Vik and Tory looked in the direction of the underground garage where the truck was parked in unison. It didn’t take them long to start walking in the same direction.

“What kind of botched-up operation did we land ourselves into, hermano. Do you really think the baldy was involved in all this?”

Tory asked Vik as they headed to the underground garage. The latter couldn’t help but shake his head in denial before replying:

“I was also thinking of him getting involved in our setup. But now that I think about it, it all feels wrong. The guy is selfish and cautious.

He didn’t have anything to gain from making us fall into a trap like that. At least not on this job. The job was too high-profile for his reach anyway.

He’ll find himself in trouble if we get caught and his links to us are established.”

Vik said as he and Tory approached the truck. He scratched his chin before adding up.

“It’s bigger than Baldy’s paygrade. Or any of our backend crew. I realized this after listening to that announcement.

That trap… it wasn’t specifically meant for us.”

Vik narrowed his eyes as he started to make sense of his situation. He spat in anger and replied in a cold voice.

“We were just at the wrong place at the wrong time. To sum things up, the guys in the shadows don’t care whether it was us or some other crew who pulled this job off.

They were ready to sacrifice anyone the moment the crew started operating. Burn everything related to them forever.”

***

Vik and Tory were used to taking simple goods-smuggling jobs from their fence, Jim Belos. But suddenly their bald fence was all smiles when he told them that he had found an Op of a lifetime for them.

The pay was huge. The risks were minimal. And there was no gun-play or metahumans involved. At least that’s what Jeff had said to them at the time.

The job consisted of stealing a truck from a controlled research facility.

Vik and Tory started their recon after learning about the job. They observed the surroundings of the facility and discovered that it had very scant security.

Plus, there were a lot of loopholes too. Almost like it was tempting all the thieves in the world to loot the place.

Vik and Tory accepted the Op after doing their recon. But Vik got uncomfortable. He had learned long ago that no heavenly pies were landing in front of him out of the blue. His life had always taught him to take the positive things happening to him with a grain of salt.

So Vik performed additional research. Not on the recon itself. But on the blueprints of the facility. He studied the tunneling system, architecture, and everything that could be learned about the facility through free and paid knowledge on the black sites.

Then Vik placed additional countermeasures in place in case Op got even slightly wrong. He thought of every possibility. He imagined worse outcomes and came up with even more ways to deal with them.

And all that precaution paid off. Because things started going wrong from the moment this Op was started.

Vik and Tory had successfully breached the facility’s security and gotten inside. And they had also rerouted the feed on the holo-camera to one of the tech guys in the baldy’s contact. Vik had paid close attention to the rerouting.

Only when he confirmed that the holo-cameras would not be available, did Vik allow himself and Tory to make a move.

But that was not all. Vik had also gotten face-disorganizers for him and Tory. They were synth-skin face masks that ensured that their real faces were not revealed anywhere.

Vik had taken multiple precautions of these kinds to ensure their anonymity in case the Op fails. And he had only told the plan of action to Tory and the tech guy who was operating things for them from behind the scene.

And yet, with all of Vik’s precautions, things started going wrong the moment they started their Op for real by stepping into the core of the facility. They got detected even without tripping any form of alarm.

And it looked like the guards knew exactly where the duo was and where it was heading. Vik quickly came to a decision and told Tory to disconnect his comm connection with the tech guy.

After that, Vik chose a different route to approach the truck that no one, even Tory, knew about. The paranoid person in him always liked to have multiple options for himself after all.

To avoid being followed, Vik used IEDs. The blast impact generated by these explosives would not be fatal to security guards wearing cutting-edge armor. But it was enough to slow the pursuers down.

The duo finally reached the truck that was placed in the facility’s basement parking lot. There were other high-tech vehicles in the facility too. But that truck was eye-catching with its large size.

Vik and Tory got to work immediately. The IEDs had already started going off. They knew they didn’t have much time.

Vik first identified and removed all the trackers attached to the truck with the scanner he had purchased on the black market in advance. He had kept this purchase a secret too.

Only after ensuring that there was no way to track the vehicle did Vik allow Tory to start driving it. He then got inside the driver’s compartment beside his partner in crime. By then, the guards had arrived.

But it was too late. Vik’s thorough planning had ensured that they had enough time to pull off this heist without any casualties from either end.

Throughout the Op, Vik had made sure that their identities were not leaked in any way. And yet Raquel had zeroed in on them. That meant Vik’s plan had loopholes.

There was also a possibility that Raquel had been tipped about their identities by someone who knew what they were doing.

Or…

She knew about the Op all along. Maybe it was her that commissioned the Op in the first place.

Vik believed the last option was the right one. But why would she or her team sanction a raid on their own base?

And what was that all about killing Remington Roy? Vik had so many questions spinning in his head that he stopped thinking for a while.

He concentrated on the task at hand.

He had to check out the most controversial Oasis pods placed in Oasis Corp’s precious truck.

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