Raymond collapsed against the compound's interior wall. Carlos bent double beside him, both breathing hard; their chests heaved in synchronised exhaustion. Engines whined and gunfire erupted beyond the sealed gate—distant now, reinforced steel and concrete muffled the sounds.
Guards emerged from doorways, raising their weapons. Six men moved with casual precision, accustomed to violence.
A figure emerged from the crowd. Scarred face. Eyes like flint. The guard leader.
"What the fuck was that?" His voice carried the weight of someone used to obedience.
Carlos straightened, still breathing hard but recovering faster than Raymond. His hands remained visible, non-threatening.
"We got taken. Ransom play." Carlos gestured toward Raymond, who remained slumped against the wall, playing the part of the exhausted, terrified hostage. "They grabbed us outside the casino. We got out through the vent system."
The guard leader assessed them, shifting his gaze between the two. The leader studied Raymond with the intensity of a predator evaluating prey, placing his hand on his sidearm's grip.
"Who's the kid?"
Carlos stepped slightly forward, familiar warmth overcoming their distance, not aggression. He placed a hand on Raymond's shoulder and smiled—the expression of someone introducing a close friend.
"John. Rich friend of mine." Carlos winked at the guard leader. The gesture carried meaning: he's useful, he's connected, he's worth keeping alive.
The guard leader's posture shifted minutely. Understanding flickered across his scarred features. He knew the type—wealthy foreigners seeking thrills in the outer sprawl, worth more intact than damaged.
He jerked his chin toward one of his men.
"Check him."
The guard approached Raymond, who slouched, making himself small and compliant. The guard performed a professional pat down—quick, efficient, thorough. Hands moved across his torso, sides, legs. Checked his waistband. Inside his jacket. Nothing.
The guard stepped back and nodded.
"Clear."
The leader relaxed slightly, though his hand never left his weapon.
Carlos guided Raymond forward and put an arm around Raymond's shoulders, a casual, reassuring gesture. The guards parted, creating a corridor toward the compound's interior. Fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in clinical blue-white.
"Come on," Carlos said, his voice warm and welcoming. "Let's get you cleaned up. You look like shit."
They walked deeper into the Sand Rats' den.
Carlos led Raymond through narrow corridors lined with exposed pipes and flickering overhead lights. The air smelled of stale sweat and gun oil. Two flights of rusted metal stairs brought them to an upper level where the walls transitioned from concrete to prefabricated panels—someone had invested in making this section habitable.
"Almost there," Carlos said, flashing a grin over his shoulder. "Got the best suite on this floor."
He swiped a key card at an unmarked door. The interior surprised Raymond—plush leather seating, a wet bar with top-shelf liquor, even climate control humming softly. Carlos moved straight to the crystal decanters.
"Whisky?" He pulled two tumblers from a shelf without waiting for an answer. "You look like you need it after that shitstorm."
Raymond positioned himself at the room's geometric center—clear sightlines to both doors and windows. His pulse remained steady. Twelve years SAS. Eight as private sector. Eighteen-year-old body notwithstanding, his instincts hadn't dulled.
Carlos turned his back to pour the drinks. The decanter clinked against glass.
Now.
Raymond summoned the Vector-7 from inventory. The suppressor materialized already threaded—no wasted motion. Two shots perforated Carlos: the first through the back of the head, the second to the back of the heart. Carlos collapsed like a marionette with cut strings, whisky splashing across polished wood.
Raymond caught the decanter before it hit the floor. He set it aside, then dragged Carlos's corpse into the ensuite bathroom. He quickly wiped the worst blood spatter with towels. He ran a quick inventory check on the corpse: a key card, which Raymond immediately pocketed; empty pockets otherwise.
Back in the main room, he righted the toppled tumbler. Smoothed the whisky-wet bar top. The suite now read "occupied" to any casual observer.
At the door, Raymond activated [Basic Sneak]. The familiar sensation washed over him—like slipping into a second skin that muted sound and blurred edges. He eased into the corridor, scanning both directions. Clear.
The door clicked shut behind him.
Raymond moved through the corridor with [Basic Sneak] active. The skill wrapped him in that familiar distortion—not invisibility, but a blurring of edges that made eyes slide past without registering threat.
A guard stood thirty meters ahead, back turned, one hand resting on his rifle sling while the other held a cigarette. Smoke drifted upward in lazy spirals. The man's posture read bored—weight on one hip, head tilted toward the window overlooking the compound's courtyard.
