The high-grade security cameras wired throughout the sprawling Fortis building were strategically set up to be simultaneously viewed from two separate, secure areas.
One was the reinforced training room on the lower levels, where Max and his elite Rangers had set up their tactical command center. The other was the luxurious, executive corner office situated on a much higher floor, which was exactly where Vivian was currently seated.
She had been the one aggressively running the tactical board, tracking movements on the monitors and giving precise, life-saving orders directly to the squad captains on the microphones so far.
However, down in the training room, the Rangers also had encrypted walkie-talkies clipped to their vests. They were silently listening in on the secure channel, closely monitoring every single word Vivian relayed to the troops, just in case the former Black Hound strategist suddenly decided to maliciously change sides in the middle of the siege.
It wasn’t as if they could fully trust her like they could with the rest of their sworn brothers and sisters. Trust was earned in blood, and she had only recently been their enemy.
As Vivian sat in the air-conditioned office, her fingers froze over the keyboard. She stared at the glowing monitor, her breath hitching in her throat as she watched the chilling figure in the leather jacket stare directly back at the camera lens, holding the stolen radio.
"I’m coming for you."
The words echoed through the earpiece. A profound, paralyzing chill ran down Vivian’s spine.
’Skull...’ Vivian thought, her hands beginning to tremble slightly as the masked man vanished from the camera feed, stepping into the blind spots of the building. ’Out of everyone standing in that army outside... he might truly be the absolute worst of them all.’
Staring at the empty monitor, she couldn’t help but start to think back to the golden days of the Black Hounds.
Before this war, the Black Hounds were already incredibly strong and had been rapidly making a terrifying name for themselves as a highly successful, brutal organization in the underworld.
Their primary source of income was running a highly lucrative, completely illegal underground fighting and betting ring. The way their brutal promotion mainly worked, and the reason they drew such crowds of high-rolling gamblers, was having the giant, Jett, act as their undisputed, undefeated champion.
Jett’s terrifying name was getting around the district. The Black Hounds openly welcomed absolutely anyone, from street thugs to trained martial artists, to step into the blood-soaked cage and challenge him to a fight.
Rival gangs that considered themselves to be on the exact same level of power as the Black Hounds thought this open challenge was a perfect, public way to show everyone who was truly the boss of the underground. But every single time, they ended up failing miserably.
Even when rival factions didn’t want to fight through regular, sanctioned means and cowardly tried to jump Jett or assassinate him in the dark corridors of the underground fighting arena, Jett had brutally beaten them all down, leaving piles of broken bones in his wake.
The three leaders at the helm of the Black Hounds, Darius, Vivian, and Jett, were doing incredibly well. They were young, rich, and ruthless. They were absolutely sure they could continue growing their empire, and they were arrogantly confident they could physically take on anyone in the city, including the major Syndicates.
Which was exactly why, when the representatives of the Gilt Rats had come to them with a highly lucrative corporate offer, an offer to heavily fund and franchise the underground fighting arenas so they could be placed everywhere across the city, as long as the Syndicate got a major percentage cut, what did the Black Hounds proudly decide to do?
They spat in their faces and said no.
They had physically beaten every single person that had ever come to challenge them. And the Gilt Rats? Well, to the hardened street fighters of the Black Hounds, they just didn’t seem dangerous at all.
The Syndicate representatives had a particular, almost sterile air around them. Even when visiting the gritty underground cage fights in their pristine white lab coats, it was glaringly obvious that they were a corporate gang that probably wasn’t too strong in the actual, physical fighting department.
Vivian and Darius simply assumed the Gilt Rats had made their fortunes strictly by selling top-of-the-line illegal narcotics, or had a brilliant team of chemists, and essentially bought their way to the top of the food chain.
If that was actually the case, although the Black Hounds might not possess the vast financial resources to top the Syndicate just yet, surely the soft scientists wouldn’t be foolish enough to actually try and wage a physical war against them?
Not when the Syndicate could clearly see they had an absolute monster like Jett standing on their side. On top of that, Vivian also intimately knew the true, terrifying physical strength of Darius as well. Darius was their hidden card, a lethal fighter kept in reserve if things ever really needed to get bloody.
But their arrogance was their downfall.
It happened when Ramon, the leader of the Gilt Rats himself, was personally visiting the Black Hounds’ main venue one evening. He was sitting comfortably with Darius in a plush, soundproof VIP booth overlooking the fighting cage.
As the leader of the largest Syndicate gang in the city, Darius still didn’t want to completely get on the Gilt Rats’ bad side and provoke an unnecessary war. So, he spoke to him openly, trying to politely decline the franchise offer again.
"You know, Darius, there are far more ways than one to forcefully shut your little operation down for not cooperating with us," Ramon said smoothly, sipping a glass of expensive liquor as he looked down at the blood on the cage floor. "There are political ways to bring absolutely every rival group in this city against you."
Ramon smiled, a cold, calculating look in his eye. "It only takes a few well-placed bribes to get some heavy-handed police investigators to no longer turn a blind eye to what is happening down here in this basement. We mostly don’t care for a lot of street-level business, but once an operation like yours starts doing exceptionally well, there is an absolute need to talk to us for doing these things in our city."
Darius tightened his grip on the velvet armrest. He could tell it was a blatant, unapologetic threat to destroy their empire. And standing quietly in the corner of the room, Vivian knew something else was coming as well. The trap was closing.
"Are you a gambling man, Darius?" Ramon asked, his tone shifting to one of dangerous amusement. "Well, you would have to be, right? To set up a high-stakes venue exactly like this. I want to generously give you guys a fair chance."
Ramon leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
"How about we make a wager? We put our own Syndicate champion up against your undefeated champion in the cage. And if my fighter wins... then you and your entire gang work for us."
Ramon outlined the terms. "You will become a direct subsidiary of the Gilt Rats. You can continue to run everything day-to-day exactly as you have been doing, but in all important strategic matters, you are to strictly follow the Gilt Rats’ orders. And a heavy percentage of the venue’s overall profits will have to go to us. But don’t worry, Darius. A small percentage of a much bigger, Syndicate-backed pie will result in you getting a lot more money than what you currently have now."
Listening from the shadows, Vivian knew exactly what this was. This was a typical, predatory setup between groups and gangs in the underworld, a classic hostile takeover that would force them to fall under one major family, having several lower-leveled subsidiaries bleeding upward.
But... there was a chance. A desperate hope that they didn’t actually need to surrender their freedom, as long as they could just win the fight. Jett was invincible. Even if the Gilt Rats were confident they were going to win, the Black Hounds had to at least try.
Darius looked down at Jett, who was currently brutalizing an opponent in the cage below. He smirked.
"Alright, Ramon. You have a deal," Darius said, brimming with absolute confidence.
And that was exactly when Vivian saw it.
The temperature in the VIP booth seemed to instantly plummet. Seemingly stepping directly out of the absolute, pitch-black shadows from behind all of them, moving so silently that not even Darius’s heightened senses had picked up his approach, Skull walked forward.
He moved like a ghost, his leather jacket creaking softly as he casually sat down in the leather chair opposite them. The bone-white mask gleamed under the dim booth lights.
"So," Skull asked, his muffled voice devoid of any human emotion. "Who am I fighting?"