The Uninvited Guest

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  Yuri POV

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  I had before me a group of people, all of them staring at me with terrified faces, all of them waiting for the slightest movement, trying to predict what might happen. But here, in this place, only I hold that power. Only I have the power to decide who lives or dies, the power to impose my will upon the others.

  The plan must continue like the gears of a clock: always constant and always moving forward. Now it was my turn to keep it moving.

  "Excuse me, esteemed guests. May I know which of you is Mr. Keisuke Fujikawa?"

  "Founder and owner of Fujikawa Corp."

  "Born March 14, 1994."

  "From the Nasu region of Tochigi Prefecture."

  "That's enough. It’s me."

  "I am Keisuke Fujikawa.”

  The man stood before me, his appearance identical to the photographs we had studied. There was no doubt that it was him. His formal suit no longer seemed important when a rifle was pointed at his back.

  "Right this way, Mr. Fujikawa."

  "Let’s go have a conversation somewhere more private.”

  Two men shoved him forward with their weapons and followed me into the elevator. The rest kept watch to ensure the hostages didn't do anything reckless. During the elevator ride, I checked my watch: 8:20 p.m. The other teams should have already reported their progress. Just as planned, my radio crackled to life with updates.

  "Team Ron, the main lobby is ours."

  "I’m changing into the uniform now. The doors are locked."

  "We'll start setting the charges soon. In the meantime, we'll await further orders."

  "Zima, Tequila. COS secured. Main systems are offline. Recordings purged. Internal communications cut. Corporate firewalls are compromised."

  "Active interference engaged. The entire cellular spectrum is blocked. External radio signals are suppressed. The only operational network is ours."

  "We’re currently rewriting the security system, and access to floor 60 should open in 20 seconds."

  "This is Team Vodka."

  "The door has opened. We're proceeding with the assault!"

  "Bang!" "Bang!" "Bang!"

  "Heavy resistance encountered!"

  "We're switching to a battering ram formation. Volkov, try to flank through the lobby!"

  Fujikawa Corp.’s heavy security team seemed to be a bit more capable than the simple guards downstairs. Still, they wouldn't be much of a problem. They were trapped like rats, surrounded by a far better prepared, equipped, and experienced force. I estimated a delay of about two to five minutes. We could wait in the elevator until then.

  Keisuke Fujikawa, on the other hand, was sweating as if he had been exercising, even though he was just standing there in silence. He had no idea what was happening, nor could he do anything about it.

  The number 60 appears on the elevator, then a couple of final shots are heard. The elevator chimes, calling for the doors to open, but we are not in danger — Team Vodka was already waiting for us. One of them sits in the computer room, typing up part of the security system for the executive area. Two others methodically check the rooms off the lobby for any survivors or stragglers. Several men lie bleeding on the floor beside them, probably not going to live more than a couple of minutes. Keisuke Fujikawa stares fixedly at the results of his actions: he brought the wolves to attack his flock of sheep, and now he can only watch the assault unfold.

  After the computer finally prints a new card, Dimitri hands it to me. It's an access key for the entire building. With it, we're one step closer to our objective. Once we have the key, my group of six takes another elevator. The internal executive elevator is the only one that travels between levels 60 and 80; the latter is our new destination.

  *Ding dong!*

  When the elevator doors finally open we step into a large anteroom that functions as a lobby, with several adjoining offices — but the only one that matters to me is Mr. Keisuke Fujikawa's personal office, where his business computer sits, the only machine that can unlock access to the vault on the hidden 81st floor, where the most important items of his already-decaying empire are kept.

  This time, upon entering the room, I'm the one who sits in the big chair by the window. I see my guest's name on a wooden plate that marks this as his desk; I don't like it there, so I simply take it and toss it in the trash. My men force my poor victim to sit before me. Fujikawa trembled standing in front of his own desk — a hulking oak monstrosity that looked like an altar. Sweat had soaked the immaculate collar of his shirt. He was no longer the magnate. He was just a frightened man.

  "The computer, Mr. Fujikawa," I said in a flat, unhurried voice.

  "Unlock it."

  "For what?" His voice was a thread, a plaintive whisper.

  “Without the secure server permissions from the 81st floor, it's just... an expensive computer."