Raymond closed the distance. Twenty meters. Fifteen. His boots made no sound against the metal grating. Ten meters. The guard took another drag, exhaling through his nose.
Five meters.
Raymond's hand moved. The Vector-7 materialized mid-reach, suppressor already threaded. He raised the weapon, sight picture forming automatically—muscle memory from two decades of fieldwork translating through this younger body without conscious thought.
The guard started to turn.
Raymond fired.
Thwip.
The suppressed round punched through the guard's temple. The man's knees buckled. His cigarette tumbled from slack fingers. His body folded sideways, hitting the grating with a muted thump, rifle clattering beside him.
Raymond stepped over the corpse without breaking stride. The Vector-7 vanished back into inventory.
Two guards ahead. They stood in an open common area where three corridors converged—a junction point with overhead lighting that left no shadows to exploit. The guards faced each other, conversation flowing in low tones Raymond couldn't parse from this distance.
He pressed against the corridor wall, assessing angles. Thirty meters of open ground. No cover between his position and theirs. The moment he stepped into that lit space, [Basic Sneak] wouldn't save him—the skill blurred edges, muted sound, but couldn't defeat direct line of sight in well-lit areas.
He needed them separated. Or distracted.
Raymond's eyes tracked the environment. Exposed pipes ran along the ceiling. Electrical junction boxes mounted to the walls. A maintenance ladder bolted to the far corner.
Nothing useful.
The guards shifted position. One turned slightly, his back now angled toward Raymond's corridor. The other remained facing forward, but his attention had drifted—eyes on his wrist-mounted data pad, fingers swiping through some interface.
Fifteen seconds. Maybe twenty before their positions changed again.
Raymond moved.
He crossed into the junction at an angle that used the first guard's body as a screen. The Vector-7 materialized. Two rounds. The first guard's head snapped back—exit wound spraying the wall behind him. The second guard's hand was already moving toward his rifle when Raymond's bullet caught him through the throat.
Both bodies dropped within a second of each other.
Raymond crossed the junction, stepping around the spreading blood pools. The Vector-7 disappeared. Behind him, one guard's boot scraped against metal in a final spasm before going still.
Third corridor. Single guard at a checkpoint—makeshift barrier cobbled from metal drums and chain-link fencing. The man sat on a stool, rifle across his lap, head nodding forward in near-sleep.
Raymond drew the Vector-7. Single shot. The guard slumped sideways off the stool, rifle clattering to the floor.
Four down.
Raymond pressed into an alcove where the corridor bent at a right angle. The metal grating beneath his boots was tacky with old grease. He deactivated [Basic Sneak]—the skill's constant drain on focus wasn't necessary while stationary.
His internal clock put the time at twelve minutes since entering the compound. Sayeed's crew should be in position by now. The plan called for external commotion at the fifteen-minute mark—loud enough to pull the outer guards away from their posts, creating a window for the second phase.
He waited.
The silence pressed in. Distant ventilation hum. The occasional creak of settling metal. Somewhere below, muffled voices drifted through the compound's skeletal structure, too distorted to parse.
Raymond focused inward. The familiar pale blue interface materialized in his peripheral vision—translucent, visible only to him.
[ Main Quest: Locate and Destroy Sand Rat Gang ] [ Completion Rate: 21.43% ]
[ Sub Quest 1: Eliminate Sand Rat Outpost ] [ Completion Rate: 100% ]
[ Sub Quest 2: Rescue Rakheel Abu Al Bakar from captivity ] [ Completion Rate: 100% ]
Twenty-one percent. Five confirmed kills—four guards and Carlos. The percentage sat frustratingly low. How many more were inside this compound? A dozen? Two dozen? The intelligence from the brokers had been vague on exact numbers, focusing instead on territory and operations.
Three weeks wasn't enough time for careful reconnaissance. He'd have to work with incomplete information and adapt as targets presented themselves.
The interface flickered. He dismissed it with a thought.
Fifteen seconds later, gunfire erupted outside.
Not the controlled bursts of professional operators—this was wild, undisciplined automatic fire. The sound carried through the compound's walls, muffled but unmistakable. Shouts followed. Engines revving. The outer perimeter responding exactly as anticipated.
Raymond counted to ten. Gave the guards time to commit to the external threat. Then he reactivated [Basic Sneak] and stepped back into the corridor.
Time to finish clearing the interior.
Raymond moved deeper into the compound's industrial section. The corridor opened into a maintenance bay—high ceiling, exposed steel beams, heavy machinery bolted to reinforced flooring. A guard stood beside a hydraulic press, inspecting a data pad mounted to the machine's control panel.
