Page 78 of Pretty Little Assassin

“One of us should still have gone with Valentina,” I grumble as Zero and Alley Cat pile into the car with me. “It was stupid to let her go alone.”

“She can handle herself. You, I’m not so sure about.”

My brow raises. “You don’t think I can handle myself?”

Zero’s face tightens, and her cheeks suck in as if she’s sucking in her instinctive response.

“I think you can kill better than almost anyone we know, but I think this parallel operation requires more than killing.”

“Killing is fun, but so is saving omegas.” Alley Cat’s statement is so simple that it’s almost profound.

They’re not wrong. Neither of them.

Saving omegas isn’t my norm. Killing the motherfuckers who took them is.

“Alright, this place you’re pulling up to now has an alarm system enabled. Looks like you’ll have six minutes on the alarm between the time you trigger it and the time the place is flooded with a response team.”

Donnie’s voice climbs an octave whenever there is a clock on something.

Better that he runs comms. Put him in a field, and he would find every tripwire in it.

The first address painfully brings home to us what we are dealing with. I’m glad Valentina is not here to see it.

We didn’t make it in time. One dead omega already. Zero inhales once, sharply, and looks away. Then looks back and walks over and covers the body.

From the looks of it, she didn’t die easy.

To Zero’s credit, she didn’t flinch much.

That fuck of her stepfather isn’t even playing by the rules of his own creepy little game. Some Primacy operatives are good guys. Far too many enjoy omega abuse. Not all of them will be waiting for permission or for the contest time to run out. That abusive asshole did this on purpose.

The brutality of it only makes this triage more urgent. No time for finesse. No time for my little bottle-of-vodka calling card or carefully practiced standards.

The mission is simple now.

Find the omegas, get them out before they’re dead.

“Going in,” Zero says, opening her door before the car has even fully stopped.

She’s geared up, katana held in her hands in front of her but not in front of me.

“I go first.”

Alley Cat giggles quietly behind us both. “It’s not a Black Friday sale. Plenty of room for all of us to kill things.”

She finds everything disturbingly amusing. I rather enjoy it. I have a fine appreciation for dark humour that matches my own.

As soon as I step inside, the countdown timer starts. The alarm is a silent one. The tiny blinking red light at the seam in the corner of the wall tells me it’s live.

We split up. Each taking a hallway or floor to find the omega.

Zero’s katana makes a barely audible swishing sound as it cuts through a Primacy guard coming down the stairs. His scream is cut off right along with his head.

I take down the three that come running in response to the commotion. One with a shot to the chest, one with a hand to the neck, and one with a jagged knife to the skull.

This looks promising. Heavily guarded means guarded for a reason.

Sure enough, our first omega.