Skull continued his relentless ascent up the cold, concrete staircase of the Fortis building. He was moving tirelessly, taking the steps two at a time without his breathing ever hitching. Logically, he assumed that the commander—the one orchestrating all of this meticulous, defensive strategy outside—would be secured safely right at the absolute top of the tower.
Getting rid of him by cleanly severing the head of the snake, he might just be able to put a complete stop to all of this chaotic bloodshed in a matter of minutes. But as he seamlessly reached each consecutive floor landing, he was carefully looking at the engraved brass plaques mounted by the heavy fire doors. He was actively wondering if he would spot something else—like a server hub or a tactical armory—as he made his way up the stairs.
He didn’t actually think the head boss, or the specific person that was giving tactical orders to the frontline squads, would be sitting comfortably in a penthouse suite right at the top. They would most likely be entrenched in a reinforced security room of sorts, somewhere in the middle levels where the structural integrity of the building was strongest.
’Why did this damn building have to have so many floors?’ Skull thought, his eyes tracking a security camera as he passed another landing. ’I strictly gave Ramon fifteen minutes. I can’t afford to waste my time painstakingly checking each floor and every single office suite one by one. I guess then, strategically, it only makes sense to just keep climbing and go directly for the head then.’
As he was making his swift way up the quiet stairs, however, he found something incredibly strange. He stopped on the sixth-floor landing, his leather boots silent on the concrete.
’Shouldn’t there be armed people stationed defensively on the staircase?’ Skull analyzed, his eyes narrowing behind his bone-white mask. ’If they purposely disabled the main elevators, they would have absolutely expected us to take the stairs, right? It’s the only vertical path left. They couldn’t have possibly thought, with our overwhelming numbers outside, that we would have never eventually made it inside the lobby, right?’
The strange, silent situation was highly unnerving. The complete lack of resistance was almost exactly as if there was a polite, open invitation deliberately asking him to head deeper inside.
And when he finally reached a particular, higher floor landing, he saw exactly why the silence was so deafening. The main staircase leading further up had been completely, physically blocked off.
There was a , towering pile of heavy office furniture stacked haphazardly from floor to ceiling. Desks, filing cabinets, and metal chairs were wedged tightly together, creating an impenetrable barricade on the steps. If there was a large group of syndicate thugs with him, or perhaps some superhuman powerhouse like Jett or a heavily augmented exoskeleton user among them, they could have easily and violently moved the heavy debris away and got through rather quickly.
But for himself, being just one lean person relying on speed and technique, attempting to manually dismantle that heavy steel barricade would have been an incredibly loud, exhausting pain that would waste his fifteen minutes.
That’s when Skull slowly turned his head away from the barricade, looked towards the adjacent heavy fire door, and read the silver plaque mounted by its side.
"Media Room. I guess this is exactly where they make their corporate adverts, flyers, and promotional stuff,"Skull thought, calculating his route. "If the main stairs are choked here... maybe there’s a working service elevator or another emergency staircase located on the complete opposite side of the building that I can use to bypass this."
He placed his gloved hand flat against the cold metal of the door, readying his muscles. He fully imagined that they had tactically set it up so that the exact moment he pushed through the door and entered the unfamiliar room, there would be a heavily armed squad of people waiting in ambush, completely ready to face him in a crossfire.
When he violently pushed the heavy door open and entered the sprawling media room, Skull could immediately see several armored members of the Bloodline group taking cover. They were crouched aggressively by the editing stalls and behind other reinforced areas, their weapons drawn. He was right about the ambush.
’So, this is their grand strategy. They deliberately blocked the stairs to funnel us. They set up the office floors in specific, fortified sections, forcefully herding people to go exactly where they want to fight. They are perfectly controlling the flow of the situation. I have to admit... whoever is running this defense is significantly better than I originally thought,’ Skull analyzed.
He instantly dropped into a lethal fighting stance, preparing to slip under the incoming gunfire.
But he quickly realized that absolutely no one was pulling the trigger. And no one was actively coming toward him to engage in melee.
Instead, the armed guards just crouched there behind their desks, tracking him with their weapons, looking at him with deeply disgruntled, frustrated looks on their faces. The tension in the room was suffocating, but nobody moved an inch.
"What exactly is going on here?" Skull asked, his muffled voice breaking the heavy silence. He didn’t drop his guard. "Why aren’t you guys attacking me? You have the clear numerical advantage."
"We’ve been strictly told..." one of the tense men gripped his baton tighter, his knuckles turning white. "To just let you walk through."
When Skull narrowed his eyes and closely observed the strange situation, he could clearly see that the specific squad captain who had just spoken had a heavy walkie-talkie strapped to his tactical vest. The green light was currently blinking.
’It is most likely an elaborate trap,’ Skull deduced, his mind racing through the tactical possibilities as he slowly began to walk down the center aisle of the room. ’They are letting me pass so they can violently pin me from behind, as well as dropping an ambush from above, perfectly trapping me between two locked floors in a crossfire.’
But for a lethal professional like Skull, being surrounded wouldn’t actually be an insurmountable issue. He thrived in chaos. But the sheer discipline of it all made him genuinely wonder.
Why were they being so incredibly cautious with just one single person if it was a coordinated trap? It logically made perfect sense to employ a funneling tactic like this to deal with a large, invading group of thugs to thin their numbers. But for one lone individual? Even if the commander watching the cameras had seen his lethal skills in the lobby, letting an assassin walk freely through your headquarters was tactical suicide.
This simply wasn’t a normal way for any gang to be acting during a bloody siege.
As Skull cautiously continued to make his way up, passing through the quiet media room and finding the opposite stairwell, he was making exceptionally good time going through the building.
And as he climbed higher, he saw the exact same chilling pattern repeat itself flawlessly.
The main staircase would be heavily blocked by debris, and then it would inevitably force him to detour and head into one of the office rooms. Every single time he entered a room, heavily armed Bloodline members would be waiting, but they would simply lower their weapons and glare at him as he passed. He kept looking back over his leather shoulder, fully thinking that someone would eventually break rank, lose their nerve, and come to attack him from behind.
But they never did. The discipline was absolute.
And Skull, while traveling rapidly through the sprawling building, would calmly continue to take their generous, silent offer. It was undeniably easier and faster for him to just walk past them than forcefully dealing with them or violently fighting through dozens of men to get to the exact same physical position anyway.
But all of it just led him to genuinely wonder, a cold knot of paranoia forming in his stomach.
’What the hell is actually going on here?’