  "That's what you think," I replied, sliding the master access card Dimitri had made across the polished surface.

  "The system on the 60th floor has already been... persuaded. Their corporate firewall greeted us with open arms. Now, the computer."

  "There aren't any confidential company files there; there's nothing worth going through all this for."

  "All right, Mr. Fujikawa."

  "I won't ask twice."

  "Please provide your access key for your cold wallet."

  "Access key?"

  "That's for cryptocurrencies! Without the access computer, it’s useless."

  "I don’t have access to the computer with the necessary permissions. It's useless."

  "All the more reason to just give it to us."

  "On the count of three, Mr. Fujikawa—please, let's not reenact that scene from that movie."

  "Three."

  "Two."

  "One."

  His breathing was frantic gasps. His eyes flicked from my gun to my face, searching for some mercy that did not exist. He only found the determination of an executioner.

  "I already told you. I don’t have access to the computer."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "I can't believe this is all for a little money."

  "Fine. Then we’ll take the hard route."

  *Bang!*

  The sound was deafening in the closed room. A single shot, clean and precise, entered his forehead and exited the back of his skull, splattering the panoramic window with a violent, abstract red. His body collapsed like a rag doll, hitting the marble with a dull, wet thud.

  The barrel smoke curled through the heavy air.

  "You, search the corpse for the access key."

  "After that, get rid of the body," I ordered one of my men.

  He approached and began searching the body. In a couple of moments, he found what we were looking for: the access key to the cryptocurrency wallet. Now that we had it, we only needed to retrieve the computer without an internet connection that Mr. Fujikawa kept in the vault on the 81st floor. Then, we could obtain the necessary permissions and download the money from his accounts. We had to use that floor to reach the vault, but we couldn't do anything there yet. First, Sasha had to partially open communications access to the main server so the computer in Fujikawa’s office could regain access permissions and begin hacking the password of the first of four locks. Then, it would take about two hours to bore through the next five locks and cut the building’s power to disable the electromagnetic lock. After that, it would take 20 minutes for oxygen to enter the vacuum-sealed vault and for us to obtain the special computer. With nothing else we could do to speed up the process, we returned to the elevator and went back down to the 60th floor, then took another elevator to the 25th floor.

  All we had to do while we waited was maintain control, keep the police away as long as possible, wait for Sasha’s team to finish their work, have Team Rom access the main server, and download the cryptocurrencies. Just wait patiently.

  It was already close to 9 p.m. My plan had finished Phase 2 and was in position to carry out Phase 3 in a single move — everything was going according to plan.

  When we arrived on the 25th floor everything was exactly as we had left it. A captive audience, terrified, and a flock of sheep blindly following the pack of wolves. Several of them began to shout when they saw we had returned without Mr. Fujikawa, understanding very well what that meant.

  Brzzz

  The radio started buzzing — an incoming communication.

  “Zima, this is Team Rom.”

  “The fire alarm has been activated.”

  “You already triggered the fire alarm?”

  “That’s ten minutes ahead of schedule.”

  “Sir, it wasn’t us, someone else must have triggered it.”

  “Okay, no problem, just stick to the plan.

  Use the lobby phone to call 911, give them the building code and cancel the alarm with emergency services.

  Tell them that a drunk party guest was causing a disturbance and was being escorted outside by security, and that’s when he activated the fire alarm.

  Then post the fake pre-recorded videos on the stolen cell phones of the hostages.

  The police will try to cross-check on social media to see if the story holds.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Unfortunately, I now found myself forced to trigger part of Phase 3 prematurely, but it’s fine — just like in war, no plan survives the first encounter with the enemy intact.

  ……..

  Enemy…….

  “Team Ron, can you tell me on which floor the fire alarm was activated?”

  “Ninetieth floor, sir — the restaurant and rotating observation deck.”

  The news of the alarm irritated me, but it did not worry me. A minor setback. A frightened guest, a lagging guard… something manageable. From my position on the 25th floor, where the flock of sheep still trembled, I made the most logical decision.

  “Volkov, Sokolov,” I called, pointing to two of my most efficient men from Team Whiskey. “Floor 90. The restaurant. Someone triggered the alarm. Clear the problem. Quietly and quickly.”

