Chapter 6 - The Hostage Situation
The sharp crack of the breaking tablet silenced the entire room.
Vance's face twisted into a mask of pure, unadulterated rage.
"Shoot him in the legs!" Vance screamed at the mercenaries.
Three armed men stepped forward and leveled their heavy rifles at Julian.
Suddenly, a loud crash echoed from the front entrance of the lobby.
Ryan the security guard had just driven a heavy armored transport van straight through the bulletproof glass doors.
Shattered glass rained down like diamonds as the heavy truck plowed into the lobby.
The mercenaries turned their weapons toward the truck and opened fire in a deafening roar.
Bullets pinged uselessly off the thick armor plating of the vehicle.
Ryan kicked open the driver's side door and rolled out behind a massive concrete pillar.
"Get down!" Ryan shouted, tossing a heavy black duffel bag sliding across the floor to Julian.
Julian unzipped the bag and pulled out two advanced tactical EMP grenades.
He pulled the pins and rolled them perfectly across the marble floor.
The grenades detonated with a silent flash of blinding blue light.
Every mercenary's night-vision goggles short-circuited instantly, temporarily blinding them.
The laser sights on their rifles died, and their communication earpieces erupted in violent static.
Julian used the chaos to sprint across the lobby and dive behind the pillar next to Ryan.
"I thought I fired you," Julian said, checking his pockets for a spare clip.
"You can't fire me, I don't technically work for you yet," Ryan grunted, chambering a round in his shotgun.
The mercenaries quickly ripped off their useless goggles and began advancing on the pillar.
The countdown clock above them showed only four minutes remaining.
"We can't hold off thirty heavily armed killers," Ryan warned, peeking around the corner.
Julian pulled out his battered cell phone, which was completely unaffected by the EMP blast.
"We don't have to fight them," Julian whispered with a cold smile.
"We just have to flush them out."
Julian pressed a sequence of numbers into his phone and hit the call button.
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A mechanized voice echoed from the ceiling speakers.
"Initiating deep-sea atmospheric protocol," the building's AI announced.
