe. We need you to go in. Now. You’re the only two people on earth his security isn’t looking for. He thinks you’re dead, or in jail. We’re going to use that."

The back door of a black, armored suburban slid open. Inside, it was a high-tech mobile command center, all glowing screens and monitors.

Johnson gestured to the open door. "Welcome to the real game, kids. We’ll provide the gear, the comms, and the extraction. You provide the... ’chaos’. How do you feel about saving the world, stopping a shadow-economy from collapsing, and getting paid an obscene amount of money for it?"

Rick looked at Sharon. She was still standing there, a tragic, bloody, half-naked wreck wrapped in a plastic curtain with cartoon ducks on it. He looked at Johnson. He looked at the new, thirty-thousand-dollar Rolex on his wrist.

A slow, cold, predatory smile spread across his face.

"I’m going to need a new suit," Rick said.