The press itself was massive—ten tons of crushing force, industrial-grade equipment designed for compacting scrap metal. Its vertical ram sat raised in the maintenance position, held by a single electromagnetic lock. A red indicator light blinked on the control panel.
Raymond assessed the angles. The guard stood within the press's operational envelope, his back to the kill zone. [Basic Sneak] kept Raymond's approach silent as he closed the distance to the control panel on the opposite side.
His fingers found the emergency release—a mechanical lever protected by a plastic safety cover. He flipped the cover up. The guard's head started to turn, some instinct registering wrongness in his peripheral awareness.
Raymond yanked the lever down.
The electromagnetic lock disengaged with a sharp metallic clunk. The ram dropped. Ten tons of steel plummeted three meters in less than a second, the hydraulic dampeners offline in emergency mode.
The guard's scream cut off instantly as the ram crushed him against the lower plate. Metal shrieked. Something wet splattered. The machine shuddered once, then went still, the ram settling with a pneumatic hiss.
Raymond moved away from the control panel—
Footsteps. Running. Coming fast from the adjacent corridor.
"Marco? Marco, what the fuck was that?"
Guard six. The noise had carried.
Raymond's hand moved to inventory. The stun grenade materialized—compact cylinder, pin already accessible. He pulled it, counted two seconds, then threw it blind around the corridor corner.
"What the—"
BANG
The flashbang detonated with a percussive crack that rattled through the maintenance bay. Brilliant white light flooded the corridor. A man screamed—not pain, but sensory overload. The guard stumbled into view, hands pressed against his face, rifle dangling from its sling.
Raymond deactivated [Basic Sneak]. No point maintaining it now.
He closed the distance in three strides. The Vector-7 materialized mid-draw. Single shot to the head. The guard dropped, his scream cutting off mid-breath.
Boots pounded against metal grating. Multiple contacts. Coming from two directions—one from the corridor ahead, another from the stairwell behind.
Raymond stored the Vector-7 and moved toward the intersection point, reading the acoustics. Two guards. Converging on his position. Maybe twenty seconds out.
He positioned himself at the junction where three corridors met—back to the wall, angles covered. The first guard appeared from the left corridor. The second emerged from the right simultaneously.
They spotted him. Rifles came up.
Too close. Ten meters. The narrow corridors gave them no room to maneuver, but the same limitation applied to him.
Raymond lunged forward—not away, but toward the left guard. Inside his firing arc before the man could adjust. His hand shot out, deflecting the rifle barrel upward. The guard tried to pull back. Raymond didn't let him. His other hand drove forward, fingers rigid, striking the soft tissue below the Adam's apple.
The guard's windpipe collapsed with a wet crunch. He dropped the rifle, hands flying to his throat, eyes wide with panic as his airway sealed shut.
Movement behind. The second guard charging in.
Raymond spun. The second guard slammed into him, the impact driving them both against the wall. The man's rifle clattered away, lost in the collision. They grappled—close, brutal, no room for technique. The guard's fist connected with Raymond's ribs. Pain flared. Raymond drove his elbow up, catching the man's jaw. Bone cracked.
The guard stumbled back, dazed. His eyes tracked downward—to the fallen rifle three meters away.
He dove.
Raymond's hand moved to inventory. The Raptor-9 materialized already in firing position. He squeezed the trigger.
The SMG roared—nine-millimeter rounds at full automatic. No aiming. No precision. Just volume of fire in a confined space.
Bullets stitched across the guard's diving form. One caught his shoulder. Another his side. A third punched through his skull as his trajectory carried him downward. He hit the grating face-first, momentum sliding him another half-meter before he went still.
Raymond released the trigger. The Raptor-9′s echo faded, replaced by ringing silence and the wet, desperate gasping of the first guard dying against the wall, hands still clutching his ruined throat.
Raymond stored the SMG. He checked both corridors—clear. The dying guard's gasps grew weaker, then stopped.
Eight down.
The compound had gone quiet. No more footsteps. No shouts. Just the hum of ventilation and the distant crackle of gunfire outside where Sayeed's crew maintained their distraction.
Raymond moved deeper into the den's interior, toward where the leadership would be holed up.
His eyes flicked to the quest log hovering at the corner of his vision.
[ Main Quest: Locate and Destroy Sand Rat Gang ] [ Completion Rate: 47.14% ]
Time to find the boss of this den, the elusive Giant Rat.