"Boss? Boss?"
It took several calls from his subordinate before Hans finally snapped back to reality. The heavy, dark turmoil swirling in his eyespletely betrayed the sheer chaos raging in his mind.
"The current chairman of the Bright Group is the Ashbourne family''s second wife. That means the Ashbournes found us."
Every single employee at The Genesis Lab was a fanatic, willing to die for a boss they had never even seen in person. The guard looked at Hans dead seriously. "Elvis Waverley''s girl is locked up in our testing wing right now. If the Ashbournes tracked us down, they have to be looking for her."
Another guard chimed in, his face twisted in a dark scowl. "Boss, we need to take them out. We have to be decisive. It''s incredibly dangerous that they even got this close. If they drive back and hand these coordinates to the Ashbournes, this entireb is finished!"
Hans stared nkly at the screen, his massive hands curling tighter and tighter until the veins bulged against his skin.
"This isn''t overseas. If you kill someone in Elmsworth—especially someone tied to the Ashbourne family—they will hunt you to the ends of the earth. Do not engage. Find a way to run them off the road instead."
The two guards traded stunned looks.
This was the most they had ever heard Hans speak at one time.
Right then, another guard burst into the room, looking frantic as he barked out a direct order.
"Ms. Alexia has issued a red alert! Better to kill the innocent than let a threat escape. Anyone intruding on base territory is to be executed on sight!"
Hans''s brown eyes contracted fiercely. For the very first time, he lost his irondposure and roared.
"Stand down! No one fires!"
"I''m sorry, Boss. Ms. Alexia said this orderes directly from Sir. We have to obey. Engage!"
One of the guards immediately hammered away at his keyboard, redirecting twobat drones toward the ck sedan.
For some inexplicable reason, Hans felt the blood freeze in his veins. It all rushed toward his violently pounding chest. His heart hammered so erratically he felt like it was going to explode at any second.
He grabbed his chest with one hand, his other hand gripping the edge of the console in a white-knuckle hold.
He had never felt anything like this before. It felt as if something immeasurably precious was being brutally, bloodily carved right out of his body.
In that split second, a single, overwhelming urge hijacked his brain—
He had to stop this!
But if he stopped it, Chad Abernathy would instantly know he waspromised.
He wasn''t afraid of dying. He was afraid of losing his cover in the dark, and terrified
he would lose his only chance to drag Elsie Archer out of this living hell!
Bang! Bang! Bang!
The deafening roar of automatic gunfire sted through the speakers.
On the screen, a hail of bullets from the drones ripped into the ck sedan.
The tires shredded instantly. The car violently fishtailed across the
mountain road, mming into the rock face on the left before
cocheting straight into the
guardrail on the right.
Beyond that guardrail was a steep cliff dropping straight into a
zero percent ofance of survival They would be crushed to pieces!
"No..." Hans opened his dry lips, his eyes burning bloody red.
More gunshots rang out.
He was forced to watch as the sedanpletely blew through the barrier and tumbled violently down the embankment toward the water.
Then, the feed went dead silent.
A crushing, suffocating agony coiled tightly around Hans''s heart, threatening to rip it into quarters.
He had never experienced such paralyzing terror.
He felt like a lost child who had been separated from his parents, spinning around and around in circles, unable to find his way home.
At that moment, the guard who had delivered the kill order picked up thendline.
"Ms. Alexia, we followed your orders and eliminated the hostile vehicle."
A few secondster, the guard turned back to the drone operators. "Ms. Alexia wants the drones to fly down and verify the kills if anyone is still breathing, finish them. Leave no survivors!"