Betrayal - Book 3 of Guardians Saga - EDITED

CH 3.3 Reboot the Mission

A/N You don't have to listen to the music video, but it adds to your reading experience.

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In a nondescript office with standard office furniture and chairs, two nondescript men in nondescript black suits with white shirts sat facing each other. Their faces were clean shaven and they wore standard haircuts. Other than hair color and weight, one would be hard-pressed to distinguish these two from Grange and his boss.

"I don't see why we're going to all this trouble, Brockner" the blond man grumbled. He stood up and paced back and forth in front of the captive. His thin lips were pursed in annoyance while his associate merely watched with casual indifference. "Just knock her out with a few jolts of electricity and she'll remember everything. She's not going to escape us then."

Brockner took a long drag from his cigarette and looked up at Scott with an expression of dubiousness. "Are you so sure? What if she remembers nothing? Or worse yet, what if she remembers it all but decides that she prefers her current lifestyle over rejoining our ranks? Then what do we do? "

Scott shrugged nonchalantly before replying with an unmistakable air of callousness. "Bag her and sell her," he said.

Brockner let out an exaggerated snort, squashing the smoldering cigarette butt into the ashtray and adjusting his tie. "No way. She's too valuable to be dead; all of her biochemical processes would be lost, and those neural implants don't work well in corpses. We'd lose the opportunity to sell what she knows, if that comes to pass. Instead, we have to undermine her position so it looks like it just fell apart. That way she won't have anyplace to return to whether we bring back her memories or not."

Scott crossed his arms and narrowed his gaze at Brockner. "But only if she doesn't find out you engineered it all."

A sly smile slid across Brockner's lips. "Exactly why they pay me the big bucks! I'm off. Keep me posted on Dr. Cohan's progress when I come back."

Scott sneered as Brockner walked away. "I hate that guy."

"Which is why," Brockner said without looking back, "they pay you."

*****

Alex saw the blur of motion, but let her attacker tackle her to the ground anyway. She did brace herself so that her head didn't slam into the concrete. She let him both grab her jaw with his meaty hand and gut-punch her once. It gave her the excuse to go still, as if in fear and defeat. She was waiting for him to declare himself.

Her attacker, a young guy in his twenties, wearing gangsta clothes and sporting a buzzcut. His eyes both dull with stupidity and contempt as he let out a string of obscenities before forcibly ripping open her blouse

Rapist, not mugger.

Alex blasted him back into the wall. He stayed on his feet and straightened, because muggers were blasted unconscious, but rapists received a more thorough treatment.

His face twisted in fury and he rushed her again, a knife appearing in his right hand. The blade swept past her shoulder as she sidestepped it and then grabbed his right wrist. She firmly pressed her thumb against the median nerve to make sure he had no chance of getting away. Her other fist shot forward and smashed into his nose with an audible crunch, and he dropped the weapon with an agonized groan. Alex stepped back now, watching as both hands scrambled up to cup his face.

As he doubled over in pain, Alex brought her knee up into his face with a sickening thud. His head snapped back as if it had been on a spring and she followed through with a vicious side-palm to the temple. Once he collapsed to the ground, she blasted him again. She honed her blast above his pubic bone into the nerves there, hoping to burn them out and make his privates useless. Once he passed out, she took all his clothes.