  They nodded; their faces hidden behind balaclavas showed only the cold determination I expected. They were predators, not thugs. Volkov, a veteran of forgotten conflicts, and Sokolov, young but lethal. Two men should be enough for any guard or hiding civilian.

  I watched them walk away toward the elevator, their silhouettes vanishing behind the steel doors. I turned back to the crowd of hostages, maintaining the illusion of total control. The plan was moving forward. Sasha was working on the systems, Dimitri was preparing the drill for the vault. Everything was in its place.

  Minutes passed. Five. Then ten.

  A faint twinge of unease began to form in my mind. Too much time for a simple check.

  “Volkov, report,” I ordered over the radio, my voice sharper than usual.

  Silence.

  Only the static whisper of the open channel answered me.

  “Volkov. Sokolov. Respond.”

  Nothing.

  The gazes of my other men began to drift toward me. They could feel the anomaly, the fracture in the perfect rhythm of our operation. The captive crowd also seemed to sense the change in the atmosphere, a faint spark of hope igniting in their eyes.

  Then, we heard the ding.

  Soft, innocent, almost mocking. The sound of the elevator arriving at the 25th floor.

  When the doors opened, the first thing we heard was the terrifying scream of a woman, a scream from the depths of her lungs as if she had seen death itself crossing from beyond to claim a soul before her eyes. One of my men rushed to check what had made her scream so horribly, and when he spoke, he said something I never expected.

  “Zima, it’s Volkov!”

  “He’s... he’s dead. Sokolov too. They fucked him up. They... they ripped his head off, damn it. They ripped his head off and shoved it between his legs.

  “There’s a message on his shirt, it says... it says ‘Your ass is mine now’ written in blood, his own blood.”

  The scene was grotesque. Sokolov was sitting on the floor of the elevator, slumped against the back wall. His head was no longer on his shoulders. It had been placed between his own legs, his face frozen in a final grimace of agony and surprise. His glassy eyes stared into nothingness.

  But the message didn't end there.

  Someone, with a steady hand and a sinister sense of humor, had written something on Sokolov’s bloodstained shirt. With the man's own blood they traced crude, mocking letters.

  “Your ass is mine now.”

  It was a provocation, clearly an invitation to play — a show of skill, of cunning, a question of who was better: his mind or mine. It was a challenge to my perfect, rehearsed plan; a rebellion against my control.

  “Goddamn, this isn’t some idiot trying to run — this is another wolf, a lone one.”

  “The idiot has his weapons. He has his magazines. He probably has his radios too, so assume he’s listening to us.”

  “Let’s switch to speaking Russian.” I warned the others over the radio.

  Switching to our native language would give us an important tactical advantage; it would make us less predictable against our new enemy, one who was tempting fate or perhaps relying on his skill to be better than me — a grave mistake. We would show him why we were the best.

  “There are no reports of other agents in the building. It's a single person, without a doubt.”

  “Another guard maybe? Maybe he was taking his break and ran into them head on,” said another of my men.

  “One person has taken out two of my best men, taken their gear and sent us a shitty postcard.”

  “No, they went to check the fire alarm triggered on the 90th floor.”

  “It was an ambush. He was already waiting for them — that's how he managed to kill them.”

  “That John McClane becomes a target for immediate neutralization. He's more dangerous than ten of those crying hostages.”

  “Do we change the plan, Zima?”

  “Negative. Main plan stands. Fujikawa is dead, we have the key. Tequila, maintain the lock. Ron, hold the perimeter.”

  “But Whiskey... deploy the hunters. Alpha and Beta teams. Sweep the building.

  “Start from the elevator origin, the 90th floor. Clear floor by floor, ventilation ducts, drop ceilings.”

  “Find me that motherfucker cowboy and gut him. I want his head as a trophy before we open the vault.”

  As I ran through every move of this “John McClane” in my head, a sudden, icy certainty seized me when I noticed the absence of one of the tactical radios; that lone wolf had not only killed my men, he had stolen a communications unit, and he would undoubtedly try to use our own network to send an encoded distress signal to outside authorities. I immediately ordered another couple of my men to go to the top of the building, to the rooftop, and try to stop the disruptor from forcing us to change our plans further — but a doubt gnawed at my mind: was it already too late? Had that damned cowboy managed to transmit our location before we could silence him?