Total pages in book: 96
Estimated words: 89763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 89763 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 449(@200wpm)___ 359(@250wpm)___ 299(@300wpm)
Another of Aeacus’s people, a small person with medium-brown skin and more piercings than I can easily count, comes up. They point to a spot that looks like every other part of the building. “Do we have a security layout?”
“Let me check.” The guy at the computer mutters a little and then the image changes, a secondary layer appearing in green over the black lines. “There.”
“This is Mars,” Aeacus introduces the new person. “They’re the best.”
I haven’t worked with them before, so I’ll believe it when I see it. But I’m not usually sent on shit like this. I prefer to work alone, and I’m not what you’d call subtle.
Mars whistles under their breath. “They have this thing locked up tighter than…” They glance at me and swallow hard. “Well, tight.”
I have a feeling they were about to say some shit about Ariadne, but I let it slide. This time. “Walk me through it.”
“Everything is passcoded. Means you can’t just kill some fucker and take his badge. You need the code. And I need some time to confirm this, but if Zeus is as paranoid as these plans indicate, I’d bet a month’s wages that the passcode either changes regularly or everyone has their own individual one. Makes it harder to hack.”
I eye the plans on the wall. “So we bust our way in.”
“Not going to work.” They tap the stairwells. “These are blast doors. They drop in the case of an attack, and they can be triggered remotely.”
Fuck. I cross my arms over my chest and consider the plans. Blast doors on the stairwells. Elevators that will shut down the moment there’s trouble. Means it’s impossible to go up…but it’s equally impossible to escape. “We go down.”
“What?” Aeacus looks at me like I’ve grown a second head. “These buildings are created to be steady. It will take more than a handful of bombs in the basement to topple it. We need to take out at least the first couple floors, if not the entire bottom half. We need to go up.”
Bringing down buildings is a pain in the ass. “So we don’t do it all at once. We infiltrate and plant the bombs over the course of a couple days and remote detonate when the time comes.”
“That brings us back to the problem of getting in.”
“Yeah.” I lean forward. “Is there a water line we can break? Some shit that will require outside maintenance?”
“I’ll look.” The guy at the computer types away and whistles. “Whoever got you these blueprints was thorough.” One click and an orange layer is added to the schematic. “Water lines.” Another click adds red. “Electrical.”
Aeacus hums under his breath. “They’ll pull in their own people to fix something that goes wrong.”
“They’ll try.” I shrug. “Your team has done a bait and switch before. Won’t take much to do it again.” I’m too recognizable. Not that I want to dress up like a plumber and fix some pipes.
“It might work. Risky but it’s something.” He frowns. “Give us some time to run some scenarios and get things into place. Minos wants an update tonight.” He glances at me. “You should probably be there for it.”
It’s the very last thing I want to do, but when has that stopped me? “Wouldn’t miss it. Text me when you’re ready.”
I almost call Ariadne, but there’s no reason to update her until I have the full details. I’d rather do it in person anyway.
As tempting as it is to check in on her, I head back to my apartment. She promised to stay inside today and keep her head down. She’s as safe as it’s possible to be in this fucking city. It will have to be enough for now.
Plus, I’m not as young as I used to be. I haven’t slept much in the last week, and I’m starting to feel the effects. I need to crash for a few hours so my head doesn’t get muddled. Missing shit because I’m fuzzy is unacceptable.
I’m stumbling a little as I unlock my door and slip inside. I haven’t bothered to go back to the apartment Minos keeps, but I’ll have to make an appearance tomorrow. In the meantime…I sigh and pull out my phone.
Minos picks up on the first ring, the eager fucker. “Well?”
“We have a plan. Aeacus is getting things lined up. I don’t have a timeline yet, but we’re moving as fast as is feasibly possible.”
He curses. “I need it done next week.”
I pause. “What?”
“Next week, Minotaur. Circe’s orders. She’s got something in the works, and she needs that tower to come down to make it happen. So we will make it happen.”
Easy for him to say. He’s sitting nice and safe in his penthouse, yelling commands without any comprehension of the implications. He wasn’t always like this, but something about all the repeated failures has cracked his confidence. Or maybe it was Ariadne’s defection. Or Theseus’s. Impossible to say the specific thing that pushed him over the edge, but now I’m the one having to deal with the consequences.