Chapter 374.
<strong>Chapter 374. Operation: Brainjack, Phase 1; War of Attrition Day 1 (6/6)</strong>
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hold up, what are you doing?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well, if you don’t want to help, then I’ll have no other choice but to go out like this and offer my head up to Swastika on a silver tter.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re bluffing. There’s no way you’d do that.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Sure I would. Here you go.” I tossed the wig over to him and started to remove the shirt over the fat suit.
<span style="font-weight:400">“You can take the fat suit and clothes and get out if you’re too scared to go through with this. There’s nothing wrong with being afraid. You could die if I betray your trust after all. Dying is scary. Nothing is guaranteed, and if you can’t trust me, then I agree with your decision to not help me.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I said I’d trust you if you agree to be friends.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Well sorry, I will never trust friends with my life. Meaning, I won’t be able to trust you if we’re friends. That will make this n impossible.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“You’re saying that you’d trust someone you’re not friends with more than a friend?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I don’t trust anyone… unless... they’re willing to sell me their soul to me through a contract.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“What are you, a devil?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, I am actually.” I shrugged in a nonchnt, unserious fashion.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Devil my ass. Fuck off, who’s scared man? Me? I’m not scared at all of dying and I’m definitely not getting cold feet. Tell you what, if we do get rid of Swastika somehow, I’ll sell you my damn soul. My soul for getting rid of a gang of rapists and murders while simultaneously increasing the number of future hot babes in the city to gawk at isn’t a bad trade at all.” Jass walked up to me and pped the wig down on my head.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Rosa, let’s go. I’ll show him who’s scared of dying. This is for the future of hot babesing to this city.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I quickly readjusted the wig on my head and fixed my shirt as Jass opened the door. Rosa and I followed out behind him. She had a rather amused smile on her face.
<span style="font-weight:400">I naturally didn’t forget my stic bag with my things inside.
<span style="font-weight:400">Rosa and Jass exited the store together and headed to our pre-established destination. I didn’t immediately leave the store after them. Rather, I waited inside reading a magazine with the window to my left. Between the pages of the magazine, I took out my phone, connected to a logless VPN, and checked a disposable email I’d set up.
<span style="font-weight:400">There was an email. When I read the contents, there were only two words, ‘Call me.’
<span style="font-weight:400">I wouldn’t call them here though.
<span style="font-weight:400">I turned off the location tracking services, put it into airne mode, removed the SIM card, and powered down the phone. I did the same for Rosa’s. Even then it still wasn’t impossible for the phone to be tracked, but it was still extremely unlikely for the police at least to be able to track it like this.
<span style="font-weight:400">If for example there was a Trojan on my phone or even a chip connected directly to the battery internally, it could potentially be tracked, but there was no chance that would happen.
<span style="font-weight:400">Why didn’t I go to such lengths for the operation as the school yesterday? Well, there’s no way anyone above the police would get involved for that.
<span style="font-weight:400">This time too that was pretty unlikely, but I wouldn’t take any chances this time around. The ending of this wasn’t going to be something minor like trespassing or petty theft. This time around, someone was guaranteed to die, no, to be murdered in cold blood.
<span style="font-weight:400">It didn’t matter who the deceased person was, a murderer was nevertheless a murderer.
<span style="font-weight:400">I exited the store and hopped on my motorcycle. I put my helmet on, started it up, and took off. I traveled around the city for a while taking constant random turns to make sure nobody was following me. When I was confident nobody was, I headed to the parking lot at the mall and parked my motorcycle there.
<span style="font-weight:400">I got off it and started walking in the direction of a building. I was leaving my motorcycle here for Jass tomorrow. Today, after they encountered Malory, they would head to a vacant but furnished apartment Rosa scouted out before work and lock picked.
<span style="font-weight:400">The unit directly below it was also vacant. They would enter the top one then grapple down into the unit below it and Jass would stay inside that one. During his stay, he would never turn on the lights in the unit. This was to prevent anyone who might be keeping an eye on the building from noticing them when they moved to the lower unit in the dark of night from the outside. Rosa would then slip out from the building in a disguise she’d prepared and left there earlier today. She’d return home after that.
<span style="font-weight:400">I’d instructed Jass to leave his phone in that unit by slipping it in through the mail slot before he showed up at the store. This way, he’d have his phone in case anything unexpected happened and he needed to call for help.
