His personal team was now positioned across the street from the warehouse, hiding behind a large green trash bin, their stealthy advanced unnoticed by the guards. Four guards now stood near the entrance. Others walked nearby or were stationed closer to the warehouse.
Maximus took slow, even breaths. This might be it. The end of the Phoenix Corps. If their creators were eliminated, then they could consider a future free of paranoia. He could consider a future with Selena.
His jaw tightened. He couldn’t be thinking of her, not now. Besides, if Quinen was inside, and they forced him to fix them, Maximus would have a shot at finding his Vestal. No matter how Selena made him feel, she wasn’t his Vestal. She couldn’t be. He’d know, but now he questioned if that mattered.
Maximus sucked in another breath. It was time to focus. Everything else could come later.
“I don’t see the big deal,” one of the guards said, the words easy to pick out for the hybrids’ superior hearing given the quiet night.
“See the big deal about what?” another guard asked.
“Damned werewolves.” The guard scoffed. “Bigger guys are easier to hit.”
“They hybrids aren’t not really werewolves, you know. They just have some wolf genes and shit mixed in. It’s not like they change into actual wolves.”
The first guard shrugged. “They growl and have amber eyes and shit. Besides, I don’t care. I do what I’m paid to do, and that’s shoot whoever the doc tells us to shoot. I’m glad he gave us the all-kill order for those mutts. We should have had it before. It’s dumb to worry about keeping any of them. He can always make more. I don’t see the point, but hey, not my money. Should have just drowned all those freaks when they were still babies.” He laughed. “Put ‘em down like they do strays in the pound, right?”
It took all of Maximus’s self-control not to growl. He centered his mind instead on the useful intelligence he’d gleaned. A doctor was leading them, which fit in with the previous info he’d received suggesting Quinen was there. Given some of what they’d seen in the abandoned facility, the good doctor hadn’t given up his experiments.
The other guards laughed. A couple others added their own pound jokes. Cornelius started growling but managed to stop himself after a couple of seconds. The guards would get what they had coming soon enough.
“You hear something?” the first guard said, glancing around. “Like growling?”
Another man laughed. “What? You really think those hybrid freaks are going to show up here growling? You’re just getting inside your own head, man. They’re probably still scratching their heads trying to figure out where we went.”
Cornelius gritted his teeth. Maximus shook his head at the man, not worried. They’d all suffered, and hearing someone make such light of it was upsetting.
The guards weren’t going to show restraint, and they knew who they were working for. The men he’d encountered in the forest didn’t seem to care about killing innocent people. All that added together made his choice easy. He’d half-worried they would run into a warehouse patrolled by a bunch of part-timers thinking they were guarding some private shipping warehouse.
“Everyone pick a target,” Maximus whispered. “On three, we’ll all simultaneously take them down and move toward the fence.” He poked his barrel around the side of the trash bin, lining up with one of the guards. “One, two, three.”
Twelve rifles cried out in perfect unison, the overlapping, resounding noise so loud it might have been mistaken for a cannon. Twelve guards dropped right after, blood spreading from their chests. The frontline of warehouse defenders had already been shredded in less than a second.
Maximus jumped up and sprinted toward the gate. His teammates rushed after him, falling into a roughly triangular formation. They didn’t hesitate to fire another volley, taking down the second rank of guards who had rushed toward their comrades. Other rifles answered in the distance.
He didn’t need to check in right away with the other teams. They all knew their jobs, and, in truth, any small group of them might have been enough for the mission given the quality of the enemy.
With the immediate guards down, Maximus and his team slung their rifles over their shoulders and leapt onto the fence. They scurried to the top in seconds and already had their rifles ready before their boots hit the ground and pulled their guns down.
A bullet whizzed back Maximus’s head. CJ took out the shooter, a guard who had emerged from the warehouse.
“Beta Team, hit the warehouse from your side and spread out to watch for anyone escaping,” Maximus ordered. “Gamma, sweep across to the front gate, lock down the position, and get the gate open in case we need a rapid retreat. Help guard the perimeter. My team will find Quinen.”
“Roger,” answered Zephyrus and Thaddeus in unison.
Cornelius and Tiberius picked off another pair of guards stupid enough to rush outside and confront the angry hybrids. Light spilled out now from the open double doors leading into the warehouse. Maximus’s team had clear line-of-sight for entry.
He didn’t know how many guards were inside the warehouse, but given how many the hybrids had already taken out, there couldn’t be that many left. There might be Glycons or other monsters inside, but based off the conversation they’d overheard, those kinds of assets weren’t available.
Maximus allowed himself a triumphant grin. Quinen had gotten too cocky and left himself exposed. Now the hybrids would take advantage of that to finish his organization off for good.
The hybrids cleared the distance from the gate to the door in seconds, taking up position on either side of the door. It opened into a wide hallway that ended in the main warehouse floor about twenty yards away. A row of inconvenient crates blocked most of their view. They couldn’t see much from their position other than piles