<span style="font-weight:400">As I thought over the n in my head while I walked, I turned into a small dark alley between two buildings.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What do you want fatty? If you’ve got no business here, then scram.” A girl donning a helmet with a dark visor hiding her face, dressed in an all-ck leather jumpsuit, spoke up when I turned the corner. She was leaning against the wall of the building with her arms crossed.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Lea, it’s me.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Huh? Ran?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“The hell, how much do you need to eat in one day to get so fat?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“It’s a fat suit.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Pfft. This look suits you well. Hahaha!” She started holding her stomach andughing as she poked my protruding belly.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Shut up. It’s all part of the n. It’s going well so far. Let’s hurry up and get out of here.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, yeah. You said we’d be heading out of the city, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. Make sure we’re not followed.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m free to go as fast as I want, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah.”
<span style="font-weight:400">I followed behind Lea deeper down the alley to a dead end.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Where’s your bike?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Behind this, duh.”
<span style="font-weight:400">She put her hands on the wall and pulled to one side. When she released it she raised her right leg up and kicked at the dead end. The wall flew open to the side. Behind it, her motorcycle awaited us. In front of it was another wall that she repeated the same actions for.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Is this one of the ways you evade the cops?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah. There are a bunch of other locations we have set up for losing them though. This is just one of many littered throughout the city. There’s also a manhole here which we can slip out through if we’re ever really trapped without any escape. We’d have to ditch the bike, but it’s better than getting busted. My gang has fully mapped out the city’s sewer system. It makes for a pretty solid escape as I can change out my clothes and pop out where I have my street legal bike at.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I see.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hey, close that one behind us. Don’t bother putting the lock on it though. That’s only to be used if the cops are hot on our tail and we’re buying time to get out through the sewers.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Right.”
<span style="font-weight:400">It had been made to look like a natural wall between the two buildings. In reality, neither wall was a real one. They’d even installed a ceiling above the two walls. It was essentially a makeshift parking garage created by transforming an open alleyway between two buildings into a dead-end one.
<span style="font-weight:400">Honestly, I was pretty impressed by their work. When it came to evading the cops, they were definitely well prepared. She wasn’t kidding when she called herself a street rat. She’d gone as far as mapping out the city sewer system and was willing to use it for ast resort escape n.
<span style="font-weight:400">I did as she requested and closed the wall to our rear as she moved her motorcycle out the other side that opened up to the sidewalk.
<span style="font-weight:400">I followed her out and closed the second wall off while she got on her motorcycle and started it up.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Hop on fatty.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I’m not fat, I’m big-boned.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Pfft hahaha! Yeah, yeah. You’re big-boned. Sure you are. Let’s go.”
<span style="font-weight:400">When I climbed on the back she said, “My baby sounds like it’s crying from all the extra weight.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Did you put on too many pointstelyyyyyyyyy!” She cranked the handle and we went from 0 to 100 in a few short seconds. Caught off guard and terrified I’d fall off I hugged her tight. I wouldn’tin this time since I’d told her to go as fast as possible to ensure we couldn’t be followed.
<span style="font-weight:400">In a short ten minutes, we were out of the city. Ten minutes after that, going at about 350 kilometers per hour, we were pretty far away from the city. We parked up in a ditch about a hundred meters away from a gas station in the middle of nowhere.
<span style="font-weight:400">“What now?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“I want you to call this number using the payphone in the booth outside the gas station.” I handed over a piece of paper with a number written on it before I opened the stic bag I brought with me and retrieved two two-way radios I borrowed from Rosa. After I handed one over to her I exined, “Hold this two-way radio up to the phone. I’llmunicate with the person we’re calling through this.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“All this just to make a call? Isn’t this a bit excessive?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, it definitely is.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Just who are you calling that you’re going through all this effort for?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Don’t worry about it.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Haaaah. Fine.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Leave the key with me.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Are you nning to ditch me here?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“No, it’s just a precaution. Remember, with the contract we have, if I betray you, I die.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Oh yeah, I forgot about that.” She tossed the key over to me as she started walking toward the gas station.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Your phone is off, right?”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Yeah, it’s been off this entire time. I never even have the battery connected when I’m driving this motorcycle unless I have no other choice.”
<span style="font-weight:400">“Good.”
<span style="font-weight:400">Not too long after that, Lea stepped into the payphone booth and inserted a coin. She dialed the number and held the two-way radio up to it.
<span style="font-weight:400">Ring.
<span style="font-weight:400">Ring.
<span style="font-weight:400">Ring.
<span style="font-weight:400">Click.
<span style="font-weight:400">It connected.
<span style="font-weight:400">“...”
<span style="font-weight:400">“...”
<span style="font-weight:400">Both sides were initially quiet and didn’t say anything.
<span style="font-weight:400">“Is this… Devthor?”
<span style="font-weight:400">The other end was the first to break the silence. Before I responded, I pressed a button on the two-way radio designed to scramble and distort my voice and confirmed, “Yes, this is Devthor…”